Throughout the 1990s, the Russian armed forces could not afford to buy much new stuff. China came to the rescue in the 1990s, and over the next decade, bought nearly $20 billion in Russian arms. But China also began to blatantly copy lots of the Russian tech, and build their own. Thus, not surprisingly, for the last five years, Chinese orders have shrunk, while production of copies of Russian tech have increased. In some cases, Russia has simply refused to sell China high tech stuff, to avoid having it copied.
Russia stopped selling China rope since the Russians finally realized that China could use that rope against Russia. And now the Russians are feeling a bit nervous about that Chinese rope dangling near their Far East:
More money was put into the nuclear weapons forces, with the realization that this was the only way to keep the Chinese, or any other potential invader, out. But now the generals and admirals are insisting that the conventional forces are rapidly crumbling, and without replacement weapons and equipment, there will be no Russian military capability available except nukes, or small commando units. The government now promises to halt the rot, via new purchases, within five years. The military leadership believes the nation faces some very real military threats. The generals are particularly worried about widespread Islamic radical unrest in the east, as well as possible Chinese attempts to regain territory lost, over a century ago, in the far east. In both these cases, nukes alone would not solve the problem. To emphasize the point, the major military training exercises this Summer have been held in the east, to work out the technical problems of dealing with a military crises there.
It is interesting that the exercises will be openly directed at the China threat, at least in part.
I suspected that the last couple rounds were really directed at China despite the claimed anti-NATO focus.
If we're ever to really reset relations with Russia, the Russians have to stop seeing the West as an enemy and join the West. Could Moscow's nervous gaze east end their dangerous fixation of war with American and NATO? A war nobody in America or NATO wants, anyway, despite Russian paranoia?
