error"Cooperative failure between Russia and the United States"
on Wednesday, January 16 @ 03:03:26 EST

By Ivan Ivanov
YellowTimes.ORG Columnist (Russia)

(YellowTimes.ORG) � So the military budget of the United States has been signed with $317.2 billion dollars of taxpayer money being transferred from the state budget to the accounts of the military industrial plants. What a wonderful thing the American election system is. If you can sponsor some candidate by contributing a million dollars to his campaign, he will repay you with a few billion in return. How democratic!

I recollect the times of Ronald Reagan, who was able to sign the �Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty� in December of 1987 while still being able to sign the military budget with the huge expenses of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI-system). The USSR also worked on the SDI-system despite the fact that Russian scientists tried to convince Kremlin �sachems� headed by Gorbachev that the SDI-system was a fool idea which could not work in a principle.

As a result, for eight years (1983-1991), the United States spent 100 billion dollars vainly while the USSR spent 15 billion dollars appropriately (take into account that these figures show the cheapness of labor in the USSR and differences in prices on raw materials and equipment).

By participating in these mad military buildup races, Gorbachev and the Kremlin �sachems� missed golden opportunities to receive an advantage in the Cold War.

But now there is no Gorbachev in the Kremlin. There is no USSR. There is no money in Russia�s budget for such mad ventures.

Now Russia watches as the United States puts massive amounts of money into their military and learns all about many Russian secrets, even creating a special department to analyze them. U.S. government administrations were surprised to find out how much more advanced Russian scientists were than U.S. scientists (There are many examples of this. I�m sure that the American �free� press never reported about these interesting stories. Feel free to ask me at: iivanov@YellowTimes.ORG).

One of these secrets is "the story" about a Russian torpedo called "Shkval." This unit was designed to go under water with a speed of over 100 meters per second (over 225 land miles per hour). No aircraft carrier or any other ship would have had a chance of survival if "Shkval" was propelling toward them.

After the USSR collapsed, America behaved so arrogantly, acting as the only military and economic force across the globe. Perhaps America considers itself absolutely impregnable, but it is not so.

The European Union and other countries will not look at the construction of a new American ABM-system dove-eyed. Now, and in the future, only Russian engineers have had scientific and industrial potential for the creation of new effective weapon systems with a demand worldwide. This is one of the reasons Russia has tried to be friendly with the United States. Besides, Russian industry has no money to equip even their own army, let alone build and sell such weapons to consumers.

Though the Chinese paid to Russia one billion dollars for two destroyers (project of the early 1980s) and received both of them last year. They ordered two again (with the best weapons for $1.4 billion) and will get them by 2005. They are indistinguishable from the U.S. Navy. Moreover, the competitors of China want to have the same. Taiwan, for example, begged the United States to sell them destroyers with the air-defense system �Aegis.� America decided against it and sold them vamped ships instead which had been built for Iranian Shah Reza in the 1970s. But the Shah was overthrown; therefore, the destroyers were still in America as a mothball fleet. Perhaps selling outdated ships is good business, but how will those ships stand up to new modern day Chinese ships?

However George W. Bush should understand clearly, that Russia could easily begin to sell high-class weapons or weapon plans to other countries with a simple ambition: to make a lot of money.

Instead the Bush administration is living up to pre-election promises to sponsors, promises which are stronger than common sense. This administration plans to increase the technology of the U.S. military even more. A few days ago, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell invited Russian scientists to participate in an exchange of technical ideas about the creation of a new American ABM-system (He said nothing about payment for the scientists. Maybe he thought they would do it out of �goodwill?�)

But once again we see that America is trying to invent something impossible. But if it turns out to be possible, they need to remember that Russia still holds secrets that could be spread across the world.

For years now, America has tried to establish their superiority all over the world. Russia and other countries have resisted this. America has built aircraft carriers and have positioned them on all seas to "protect national interests."

Instead of trying to compete with this, Russia has instead created rockets that can turn any aircraft carrier into a tomb within 30 seconds. All military officials know this fact, but they try to ignore it.

The world is tired from the arms race. The best scientists and engineers spend their lives working in this brutal business. It is evident that militaries around the world defend not the interests of their country and people, but interests of their leaders and military corporations.

It is a pity, but we can only dream about how much safer our planet could be if America and Russia would stop the arms race and establish sincere cooperation for the boon of their peoples. Although there would still be losers, this kind of cooperation would make the world a better place.

Ivan Ivanov encourages your comments: iivanov@YellowTimes.ORG

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