Online debate on Russia at The Economist
At a House Committee on Foreign Affairs meeting 9 September 08 members of Congress discussed what the U.S. response should be to Russia’s aggressive actions in Georgia last month. Most members of the Committee acknowledged that some sort of response was necessary to voice U.S. concerns about the possibility of a more aggressive Russian foreign policy, while they also conceded that the U.S. does need Russia’s cooperation on important matters of international security, such as helping to influence Iran’s nuclear ambitions. An interesting debate is being hosted online on this topic by The Economist – click here to link to it.
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.
The Indian government announced yesterday that it had conducted the first flight test of its Agni-5 ballistic missile “with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.
While many are rightly concerned about Russia’s development of new nuclear-capable systems, fears of substantial nuclear increase may be overblown.
Despite modernization of Russian nuclear forces and warnings about an increase of especially shorter-range non-strategic warheads, we do not yet see such an increase as far as open sources indicate.