The "Peace Dividend" is over...standby for a 27% increase in defence spending to match the Russians (Yeah, right!). This article does make interesting reading though.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../wputin119.xml
Top quotes:
Intelligence sources say Washington and London have been taken aback by just how seriously Russia has viewed the perceived slight and admit that in concentrating so heavily on Iraq and al-Qaeda, they took their eyes off the ball
A source close to the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, who cut her teeth in government as a Kremlinologist in the Eighties, said that Middle East issues had diverted her attention from a more rigorous engagement with Moscow.
"She wants to spend more time on Russia but that hasn't always been possible. She said to me that she regrets the fact that she has not done enough on what is, after all, her major area of expertise."
The latest developments have exacerbated an already tense situation. Russia has responded angrily to US plans to station an anti-missile system in the Czech republic and Poland by threatening to site its own missiles in Kaliningrad to counter the threat. Earlier this summer Mr Putin upped the ante by threatening to target US strategic nuclear sites in Europe. Tensions with Britain over the murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko have prompted tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats, while on Friday the BBC's World Service was thrown off Russian FM radio.
But perhaps the only positive that Britain can draw from Russia's military resurgence is that its new Typhoon fighter aircraft, purchased at about £20 billion to counter a Cold War threat, might finally have found a worthy adversary.
Russian defence spending rose by 22 per cent and 27 per cent in the past two years and could be up as much as 30 per cent this year. In February, Sergei Ivanov, then defence secretary and now one of the front-runners to replace Mr Putin next year, announced a £100 billion programme of expenditure.
Here it is in picture form for the Pongos:
I guess the PR08 will have to be re-done now then???
LJ