Russian And Chinese Weapon Empires

[Anileve]

What a terrible shame! Although I am not surprised, coming from former Communist nations and world powers. Armen how do you feel about China now?

 

Russian and Chinese weapons blamed for fuelling Sudan war

By Meera Selva in Nairobi

 

17 November 2004

 

The brutal ethnic war in Darfur is being fuelled by weapons supplied by companies from countries that are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, a report claimed yesterday. The Security Council is trying to find a way to end the violence.

 

The Chinese and Russian governments have been allowing the sale of military equipment to the Sudanese government, according to an Amnesty International report, which also repeated claims that a British firm had been involved in brokering an arms deal between Ukraine and Sudan. The Russians and Chinese from their permanent seats on the Security Council have constantly opposed moves by other members to impose sanctions or an arms embargo on Sudan.

=====

 

Brian Wood, a researcher for Amnesty International, said: "Everyone knows that if you send arms to a country like Sudan, which has a very poor record on human rights, the weapons will be misused within three to four years."

 

The Security Council will meet in Nairobi this week to discuss the conflicts in south and west Sudan amid concerns that the Sudanese government is not willing to bring peace to the region. It has twice produced resolutions demanding that the government end the conflict in Darfur, but has stopped short of imposing sanctions or a full arms embargo. Last week, Sudanese police attacked refugees at the Al-Geer camp in south Darfur in front of UN officials, African Union (AU) monitors and journalists.

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa...sp?story=583657

 

Some will sell their soul for a whiff of the green. It is not the weapons people must fear but the minds suseptable to a corrosive usage of power.

Edited November 17, 2004 by anileve

[gamavor]

Eve, would you feel better if they were butchered with American made weapons?

 

It's just a business, like any other. BTW, Armenians during WWI were butchered with German and English made weapons. There is a lesson to be learnt in everything.

 

Although I consider myself a liberal (or maybe becuase of that and the world we are living in) I'm all for guns. All kinds and all types - no restrictions.

 

Too bad I cannot carry Kalashnikov in public!

[Armen]

What a terrible shame! Although I am not surprised, coming from former Communist nations and world powers. Armen how do you feel about China now?

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Eve jan, you may have the wrong idea that I idealize China for some reason. Other than their impressive economic performance of the last 26 years and consecutive growth of their political authority in Asian region, they have all the negative sides of a world power. Same goes for Russia.

However, I wouldn't think that Amnesty International is an independent player in world politics. If they reveal honestly all these kind of occurences in world politics we may want to shoot all the governments of all major powers.

Meanwhile, China is one of the counterbalances (to some degree) to the U.S. world power, which I think is a positive.

[Anileve]

Eve, would you feel better if they were butchered with American made weapons?

 

It's just a business, like any other. BTW, Armenians during WWI were butchered with German and English made weapons. There is a lesson to be learnt in everything.

 

Although I consider myself a liberal (or maybe becuase of that and the world we are living in) I'm all for guns. All kinds and all types - no restrictions.

 

Too bad I cannot carry Kalashnikov in public!

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Jeeeezus!!! Not the second amendment talk, especially not that Kalashnikov talk. Actually I don't support arms trade by any nations, all together I don't support weapons be it for defense or any other purpose. Nor do I claim that the US is exempt from such vile transactions. Precisely, the example of innocent people being butchered proves that weapons never had and never will ensure a guarantee to serve a noble cause. What appalls me is that those people we place in power, the authorities we trust to make decisions which should be more intelligent than our own are the ones responsible for the extermination of innocent people as if they were mere pawns in their cruel game. And we continue supporting them even if indirectly.

[gamavor]

I agree with you, however no one ever promised some kind of universal justice. Those that were killing the civilians in Sudan bought their guns from Russia and China. If Russia and China refused to sell them guns, they would have been bought from India, Pakistan, Turkey or USA.

 

And since the world that we are living in is not fair, I would rather be armed than dead.

[Anileve]

And since the world that we are living in is not fair, I would rather be armed than dead.

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Actually it's that sort of rationalization that keeps the gun industry afloat. We are supposed to believe that the world is dangerous and we must protect ourselves, the demand for that metal gear becomes a necessity with a proper conditioning by the authorities. And since it is a necessity which entails a level of danger, the market is always prospering. I really don't know anyone in the civilized cities who really needed a gun, be smart about your decisions and you will never need one. I think that the authorities have done a good job of demoralizing human nature and turning them into beasts who need to protect themselves from each other.

 

What I want to know is when will the UN pull their shyt together. They are as powerful as those annoying fruit flyies who buzz insistently and everyone just methodically shoos them off. What exactly are they getting paid for?

[gamavor]

Again, I can't agree more than that!

 

Since the dawn of the human civilization, everything that belonged to the category "material culture" was produced, invented, distributed for the human phenomenon called - The Market.

 

Before guns, there were spades, swords, knifes etc. in use with the same purpose.

Then, people revolted and thought that they can build a better system of human relations, better social structure but it all failed, because they refused to realize that the shortcomings are not due to their inability to build fair and just society, but because of our human imperfection.

 

People tried to change the world through revolution (it didn't work), they tried to change it through evolution (well, anyone that believes in evolution has good excuse not to fully refute this path:), - works well also for conformists:)) and the third way is - love the world as it is and maybe you can change it.

[Anileve]

You are absolutely right! But I don't blame the simple-minded men but the masterminds who do their best to sustain their simplicity for their own power supply.

 

As my idol Ayn Rand said:

 

"The truly deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser's intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture's dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.

 

No, the average man is not morally innocent. But the best proof of his non-brutality, of his helpless, confused, inarticulate longing for truth, for an intelligible, rational world and of his response to it, when given a chance he cannot create on his own-is the fact that no dictatorship has ever lasted without establishing censorship."

[Armen]

Eve, isn't it irrational to go against the established system?

[Anileve]

Armen jan, established system? What exactly do you mean? Is it more rational to go along with an irrational established system?

[Armen]

Armen jan, established system? What exactly do you mean? Is it more rational to go along with an irrational established system?

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Any system be it rationally or irrationally established (the system of few bad men in the case above) is always stornger than a person or a small group of persons. And it always takes courage (as you noted) to struggle agaist it. However, this system is rational in the short run because it provides basic goods for the majority of its members. It is irrational because of the excess need of the few. However, people who see the negative results in the long run need courage (irrationality) to struggle because they face an overwhelming majority of people who are content with the system. So, irrationality of the few bad men can be countered with irrationality of a group of good people. Again, these good group is going to be irrational because they will need personal sacrifice, which is the price to fight against any established system.

 

How is anyone going to persuade Lockhid Martin, General Dynamics etc. not to produce arms if they provide so many jobs? If they produce, their production must be utilized. It can be utilized for defense. However, any military establishment will create a opportunity for offensive ulilization of these products if the necessity for defense is not there. That's how a system works. The one who stops this system could be considered a new prophet.

[Armen]

Again, I can't agree more than that!

 

Since the dawn of the human civilization, everything that belonged to the category "material culture" was produced, invented, distributed for the human phenomenon called - The Market.

 

Before guns, there were spades, swords, knifes etc. in use with the same purpose.

Then, people revolted and thought that they can build a better system of human relations, better social structure but it all failed, because they refused to realize that the shortcomings are not due to their inability to build fair and just society, but because of our human imperfection.

 

People tried to change the world through revolution (it didn't work), they tried to change it through evolution (well, anyone that believes in evolution has good excuse not to fully refute this path:), - works well also for conformists:)) and the third way is - love the world as it is and maybe you can change it.

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Gamavor, I think it is different this time because it is on global scale and with WMD.

[gamavor]

...or maybe who have them and who did not.

[Armen]

Gams, you'd feel safer if you'd have a SS-18 in your backyard

[gamavor]

Gams, you'd feel safer if you'd have a SS-18 in your backyard

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If my backyard is next to some circumsized mo...fu..er, yes!

[Armen]

If my backyard is next to some circumsized mo...fu..er, yes!

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Texas...

[gamavor]

Thanks for reminding me! I need to get out of here!

 

WMD are great! Thank God for them!

[Anileve]

If my backyard is next to some circumsized mo...fu..er, yes!

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I hate it when you when you state things like that. You are too intelligent for those sort of remarks.

[gamavor]

Sorry Eve, I simply cannot behave all the time!

[Anileve]

Any system be it rationally or irrationally established (the system of few bad men in the case above) is always stornger than a person or a small group of persons. And it always takes courage (as you noted) to struggle agaist it. However, this system is rational in the short run because it provides basic goods for the majority of its members. It is irrational because of the excess need of the few. However, people who see the negative results in the long run need courage (irrationality) to struggle because they face an overwhelming majority of people who are content with the system. So, irrationality of the few bad men can be countered with irrationality of a group of good people. Again, these good group is going to be irrational because they will need personal sacrifice, which is the price to fight against any established system.

 

How is anyone going to persuade Lockhid Martin, General Dynamics etc. not to produce arms if they provide so many jobs? If they produce, their production must be utilized. It can be utilized for defense. However, any military establishment will create a opportunity for offensive ulilization of these products if the necessity for defense is not there. That's how a system works. The one who stops this system could be considered a new prophet.

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I agree with some ideas, but don't forget that this country was founded upon peoples discontent with other forms of government and their desire for a reformation. If everyone succumbed to the power of the state and its overwhelming pressure, women would still be using coat hangers for other purposes. And the city hall would coerce the public into voting for their chosen candidate. Although judging from our last election I think that the integrity was compromised.

[Armen]

I agree with some ideas, but don't forget that this country was founded upon peoples discontent with other forms of government and their desire for a reformation. If everyone succumbed to the power of the state and its overwhelming pressure, women would still be using coat hangers for other purposes. And the city hall would coerce the public into voting for their chosen candidate. Although judging from our last election I think that the integrity was compromised.

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Americans did not fully understand what happened in these elections. People voted for an empire. To say the truth I was amazed by the results. The U.S. is as far as it gets from what its founders apparently (according to the legend) ment it to be. However, there is one good thing. People still have guns in their hands. They have a hypotetical ability to shoot the government if it gets too marasmatic.

[Armen]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/images/china-panda.gif

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FK19Ag02.html

 

How Russia keeps China armed

By David Isenberg

 

WASHINGTON - China may have lost the latest skirmish with the European Union to get the latter to lift its arms ban, but Beijing is still able to buy what it needs - solid, serviceable hardware and technology - from Russia, former Soviet-bloc nations and Israel. And the embargo gives China greater incentive to develop its own weapons systems.

 

On Wednesday, the European parliament in Brussels voted, as expected, to maintain the EU embargo on arms trade with the People's Republic of China until the PRC improves its human rights record. It voted not to weaken national restrictions on such arms sales and said the ban should continue in force until the EU itself had adopted an improved code of conduct, providing legal restraints on arms experts. The current ban is largely voluntary, and strongly opposed by France and Germany.

 

No matter, China is still a big arms buyer, though economic constraints if maintained at the current level probably will keep Beijing from doing anything extraordinary, military-wise, for the next decade, experts say.

 

There is a famous incident recounted by the late Colonel Harry Summers, author of the classic 1982 book On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. In it he notes that at the very end of the war he was in Hanoi trying to make an agreement on the former Republic of Vietnam. In the course of the conversation he said, "Well, at least we never lost a battle to you." One North Vietnamese general then replied, "That's true, but it doesn't matter."

 

Much the same thing might be said concerning the debate over lifting the arms embargo on China. While China does not have the most modern weaponry or military technologies, the reality is that it has most of what it needs and is not having great difficulties in procuring from other countries, outside the European Union and the United States, what it does need. So the European parliament vote is not that significant to China.

 

Where does China turn when it shops for military weapons? In a word, Russia. According to the Russian Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), China constitutes the largest single importer of post-Soviet Russian arms and military equipment, with purchases ranging between 30% and 50% of Russia's entire annual deliveries.

 

Without those arms exports to China, Russia would lack the funds to modernize its own military. In fact, in the past Russia has prohibited the export of certain of its military aircraft, or production licenses, to China only to revoke the ban later on.

 

Rosoboronexport, the sole state intermediary agency for Russia's military arms sales and exports, estimated that sales will total US$4.1 billion this year, down from $5.1 billion in 2003. Aircraft and ships account for over half of the exports.

 

China purchased eight missile systems this summer from Russia and has already received 24 Su-30MKK fighters. Jane's Defence Weekly reported last month that China is in talks with Ukraine to obtain 42 turbofan engines to power its NAMC JL-8 basic jet trainer/light attack jet. The talks are a follow up on the 58 engines ordered in 1997 and since delivered to Beijing.

 

China is also reported to have launched preliminary talks with Ukraine on the potential acquisition of the Antonov An-124 and An-225 Mriya heavy-transport aircraft to address long-standing strategic lift requirements for the People's Liberation Army. The former is the world's largest production aircraft and can carry a payload of at least 120 tons. The latter is even bigger, with a payload capacity in excess of 250 tons.

 

In October, the Admiralteiskiye Verfi shipyard in St Petersburg turned over the first of two improved Kilo-class attack submarines to China's navy, PLAN (People's Liberation Army Navy). The two submarines were unveiled at the shipyard last summer and are part of a Russia-China deal worth $1.5 billion that was signed in May 2002. The contract called for five submarines. Two are being built by Admiralteiskiye Verfi, while two others are being built by Sevmash in Severodvinsk. The final one is being built by Krasnoye Sormovo in Nizhni Novgorod.

 

The Kilo is considered one of the most advanced diesel-electric submarines in the world and the subs will boost China's ability to conduct a naval blockade of Taiwan. According to a November 17 article in the Asian Wall Street Journal, by 2007 the PLAN force will have 12 Kilo-class subs. Most will be armed with "Club" anti-ship missiles, which have a range of 136 miles.

 

According to John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a non-profit research group in Alexandria, Virginia, "China has acquired an enormous number of Sukhoi [fighter aircraft] variants from Russia, as well as destroyers and subs." He thinks the debate over an embargo is unimportant. "The EU decision to keep the arms embargo on China is not relevant to China insofar as Taiwan, or asserting rights in the South China Sea, is concerned," he told Asia Times Online.

 

Sometimes when China is blocked from obtaining military systems it desires, that denial serves as an incentive to develop the arms and technology domestically. For example, in 2000, the US pressured Israel to back out of a $1 billion agreement to sell China four of its Phalcon phased-array radar systems, which would have been used for a Chinese AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System). Last week the Washington Post reported that China has developed its own AWACS, using a domestically produced advanced radar mounted on a Russian-made Il-76 transport aircraft, and is test-flying the first models for early deployment in the Taiwan Strait. The AWACS could be operational within one or two years, assuming the tests are successful.

 

Israel has also been a long-standing supplier of advanced military technologies to China. According to the findings of a past US congressional committee chaired by Representative Christopher Cox (Republican-California), Israel has "offered significant technology cooperation to the People's Republic of China, especially in aircraft and missile development", including helping China build its current F-10 fighter jet. The Chinese F-10 is virtually identical to the discontinued Israeli Lavi fighter, an aircraft designed using $1.5 billion in US aid. The Lavi program, funded by the US and based largely on the F-16, was intended to provide Israel with its first domestically built fighter jet.

 

Israel also transferred to China its STAR-1 cruise missile technology that incorporates US stealth technology and is a version of Israel's Delilah-2 missile, which contains US parts and technology.

 

Perhaps the biggest constraint on advanced Chinese military modernization is economic, not political. According to Ted Carpenter, director of foreign policy studies at the Washington, DC-based Cato Institute, qualitatively, "they are still close to a generation behind the United States. Chinese progress will depend on how much economic resources they want to devote to it," he told Asia Times Online. "At the current level they would be hard put to do anything in the next decade."

 

David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the Washington-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background in arms control and national security issues. The views expressed are his own.