Word: russia
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That's an understatement. Russia's military is still largely a remnant of the Soviet days, when the Red Army's millions were spread across a vast swath of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. When the Soviet empire began collapsing in 1989, Russia lost the bulk of its foot soldiers, as well as several key defense-related industries, ranging from shipbuilding in Ukraine to nuclear enrichment in Kazakhstan, according to an analysis of Russia's military in February by Stratfor, a U.S. company. The upheaval also forced many of Russia's finest engineers to quit for better-paid jobs abroad...
...limitations of both equipment and men became obvious during Russia's five-day war with Georgia last August. Despite Russia's superior firepower and its bigger army, its ground offensive was not the overwhelming success it should have been. Moscow's military arsenal lacked anything to match Georgia's Israeli-made spy drones, according to Paul Holtom, senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Indeed, Russian troops operated with no modern surveillance or night-vision equipment at all, according to Russian Duma hearings last October. Says Vadim Kozyulin, head of the conventional-arms program at the Center...
...there is one area where Russia's military has boomed during the past few years: arms exports. Moscow earned a record $8.3 billion in arms sales in 2008, second in the world to the U.S., which accounts for more than 40% of global defense spending. Moscow has been particularly good at targeting buyers in the developing world. Between 2004 and 2007 Russia sold $37.9 billion worth of military equipment - outstripping even the U.S. in that period - to more than 80 developing nations on every populated continent. Russian arms manufacturers have cut deals for everything from helicopters to tanks and rifles...
...Russia's strategy is twofold. It wants to use the huge profits it makes selling arms around the world as a platform on which to relaunch its own defense forces. But the arms sales are not only about money. Moscow hopes that as Venezuela and other countries grow more dependent on Russian weapons, political and economic ties will also grow, increasing Russia's global heft. "The West sees it as saber-rattling, but for Russia it is about retaking what it sees as its rightful position in the world," says Guy Anderson, editor of Jane's World Defence Industry...
...Russia has crafted its role by using its two most valuable assets - vast energy resources and mountains of military hardware - to cut a series of clever deals. In 2006, for example, then President Vladimir Putin flew a delegation of oil, gas and defense executives to Algeria. Putin negotiated to sell $7.5 billion worth of combat jets, missiles and tanks to the government, while Russian energy giants Gazprom and Lukoil secured key oil and gas concessions in the North African nation. And Putin offered an extra sweetener: he wrote off Algeria's near $5 billion Soviet-era debt. Then there...