Russian officer predicts war with America

Military experts in Moscow are making plans for a scenario in which Russia is attacked by the United States of America in the medium term. The reason for such an attack would be to obtain control of Russia’s oil reserves in Siberia. Major-General Alexander Vladimirov has said, “A war between Russia in the next ten or fifteen years is quite possible.” Vladimirov says that the reason why Russia might be a target is that it is “the most powerful geopolitical opponent of America and it has the power to extinguish the USA in 30 minutes.” Apart from gaining control of the oil, America would also want to attack Russia in order to demonstrate its military power to the rest of the world. General Vladimirov is Vice President of the College of Military Experts in Russia and he and other strategists aired their thoughts on war with America in an interview with the newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda. One of the other experts was the former Chief of Staff of the Russian Army, General Leonid Ivashov who is now President of the Academy for Geopolitics; General Victor Yessin, first Vice-President of the Academy for Security Problems, Defence and Law; and Alexander Shavarin, Director of the Institute for Political and Military Analysis. Their general view was that the US does not like Russia, and that a confrontation is inevitable. Of the experts, only Yessin thought war with the US was unlikely because the consequences – “a worldwide apocalypse” – were in the interests of neither state. Ivashov said that the Americans wanted to realise their “century-old dream of world domination and the removal of Russia as the main obstacle to their gaining complete control of Eurasia.” The experts all said they thought that America was capable of going to war with Russia over natural resources. The experts discussed what ultimatums they thought the US might issue against Russia. They suggested that they might demand a change in the domestic political situation in Russia on the pretext that human rights were being violated there and in order to obtain access for Western companies to oil and gas resources. They might demand the stationing of NATO peacekeepers in Russia or the secession of Kaliningrad or parts of the North Caucasus and the Caspian. Ivashov said the Americans might demand international control of Russia’s gas and oil and some sort of NATO inspection regime for Russia’s nuclear forces. According to the strategists, the only thing which will prevent such a war is rearmament. The experts differed, however, on the outcome of such a putative war. Yessin said it would lead to a nuclear winter while Vladimirov said that it would lead to a complete victory for Russia and to “the national collapse of the North American state”. [Komsomolskaya Pravda, 17 July 2007]

---- An excerpt from John Laughland's Intelligence Digest. For a free e-mail subscription to the Intelligence Digest, please click here ----