Atimes is back in action, and this article is well worth reading, imo:
Odd couples in space: Israel, Russia
By Stephen Blank
On December 28 last year, a Russian Soyuz rocket carrying an Israeli telecommunications satellite blasted into space. This event received scant global media coverage because on the face of it there is nothing particularly startling about such launches. Satellites are hardly big news now, and since 1991 Russia has been using former missile launchers that were of very high quality to launch its own and other states' rockets into space, thereby making a lot of money.
But in fact this launch represents some very important developments and its very normalcy attests to the distance we (old rival nations?) have traveled in several directions since the end of the Cold War.
First, who would have thought during the Cold War that Russia and Israel would be collaborating on programs that have definite and substantial strategic and military implications - and that such collaboration would be routine, a matter of no interest to most media?
Yet that is the case and it shows just how Russia's relations with the Middle East in general and with Israel in particular have changed. As numerous authorities have observed, space is big business today, and it affects national economies in many diverse ways. And, as noted here, space launches are one of the few areas where Russia enjoys a competitive advantage, and thus can cash in handsomely. And so Moscow is launching satellites for a host of states, including some of Israel's greatest enemies, Saudi Arabia and Iran. And these launches, too, have become routine affairs that receive little media coverage.
But the tie to Israel merits considerable coverage for it shows how far Russian foreign policy has traveled since the Soviet period. Even under president Boris Yeltsin, Russian ties to Israel were growing. Ambassadors were exchanged, embassies opened, and emigration to Israel was freely allowed.
As a result, not only did Moscow and Jerusalem stop sniping at each other and actually begin to talk to each other, but also they developed flourishing commercial relations. Because between 500,000 and a million Israelis are of Russian/Soviet extraction, a lively business and commercial relationship developed between both states, a trade worth several billion dollars a year to Russia and an equally valuable economic relationship to Israel.
Business possibilities
Even before Ariel Sharon came to power, Israeli heads of state and ministers were routinely traveling to Russia to negotiate a wide range of issues and having more than just an exchange of views with their Russian opposite numbers. While Moscow is hardly one of Israel's great boosters, its policies no longer exhibit the reflexive antagonism and personal animosity, not to mention the deep-rooted anti-Semitism that so disfigured Soviet foreign policies for so long. Thus a genuine bilateral relationship has opened up with major commercial and political benefits accruing to both sides.
The fact that both states also face threats from Islamic terrorist movements has also led to a certain convergence. Israel has had little to say about Russia's harsh suppression of separatists in Chechnya. And while the Russian foreign ministry remains largely captive of old thinking on the Middle East, President Vladimir Putin clearly appreciates Israel's restraint. Putin accordingly has shown himself to be more even-handed, although hardly overly responsive to major Israeli concerns like hostility from Iran.
But perhaps the most startling aspect of the Israeli-Russian relationship is that for a long time Russian defense industrialists and military figures have been eager to enter into large-scale deals involving Israel and military sales. In 1995, defense minister Pavel Grachev proposed such large-scale partnerships and Israel has responded positively.
This cooperation is especially significant because in many respects Israel competes with Russia for arms sales to growing markets like India - where some observers contend that Israel has already supplanted Russia as the largest exporter to New Delhi. Israel and Russia also have collaborated on some critical deals in the upgrading of older model MiGs for former Russian customers.
US pressure aborted the plan to sell China an Israeli-produced Phalcon early-warning radar mounted atop a Russian Ilyushin-78 aircraft, but the Pentagon has approved a similar sale of three such equipped aircraft to India. The agreement has been signed already. So when Russia's military attache to India, General Viktor Chernov, announces that Moscow is very interested in forging trilateral arrangements with India and Israel, in order to continue servicing the Indian market, the importance of Russo-Israeli relations, especially commercial and military-commercial ties, readily become apparent.
China-EU, other collaboration under way
The importance of such collaboration is apparent not only to India. The satellite launched for Israel on December 28, the AMOS-2, does not only give Israeli Aircraft Industries an opportunity to market satellites and Russia an opportunity to showcase its launch capabilities in Europe, it also ties both states more closely into the European consortia for space exploration, Ariane and Starsem.
The satellite launch also highlights the growing salience of international collaboration in space. Oddly enough on December 30, two days after this launch, China launched the first satellite of its Galileo project with the European Union. This Sino-EU launch was intended to track space storms and help improve the safety of space missions. Further launches will take place in 2004.
So concerning international collaboration among hitherto unlikely partners, the Russian-Israeli launch is by no means atypical. Rather, it is a normal development that shows the world just how far the normalization of Moscow-Jerusalem ties based on the pursuit of mutual advantage and interests has come.
All of this demonstrates the increasing importance of the mastery of space or of space control for military purposes. Contemporary wars dating back to Operation Desert Storm in January 1991 demonstrate the necessity of controlling space and of denying it to enemies - as crucial to successful war strategies.
Yet no state or its military agencies has shown the capability to achieve such domination, including the United States and the Pentagon. Instead, governments and their armed forces must compete with increasingly sophisticated civilian and international consortia to launch and maintain satellites and long-term orbital capabilities and to obtain usable data from these satellites.
These consortia and the satellites they launch also compete favorably with military agencies in terms of their terrestrial photography. Thus they can potentially make available comparable images of comparable quality, compared with what their opponents are obtaining from their own space satellites and orbital vehicles.
The internationalization of this business can make for some very interesting forms of international relations and competition in future conflicts, or even in peace time, as the lucrative possibilities inherent in space exploration and the use of space for commercial and scientific purposes become increasingly clear, increasingly available and increasingly affordable.
Thus the Russian-Israeli launch stands at the intersection of several important trends in contemporary business, politics and warfare. While it is still unclear how these trends will influence global directions in 2004 and beyond, one could reasonably expect more such collaborative space launches in which what once seemed fantastic and highly improbable becomes a perfectly routine and even unheralded event.
Stephen Blank is an analyst of international security affairs residing in Harrisburg, Pa. |
