THE ATOMIC PROJECT. MANAGEMENT LESSONS

Such a breakthrough became possible thanks to the Nuclear Arms Limitation Treaty, also known as START-3, signed by Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama on April 8, 2010 in Prague (entered into force on February 5, 2011), according to which by 2021 it is planned to reduce the nuclear warheads of the parties to 1,550 units, and carriers (intercontinental ballistic missiles, ballistic missiles of submarines and heavy bombers) – up to 700 units. This was the first agreement in the strategic field, after the treacherous policy of the “perestroika” and the Democrats, in which Russia managed to achieve significant advantages for itself. In it, for the first time, the Americans pledged to REDUCE their strategic potential, while Russia was given the opportunity to increase it. In addition, within its framework, the most important restrictions that existed in the previous START-1 and 2 treaties were lifted from Russia: on the size of the deployment areas of mobile ICBMs, on the number of multi-charged ICBMs, on the possibility of creating railway ICBMs. Russia has not made any concessions. Having written off Moscow as a serious geopolitical competitor and believing in the myth of its unattainable military and technological superiority, Washington has driven itself into such a trap, the way out of which – at least in the near and medium term – is not even visible. And it’s not just about strategic nuclear forces. Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the so-called “sixth generation wars” and high-precision long-range weapons, which are designed to ensure victory over the enemy without coming into direct contact with its armed forces. But apart from the fact that this concept itself is very doubtful (neither in Iraq nor in Afghanistan could the United States retain the victory achieved in this way), Russia is also reaching a parity line here. The proof of this is the new generation of long–range cruise missiles, which will soon be deployed on submarines of the Black Sea Fleet and missile ships of the Caspian Flotilla.

In Russia today, many people find it hard to believe

Such distrust is especially widespread in the circles of the so-called “patriotic public” due to the fact that our public opinion is firmly and selflessly held captive by numerous myths about Russia’s total “weakness” and total Western “superiority”. These myths were formed back in the “dashing 90s” under the influence of Yeltsin’s betrayal of our national interests and the brutal Russophobia of the then-dominant liberal-democratic “masters” of Russia. It must be admitted that in those days they fully corresponded to the sad reality. But times have changed. And this can be easily understood if you do not try to replace a sober analysis with slogans and chants, and facts with fictions and fantasies.

THE PHENOMENON OF RUSSIAN POWER

Russian tanks in Europe

Consider, for example, the potential of conventional weapons of Russia and the West in the European theater of operations (Theater of Operations). In this area, as it is considered in a “decent patriotic society”, NATO is almost an order of magnitude superior to “weak” Russia. But the first encounter with reality leaves no stone unturned from such a delusion. As you know, the main striking force and the core of the combat power of the Ground Forces are tanks. By the time of the collapse of the USSR, our Armed Forces had about 20,000 tanks in their composition on the European Theater of Operations. The Americans, in turn, deployed a group of 6,000 heavy Abrams tanks on the territory of the Allies. But, despite this, the combined potential of NATO in Europe was still significantly inferior to the Soviet one. And NATO strategists were forced to compensate for this imbalance with the help of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW). Back in the first half of the 1950s, NATO conducted a study on what forces the bloc needed to have in order to reliably repel a large-scale land offensive by the superior forces of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries. Then the calculations showed that to solve this problem it is necessary to have at least 96 full-blooded divisions. Meanwhile, the cost of arming one such division alone exceeded $1 billion. (and this is not in current dollars, but in the prices of that time!). Plus, about 2-3 times more funds were required for the maintenance of such a huge group of troops and the creation of appropriate infrastructure. Such a burden was clearly beyond the power of the Western economy. The solution was found in deploying a grouping of American tactical nuclear weapons on the continent, which was soon done. By the beginning of the 1970s, the American arsenal of TNW, according to experts, already numbered about 7 thousand ammunition for various purposes, and the highest achievement in this field was considered to be the creation of selective action weapons – neutron charges (for 203 mm and 155 mm guns, as well as for Lance missiles) with a capacity of 1 to 10 kilotons, which were considered as the main means of combating the personnel of the ground forces, especially the crews of Soviet tanks. Taking into account the nuclear factor, in order to repel the “Soviet aggression”, NATO needed to deploy not 96, but only 30 divisions, and they were deployed. How are things in this area now? And here’s how: at the beginning of 2013, the last batch of heavy Abrams was withdrawn by the Americans from Europe. In the NATO countries, over the past 20 years, 10-15 “old”, but in fact – quite combat-ready vehicles were scrapped for one new tank that entered service. At the same time, Russia has hardly reduced its tanks. As a result, today OUR COUNTRY IS THE ABSOLUTE LEADER HERE: in mid-2014, there were as many as 18,177 tanks on the balance sheet of the Ministry of Defense (T–90 – 400 units, T–72B – 7144 units, T–80 – 4744 units, T–64 – 4000 units, T-62 – 689 units and T-55 – 1200 units). Of course, only a few thousand vehicles are deployed in the units of constant readiness, and most of them are located in storage bases, but the picture is exactly the same for NATO members. So the decisive superiority of Russian tanks has not gone anywhere since the Soviet era, strange as it may seem, “patriotic” mourners and all-sufferers will hear it! Okay, the corrosive reader will say. But some of these tanks should be kept in the Far East, because China has its own 8,000 armored vehicles. In addition, NATO, as before, can compensate for this imbalance with the help of tactical nuclear weapons. So, even more reliable and cheaper… And here another surprise awaits us. In the field of TNW, the superiority of modern Russia over NATO is absolutely crushing!

Washington’s Fatal Miscalculation

And the Americans are well aware of this. Russian just used to think that Russia would never rise again, that the possibility of a big war in Europe was reduced to zero and the Russian TNW, along with Russian tanks, would eventually crumble from old age and uselessness. And now… now they’ve woken up, but it’s too late – the train has left! Here it must be said that this nuclear weapon can be called “tactical” very conditionally. Sometimes it significantly exceeds the power of warheads mounted on strategic ICBMs. I will point out for example that the range of safe firing of Russian 65-76K torpedoes in the nuclear version is eleven and a half kilometers, otherwise you can get under the blast wave of your own torpedo. And this despite the fact that the range of these torpedoes does not exceed 50 km. And, for example, the tactical bombs of the USA (B-61, 170 kt) and Russia (up to 350 kt) significantly exceed the warheads of the strategic American ICBMs Minuteman-2 (170 kt) and the Poseidon SLBM (40 kt) in their power. It would be useful to recall here that only two atomic bombs with a capacity of 15 kt (tactical, according to the current classification), dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, brought Japan out of the war three weeks later… So, NATO countries currently have only 260 tactical nuclear munitions in the European Theater of Operations. The United States has 200 aerial bombs with a total capacity of 18 megatons. They are stationed at six air bases in Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey. France has another 60 atomic bombs. That’s it! And Russia today, according to the most conservative estimates, has no less than five thousand units of TNW of different classes – from warheads for Iskanders to torpedo, aviation and artillery missiles! True, the United States has 300 more tactical B-61 bombs on its own territory, but with such an imbalance, this, you know, does not change things. And the United States cannot change this imbalance: they have destroyed the rest of the “legacy of the Cold War” — tactical nuclear shells, land–based missiles, and nuclear warheads of Tomahawk sea-based cruise missiles.And the Americans are well aware of this. Russian just used to think that Russia would never rise again, that the possibility of a big war in Europe was reduced to zero and the Russian TNW, along with Russian tanks, would eventually crumble from old age and uselessness. And now… now they’ve woken up, but it’s too late – the train has left! Here it must be said that this nuclear weapon can be called “tactical” very conditionally. Sometimes it significantly exceeds the power of warheads mounted on strategic ICBMs. I will point out for example that the range of safe firing of Russian 65-76K torpedoes in the nuclear version is eleven and a half kilometers, otherwise you can get under the blast wave of your own torpedo. And this despite the fact that the range of these torpedoes does not exceed 50 km. And, for example, the tactical bombs of the USA (B-61, 170 kt) and Russia (up to 350 kt) significantly exceed the warheads of the strategic American ICBMs Minuteman-2 (170 kt) and the Poseidon SLBM (40 kt) in their power. It would be useful to recall here that only two atomic bombs with a capacity of 15 kt (tactical, according to the current classification), dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, brought Japan out of the war three weeks later… So, NATO countries currently have only 260 tactical nuclear munitions in the European Theater of Operations. The United States has 200 aerial bombs with a total capacity of 18 megatons. They are stationed at six air bases in Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey. France has another 60 atomic bombs. That’s it! And Russia today, according to the most conservative estimates, has no less than five thousand units of TNW of different classes – from warheads for Iskanders to torpedo, aviation and artillery missiles! True, the United States has 300 more tactical B-61 bombs on its own territory, but with such an imbalance, this, you know, does not change things. And the United States cannot change this imbalance: they have destroyed the rest of the “legacy of the Cold War” — tactical nuclear shells, land–based missiles, and nuclear warheads of Tomahawk sea-based cruise missiles. In order to understand how it happened that Russia, which “lost” the Cold War, is now an ORDER of MAGNITUDE superior to NATO in this important area, it is necessary to turn to the history of the issue. It is believed that by the beginning of 1991, the USSR had approximately 20-22 000 units of tactical nuclear weapons. These are nuclear charges of aerial bombs, warheads of tactical missiles “Luna”, “Tochka”, “Oka”, nuclear warheads of anti-submarine and anti-ship weapons of the fleet, special warheads of air defense and missile defense missiles, nuclear mines and nuclear artillery shells of the Ground Forces. This impressive arsenal was the result of a forty-year intense arms race, initiated, by the way, not by the “totalitarian” USSR, but by the quite democratic and liberal USA, which already in the early 1950s began to develop and test various types of TNW. The first example of a warhead of this class was a projectile for a 280-mm cannon, with a capacity of 15 kt, tested in May 1953. With the miniaturization of nuclear warheads, projectiles for self-propelled howitzers of 203 mm and 155 mm caliber were subsequently adopted, which had a power of 1 to 10 kt and until recently were in the arsenal of American troops in Europe. Subsequently, tactical missiles with nuclear warheads were put into service: “Redstone” (range 370 kilometers), “Corporal” (125 kilometers), “Sergeant” (140 kilometers), “Lance” (130 kilometers) and a number of others. In the mid-1960s, the development of the Pershing-1 tactical missile (740 kilometers) was completed. In turn, the Soviet military-political leadership decided that the saturation of American troops in Europe with TNW creates a fundamentally new balance of forces on the continent. Decisive measures were taken to create and deploy numerous types of Soviet TNW. Already in the early 1960s, tactical missiles T-5, T-7, and Luna began to arrive in the troops. Later, the non-strategic nuclear arsenal included medium-range missiles RSD-10, R-12, R-14, medium-range bombers Tu-22, Tu-16, tactical missiles OTR–22, OTR-23, tactical – R-17, “Dot”, 152 mm caliber nuclear artillery, 203 mm and 240 mm, tactical aircraft Su-17, Su-24, MiG-21, MiG-23, sea-based vehicles. By the way, the Soviet leadership has repeatedly offered Western leaders to start negotiations on reducing tactical nuclear weapons. But NATO for a long time stubbornly rejected all the proposals of the USSR on this topic. The situation changed radically only when the Union staggered under the blows of Gorbachev’s “perestroika”. Then Washington felt that it was necessary to use the moment to weaken and disarm its main geopolitical opponent as much as possible. In September 1991, US President George W. Bush took the initiative to reduce and even eliminate certain types of TNW. Gorbachev, in turn, also announced plans for a radical reduction of similar weapons in the USSR. Subsequently, these plans were developed in the statement of Russian President Boris Yeltsin “On Russia’s policy in the field of arms limitation and reduction” of January 29, 1992. It indicated that the production of nuclear artillery shells and warheads for ground-based missiles had been discontinued in Russia, and all stocks of such warheads would be destroyed. Russia will remove all TNW from surface ships and multipurpose submarines and eliminate one third. Half of the warheads for anti-aircraft missiles and aviation ammunition will also be eliminated. After these reductions, Russia and the United States were supposed to have 2500-3000 tactical nuclear warheads in the arsenals of TNW. But it turned out differently. The illusion of world hegemony played a cruel joke on Washington. “Democratic” Russia, after the terrible pogrom that their liberal agents staged here, was written off by American strategists. At the same time, after their high–precision weapons successfully coped with some combat tasks previously planned for TNW during the Gulf War, Washington bet on a technological breakthrough. But this led to the fact that “smart” weapons became more and more expensive, less and less of them were produced, and in the end, NATO’s “high-precision ammunition” turned out to be completely insufficient for conducting large-scale hostilities with an enemy at least approximately equal to the West in terms of its technological level.

“Borjom” for decomposed kidneys

Meanwhile, in Russia, experts quickly agreed that in the geostrategic situation that has developed since the collapse of the USSR, a landslide reduction and destruction of TNW is unacceptable. After all, it is TNW, which has quite high indicators according to the criterion of “efficiency-cost”, can serve as a kind of universal equalizer of forces, depriving NATO of their military advantage. Under the circumstances, Russia simply borrowed from NATO the thesis that was recently used by the alliance about the need to compensate for enemy superiority in conventional weapons by deploying a tactical nuclear arsenal on the European Theater of Operations.

This is how the situation has been developing for two decades

The West, having written off Russia, cut its tanks, destroyed tactical nuclear ammunition. Russia, feeling its weakness, left both tanks and tactical nuclear ammunition as an “armored train on a siding.” This is what has led to the fact that now – after Russia has overcome the inertia of disintegration and has begun a systematic revival of its power, and the West, lulled by sweet dreams of a liberal “end of history”, has castrated its armed forces to the point where they are capable of waging only colonial wars with a weak, technically backward enemy – The balance of power in Europe has radically changed in our favor. Realizing this, the Americans caught on, but it was too late. In December 2010, the Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance and Implementation of Agreements, Rose Gottemoeller, sounded the alarm: “The Russians have more tactical nuclear systems than we do, and Congress strongly recommends that these issues be addressed… The next step should be the reduction of tactical nuclear weapons.” Even more active in the same year were the Europeans in the person of the foreign ministers of Poland and Sweden, who blindly demanded from Russia the unilateral creation of two nuclear–free zones – the Kaliningrad Region and the Kola Peninsula – territories of priority deployment of the Russian TNW, including the main areas of the Baltic and Northern Fleets (in the case of the Northern Fleet, this is also the area where a significant part of the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces are based). Since then, the Americans have repeatedly offered our country a flawed way to solve the “TNW problem”, stubbornly insisting on developing an agreement “to eliminate inequality in tactical nuclear weapons stocks.” They even tried to condition the entry into force of the OSV-3 treaty on the start of negotiations on TNW. Thus, in accordance with Senator Sene Lemieux’s amendment (Amendment 4/S.AMDN.4908), the final entry into force of the OSV-3 should take place only after the consent of the Russian side to negotiations on the issue of the so-called “elimination of the imbalance” in the tactical nuclear weapons of Russia and the United States. And already on February 3, 2011, Barack Obama, in a letter sent to a number of key senators, announced “the beginning of negotiations with Russia in the near future on eliminating the disparity between tactical nuclear weapons of the Russian Federation and the United States and reducing the number of tactical nuclear warheads in a verifiable way.” But alas! In 2012, Putin returned to the Kremlin and the West’s hopes of “diluting” Russia by inclining it to unilateral disarmament failed.

***

The price of this failure became more or less clear during the Ukrainian crisis. And this price is as follows: the West has lost its former military superiority over Russia, and in the European theater of operations it turned out to be MANY TIMES WEAKER than Moscow. And there are no ways to correct this disparity, neither Washington, nor London, nor Berlin, nor Paris.

The post PUTIN’S NUCLEAR SURPRISE first appeared on Global Policy.

The article will focus on a fundamentally different type of atomic weapons, the use of which is not only welcome, but also allows the owner country to pursue a much more active foreign policy and solve in its favor such conflicts that seem to be finally and irrevocably lost.

Why do you think the United States, as soon as they manage to squeeze Russia out of another country, first of all cares about shutting down all nuclear reactors previously built in them by the Soviet Union and energy projects in general?

Everything is very simple. Energy is the blood of the economy. Not a single superpower in the last 200 years has been built on the basis of any looms, iPhones or robots. But they all had their own energy zest, which lifted them above their opponents.

Britain became the ultimate mistress of the seas and the main factory of the world, having received cheap and high-quality Cardiff coal. It was he who became her main competitive advantage over others.

In the second half of the XIX century, more than half of the coal burned in the world was English

SINGAPORE, THE UAE AND OTHER GEOPOLITICAL MYTHS

The United States was able to throw the British off the throne thanks to control over oil. The fatal fate of the under-superpower – Japan – adds extra colors and shows that there are no exceptions to this rule. A country may have a first-class industry, a fanatical and committed population, but this is not enough. For true independence, any country needs an independent energy sector. For a country to become a superpower, it must impose itself on a significant part of the world as an energy supplier. On the contrary, any country, having energy dependence on its neighbor, is doomed to be its faithful ally, or it will be turned into an economic ruin.

This is well understood in the United States, and therefore, as I have already said, the first thing they do is squeeze Russia out of the energy markets of their newfound satellites, and where they failed to do this, they very quickly roll back.

Ukraine, doomed to friendship with Russia

RUSSIAN RUSSIANS ARE THE GOAL OF THE UKRAINIAN EVENTS – TO DESTROY THE RUSSIANS BY THE HANDS OF THE RUSSIANS THEMSELVES”

Ukraine was supposed to be the main prize for the United States in its campaign to the East, which began 30 years ago. Before the decisive throw and destruction of Russia, it was Ukraine that was destined to play the role of a springboard and supplier of expendable military materials (I mean people who are ready to die in a war with the Russians). During this time, the country was involved in all imaginable and unthinkable anti-Russian projects, the elite was bought, the population was periodically brainwashed. Time after time, Washington made attempts to strengthen itself and invariably rolled back. The last and hopefully final attempt was made in 2013. Kiev and the rest of Ukraine, with the exception of Crimea and several eastern cities of the country, were quickly taken under control. And then, once again, Washington was disappointed.

Let’s leave aside the military campaign and look at the energy aspects of the confrontation. Already at the beginning of the winter of 2014, Ukraine had to be saved. To save it so that it does not collapse ahead of time. That is why in that difficult winter for Ukraine she was helped from Moscow. They helped because they were not ready to return to Kiev yet.

The same thing happened next winter, and I am sure that next winter will once again show that Russia will not let Kiev fall until it is ripe for its absorption. If Moscow had returned Ukraine at the end of 2014, in a few years it would have been raking out the problems of 30 million people who hate it because its tanks did not allow them to fully enjoy European life. And so they still have plenty of time for this.

That is why the attack on Mariupol was stopped in August 2014 and the APU, which at that time were the remnants of broken and completely demoralized detachments, unable to resist for a long time, were not finished off.

Ukraine, obviously, could not survive the first winter without the help of its neighbors, and therefore Russia began to “aggressively” supply it with gas, coal and fuel for nuclear power plants. Often in debt, realizing that these debts will never be repaid.

WITHERING OF THE UKRAINIAN ATOM

2.5 years have passed, and Ukraine’s energy dependence on Russia has only increased in percentage terms. Neither the energy saving program (freezing of the population and destruction of industry) nor the transition to alternative sources helped Kiev. Russian gas was replaced with Russian coal, which for some reason became known as South African, oil and gasoline – with Russian liquefied gas (up to 50% of liquefied gas in Ukraine is of Russian origin). And the transition to nuclear rods from Westinghouse is associated with a significant number of organizational and technological problems and cannot be implemented even in the medium term.

Only the technological transition on one test unit will take at least 8 years and then at least 4 more years, when it will be possible to completely abandon the Russian rods. No way faster.

But Kiev and Washington obviously don’t have these 12 years. Summing up the results of attempts to separate Ukraine from Russia, we must admit that, despite enormous efforts and well-planned hybrid strikes, they failed. Kiev is still critically dependent on Moscow, and its regime can be brought down at its will within one calendar year. And it will be brought down as soon as everything is ready to collect the fruits of this collapse.

THE IDEOLOGY OF GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE

The date is currently being viewed no later than 2020. But the regime still needs to reach it, which means that Moscow will continue to help its opponent, despite the rhetoric and demonstrative spitting in its direction from Kiev.

I know it sounds crazy, but that’s exactly the logic of modern hybrid wars. To understand it, let’s turn to another case.

Affectionate embrace of Turkey

THIRD WORLD, TRANSIT: ABOUT THE CHOICE FOR TURKEY

A significant event took place yesterday. A contract was signed in Turkey for the construction of the first stage of the Turkish Stream, according to which Russian gas will bypass Ukraine to Turkey and Europe. Today it is easy to build dizzying plans in your head about the advantages that Russia will receive in the future. And on November 24, 2015, it seemed to many that Russian policy in the Middle East had failed and the country was facing a long and tough confrontation with the Turkish Republic, which, of course, in this case would be helped by all “progressive humanity”.

It seemed to many, but not to those who, a few years before, had made such a turn… impossible.

Turkey’s economy is critically dependent on energy imports. Surrounded on all sides by enemies, she could not rely on a reliable ally. The Turkish “two-vector approach” at that time, in fact, was no different from the Ukrainian one, with one exception: initially all its energy projects were not tied to Russia. But gradually, step by step, Moscow entered the energy market of Ankara. In the beginning, it ensured Turkey’s independence from the West, allowing it to begin to get impudent and put into practice the implementation of its neo-Ottoman project. At the same time, energy consumption was growing in the country, and before the crisis in the Middle East (2011), this growth was up to 9% per year. The power system did not have time to fulfill all the requests of the rapidly growing industry and the service sector, and therefore constant blackouts in the provinces were normal practice. It was obvious to the Turkish leadership that a breakthrough was needed, otherwise they would have to forget about the Turkish economic miracle. In 2010, Turkey, after much hesitation and searching, concluded an agreement with Moscow for the construction of a four-unit Akkuyu NPS with an installation capacity of 4.8 GW.

At that time, the entire energy sector of Turkey had only 21 GW of generation

THE GAME OF GAS PIPELINES. NEW SEASON

And taking into account the fact that half of the country’s generation consisted of thermal power plants, as well as taking into account the import of a significant share of coal and gas from Russia, Turkey’s dependence in the energy sector has become critical and even strategic. All this played a role during the crisis of 2015. Despite desperate attempts on the part of the United States to sever these new economic ties between Moscow and Ankara and push the two countries head-on, they failed.

Moreover, we must understand that this state of affairs will not last 5 or even 10 years. The service life of the new nuclear units will be 50-60 years, and the gas pipe – at least 30 years. And all this time, Turkey will not have a desire to put sticks in the wheels of Russian diplomacy without very strong arguments, and if it suddenly does, it will regret it very quickly, as it happened at the end of 2015.

Hybrid Energy Wars

What will be the energy of the future? Whoever is the first to answer this question correctly has every reason to claim the role of a future superpower. There are exactly four applicants for today. Or rather, two, and two should be kept in mind.

To begin with, two underplays. These are Europe and China.

Europe has made a bet on two main directions. The first is wind and sun, and the second is a new generation of nuclear power plants from AREVA. With the new nuclear power plant, so far everything is not as good as the developers would like, and the wind and the sun, simultaneously with the decommissioning of the old nuclear power plants in Germany, have led the continent to a shortage of basic capacities and an increase in the cost of electricity, which is beginning to slow down its economy.

China is growing very fast. Its energy needs are so great that for a very long time they will not be able to be satisfied at the expense of internal resources (if at all). So far, the country is totally dependent on foreign energy technologies (nuclear power plants) and fossil fuels. In the foreseeable future, China is not able to get rid of it, and therefore Beijing will be vulnerable and dependent for a very long time and will not be able to be a superpower in the full sense of the word.

Rather, it will be another “pro-Russian” and very big Japan

IS THE SHALE REVOLUTION A GREAT HOAX?

So, the first real player is the current only superpower of the United States. It has made a bet on more complete extraction of traditional oil and gas and is developing these areas. Their calculation is that deposits with cheap prime cost will soon run out, their shale will be in demand and will feed the country for several more decades, and they will become a trendsetter, a source of technology, which will provide them with advantages. It cannot be said that they tried only this direction. Also, the United States was one of the first to try to subdue nuclear energy. To do this, the political levers and developments of Westinghouse were used. But the latter has not yet managed to master the construction of a new generation of reactors, and probably will not be able to do so soon. In any case, they are already far behind Russia in the nuclear power industry and are unlikely to be able to catch up with it. At the same time, Washington’s political levers are weakening, and countries are getting out of their control one by one, bowing to their geopolitical opponents.

The second player is Russia. She, like no one else, has all the possibilities for a breakthrough. And in different directions. Possessing colossal energy resources (from hydro to coal, oil and gas) and having made a qualitative breakthrough in nuclear energy (having overtaken competitors at the same time), it currently provides the world (primarily Eurasia) with a lot of unique energy projects.

Asian Super-ring: creation of a new 15 kW energy cluster in the Far East for looping the energy systems of Russia, China, Japan and South Korea into one. This will not only tie the three leading Asian economies to it, but will also allow them to deploy infrastructure for future projects in their Far East at their expense.

Development of traditional gas and oil fields in the Arctic and the Far East. By doing this, the Russian Federation will be able not only to bind new consumers to itself, but also to prevent the American shale strategy from working (the fight against which is being waged today on all fronts)

And finally, the construction of new nuclear power plants around the world. Today, contracts have been signed and 36 nuclear power units are being built (plus 8 units are being built in Russia). This is about half of the world market (if we count American and European long-term construction projects). Moreover , the geography of construction is remarkable: Turkey, Hungary, Belarus, Iran, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, China, Finland. Agreements have also been concluded with Egypt and Jordan. There are several more projects on the way.

What does this mean for Russia

The construction of stations and their maintenance are projects for 60-70 years (with the extension of the life of the blocks – up to 100 years). For a hundred years, the country that built the nuclear power plant will be like Ukraine dependent on Russia in the energy sector.

And it will also bring her money. A lot of money.

RUSSIA HAS A CONTROLLING STAKE IN NUCLEAR ENERGY

PUTIN’S NUCLEAR SURPRISE

And all this time, the probability of a conflict between Rosatom’s partner countries and Russia, thanks to the construction of nuclear reactors, will decrease. The example of Turkey today is very indicative. If we look again at the geography of nuclear construction sites, we will see that Russia surrounds itself with countries that are atomically dependent on it, and also builds new nuclear power plants in regions that are critically important to itself. This is the atomic hybrid weapon that can and should be used. And it’s already in use. The current gain in the new nuclear market allows Moscow to pursue an increasingly offensive policy in the world and is an important lever for solving its geopolitical tasks. Today we see this very well in the examples of Ukraine, Turkey, Iran, Hungary and Finland. Tomorrow it will be other countries in Asia and the Middle East, and the day after tomorrow Rosatom will begin to work actively in Africa and South America.

Even the United States has not escaped this fate. Very soon, Russian nuclear fuel will begin to conquer the market of its main political opponent.

Meanwhile, a new ambitious project is coming to the finish line in Russia: the closure of the nuclear cycle, which in the future a couple of decades will allow the industry to develop rapidly without increasing the raw material base, dramatically reduce the problems with spent nuclear fuel and the cost of electricity. And also, if this concept is successfully promoted in the world, it will not only provide the country with huge financial revenues for decades, but will also become another strategic nuclear shield of the country.

The post HYBRID NUCLEAR WEAPONS OF RUSSIA first appeared on Global Policy.