Moscow prepared to stage pre-emptive strikes - www.smh.com.au: "While taking pains to play down possible new nuclear threats to NATO, the Kremlin has made it clear it is prepared to use pre-emptive strikes against perceived threats and will continue to mobilise Russia's vast nuclear arsenal to deter a new generation of low-level instability on its borders.
A wide-ranging new doctrine for Russian military preparedness, presented to NATO generals in Colorado Springs, Colorado, last week, states that large-scale war with the US or NATO has for the first time 'been excluded from the spectrum of the most probable conflicts'.
Yet it warns that Russia must be prepared for a growing number of conflicts - such as the US-led war in Iraq - waged outside the authority of the United Nations, and wars increasingly motivated as much by economics or the interests of what it termed 'big transnational companies' as by national security.
Terrorism and instability in the former Soviet states along its borders are seen as Russia's greatest military peril, and Kremlin officials have emphasised that the kind of pre-emptive strikes upon which the US has relied in Iraq - the subject of substantial criticism from Moscow - are potential tools for the Russian armed forces as well. "
A wide-ranging new doctrine for Russian military preparedness, presented to NATO generals in Colorado Springs, Colorado, last week, states that large-scale war with the US or NATO has for the first time 'been excluded from the spectrum of the most probable conflicts'.
Yet it warns that Russia must be prepared for a growing number of conflicts - such as the US-led war in Iraq - waged outside the authority of the United Nations, and wars increasingly motivated as much by economics or the interests of what it termed 'big transnational companies' as by national security.
Terrorism and instability in the former Soviet states along its borders are seen as Russia's greatest military peril, and Kremlin officials have emphasised that the kind of pre-emptive strikes upon which the US has relied in Iraq - the subject of substantial criticism from Moscow - are potential tools for the Russian armed forces as well. "
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