Asia Times: Commercial military ties bind old pals



	July 09, 1999	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Commercial military ties bind old pals
By Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW - Their Cold War alliance may be over, butRussia and Vietnam remain very keen on nurturing a commercialmilitary relationship. Their mutual interest was highlighted during the July 1-4 visithere by Vietnamese defense minister general Pham Van Tra, who metwith Russia's deputy prime minister Ilya Klebanov.

Though Vietnam is now fully integrated into the SoutheastAsian community, Hanoi remains eager to arm its military withRussian weapons, well tested during decades of the Vietnam war. Meantime, the cash-strapped Russian government is desperate toincrease revenues to the state coffers by all means, includingthrough arms exports.

''Vietnam and Southeast Asia constitute a zone of Russia'sstrategic interests, also because there would be a demand forRussian weapons in the region,'' Klebanov told Tra. For his part, Tra said that Vietnam is keen not only to getfurther shipment of Russian-made weapons, but also to send itsmilitary officers and engineers to get training in Russia. The Vietnamese also asked Russia to set up or upgrademaintenance and repair centers for Russian weapons in Vietnam.

The Russians reportedly suggested technical assistance inupgrading Vietnam's military infrastructure, notably airfield andcommand posts. The Russians also suggested the Vietnamesepurchase more Sukhoi-27s, and consider buying anotherjetfighter, the MiG-29, as well as MiG training jets.

The Russian deputy premier tentatively accepted Vietnam's pleato lower prices for educating Vietnamese officers in Russianmilitary academies. ''If we want to sell our weapons there, wehave to teach their cadres,'' Klebanov said.

Tra also met up with his Russian counterpart, Igor Sergeyev, and withexecutives of Rosvooruzheniye and Promexport, Russia's main armsexporters. He visited a missile air defense battalion nearMoscow, where he explored Russia's famous S-300 air defensesystems.

Tra went to Minsk on Jul 4, presumably to discuss armspurchases in the former Soviet republic of Belarus so as to avoidover-reliance on Russian exporters.

Russian and Vietnamese military leaders maintain ''regularexchanges'' on military-technical cooperation, including Russianarms exports to Vietnam, Vyacheslav Sedov, Vietnam expert at theRussia's defense ministry, said in an interview. In the heyday of ideological ties between Hanoi and Moscow - thethree and a half decades between the mid-1950s and 1990 - theformer Soviet Union flooded its ideological ally in SoutheastAsia with concessionary loans and arms shipments. During this time Moscow supplied Hanoi's army with most of itshardware, because the former Soviet Union considered Vietnam animportant outpost of the 'socialist camp'' in Southeast Asia.

After the collapse of the former Soviet Union, its military aidwas replaced by Russian commercial armament sales becauseVietnam's 500,000-strong army still needs Russian arms and spareparts. Russian armaments sales to Vietnam amount to roughly a third ofbilateral trade or $100 million to $200 million.

The Russian navy still maintains several hundred personnel atCam Ranh Bay, 400 km north of Ho Chi Minh City, a large naval facility that was built by the U.S. and later provided the former Soviet Pacific fleet witha strategic base. Russia has a 25-year lease on Cam Ranh base that expires in2004, a deal that Moscow wants extended despite its domesticfinancial problems.

Still, Russia's campaign to sell more jetfighters to Vietnamand elsewhere in Asia have not been without problems. The crash of three Sukhoi-27 jets in Vietnam in December 1995marred the reputation of Russia's best fighter jet. Three Sukhoi-27 jets returning from an air show in Malaysiacrashed near Cam Ranh airfield, killing four Russian elite pilotsafter they were given erroneous landing instructions that causedthem to ram into a mountain.

Russian military experts working at Cam Ranh base had warnedthe group's leader, air force general Vladimir Grebennikov. thatthe base's airfield was not suitable for Sukhois, but the warningswere ignored as the flight organizers wanted to avoid landing atthe commercial airports in order to save money.

Still, Russia is bent on pursuing its arms sales offensives. Over the past four years, Vietnam bought 12 Sukhoi-27 jetfighters at an estimated price of $330 million. Moscow hasbeen selling aircraft with combat range of 3,680 kilometers to Vietnam, aswell as China.

Vietnam has also expressed interest in purchasing such Russianmilitary hardware as modern submarines of the Varshvyanka typefor its navy. These diesel submarines, each costing $800 million, have an exceptionally low level of noise and speed of morethan 30 knots. According to sources in the Russian defense ministry, China hasalready taken delivery of several submarines, of a class known as Project877 to Russias or Kilo-class to the North AtlanticTreaty Organization (NATO), from the Rubin shipyard in St.Petersburg.

In recent years, the Vietnamese military has also bought twomissile boats and four radar stations in Russia. Vietnam is alsopurchasing the Mosquito anti-ship missile complex, with supersonicmissiles that can fly at extremely low altitudes - below 10 meters -with an ability to hit targets at 120 kilometers range.

The missile complex is seen as a serious supplement to the combatability of the Vietnamese naval forces, in view of the unsettleddispute over the Spratly islands in the South China Sea.

The same Progress Defense Plant that produces the Mosquitocomplex sells the same to China, also a claimant to the Spratlysand Vietnam's rival in the South China Sea. Russia's policy of selling arms to potential opponents hasstirred controversy, but Russian experts insist there's no problem.

''Russian arms sales to Asia have not changed a strategicbalance there,'' said Oleg Ostroukhov of the Institute of WorldEconomy and International Relations, a Moscow-based think-tank. ''Anyway, these days Southeast Asia is much more stable thanit was, say, two or three decades ago. A limited export ofRussian weaponry is not going to cause any trouble there,'' heargued.

(Inter Press Service)

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