The Great Country Straightens Its Shoulders

1. China has been extremely worried with the ruin of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Very few people mourned over the USSR here, but its so fast destruction made the Chinese leadership not just worrisome, but even alarmed. There were various imperial structures that broke up in the Chinese history, and each time it led to long decades of chaos and revolts. In 1976-77, there was the danger of the Chinese state destruction - after Mao Zedong’s death. In spring 1989, the same danger sprang up out of the students’ riots which were forcibly suppressed.
2. In China, they have run their own and very scrupulous analysis of the causes and conditions that had made the collapse of the CPSU and the USSR possible. The analysis has outcome not in screwing up nuts nor in making the authoritarian regime more rigid, but in expanding and deepening the economic reforms. At the very beginning of 1992, Dan Xiaoping, being 88-year-old, undertook an inspection trip through China’s southern provinces to get known in works of the most successful special economic zones. Dan’s conclusions favored neither the conservatives, nor the liberals. He called upon for strengthening both the Communist Party’s leading role and "the mighty force of the market economy" in China.
3. In China, the Socialism exists not just as some program goal, or as a clause in the CPC Charter, or as a bulk of the CPC’s official ideology, i.e. not just in the consciousness of the elites or in the formal statements of the leaders of the CPC and the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese Socialism has already been introduced into the practice of all major economic structures of the PRC. It is not a kind of blind, nor it is a slogan – it is reality. Here, all the country’s biggest enterprises and all major banks are state-owned. The capitals may come into China and go out of it, but their flows are under the state’s control. It is just by this China has succeeded to safeguard the financial system of its own from the impact of the 1997 crisis and from the 2008 financial crisis.
4.Developing the public health, fighting hunger and poverty, terminating the internal conflicts and making the local authorities organized - all these have drastically lowered the children death rate and increased the average life expectancy in China. As a result, less than within 40 years, China’s population doubled and reached the mark of 1.1 billion, in 1987. The Chinese leadership had to work out the strict family planning policy and see it to be followed.
5. In the territory of China, the optimum society - nature relations have been broken as far back as in the ancient times. In China’s coastal, southern and central areas, almost all the forests had already been cut down by the 10th century. Still, in the period of 1950-2000 the industrialization of China, the prompt urbanization, laying out railways and highways and pipelines did put many new burdens upon the environment and worsened ecological conditions in the country.

1. Serious and sustained movement toward disarmament by the present nuclear armed states is critical. This is not because their force of example would dissuade would-be proliferators - to assert that would be naïve in the extreme. Rather it is that without an assault on double standards, with an end to nuclear apartheid visibly in sight, it will be impossible to generate the consensus or majority decisions that will be necessary in international forums like the UN Security Council, the IAEA Board of Governors, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference or anywhere else that necessary for the line to be held against proliferation and in favor of nuclear security.
2. Recently restated Russian military doctrine makes no useful contribution to the goal of reducing the role of nuclear weapons in states’ national security strategies. Policy leadership will need as a result to come from the U.S., and all eyes in this respect are on the Nuclear Posture Review to be released in March. Hopefully in this context the significance will be appreciated of Japan moving in recent weeks to indicate, through statements of both Foreign Minister Okada and Prime Minister Hatoyama that they could, in effect, live with the US moving to the declaratory position that it regarded the sole purpose of nuclear weapons, so long as they exist, to be the deterrence of nuclear attacks against itself or its allies.
3 Mobilizing and sustaining the political will necessary to move us - fast - toward a nuclear weapon free world will, as always, be among the most difficult of all tasks. What is required is a combination of top-down leadership from the major nuclear players, preeminently Russia and the U.S., peer level commitment and pressure from like minded members of the wider international community (as seen in the past, for example, from the Seven Nations Initiative and New Agenda Coalition) and bottom-up pressure from civil society mobilized effectively enough to make governments feel accountable and responsive.

1.The new START might brake down for some time the nuclear weapon prolifiration, though, most likely, it would not solve this problem strategically. It is ridiculous to think that Russia and the USA would seriously strive for the nuclear-free world. It is doubtful, in the light of what had been told on TNW, that negotiations on nuclear disarmament would be continued. The further nuclear weapon reductions would be carried out, at the best, by parallel unilateral steps, and probably without mutual coordination at all, i.e. primarily by technical and economic expedience that each of the parties would define independently, without any consultations whatsoever.
2.Upon the ratification of the signed treaty, it would be extremely desirable both politically and diplomatically to draw the American leadership into some broader political and strategic dialogue than TNW reduction. To this effect, it would be possible to propose to start joint search of ways to minimise the risks caused by the reality of existing mutual nuclear deterrence (“an exit beyond deterrence”).
3.In a developing situation - both for a short-term and longer-term perspective (at least, for 20-25 years) - Russia would have no other choice, but to remain a strong nuclear power. Besides, it has to be thought over the expediency of renewal of works on the means to effectively counteract the American PRO, including various ways of both penetrating it, and restrainting its development. These include grazing trajectories, maneuvering warheads, reducing acceleration part of missiles ballistic trajectory, etc.
4.Using the nuclear shield as a cover, it is necessary to actively modernize the Armed Forces adequate to risks, challenges and threats of the 21st century. It is necessary to accelerate building up the scientific and technical reserve in the key directions of development of means of the armed struggle, involving the best intellectual forces. At that, one of the most serious threats to the national security is not just Russia’s technological backlog from the most developed countries, but also the prospect of appearing something technologically unexpected to which it might be not prepared. That is why forecasting (including forsighting) should become one of the major components of the state policy. Another element of such a policy is to become the applied – and successful - usage of the high technologies both in business, and in military sphere.