Arctic Oil/Gas Aff Inherency

Russian doomsday machine is a myth

Russian Nuclear Forces, Dr. Strangelove meets reality, http://russianforces.org/blog/2006/04/dr_strangelove_meets_reality.shtml

I doubt Dr. Strangelove was a required movie-watching experience for Soviet military planners, but they got the point (we should thank Stanley Kubrick for making it so well in the movie). Here is a copy of an internal Central Committee document from 1985, which discusses various ways to increase effectiveness of the Soviet strategic forces. The author, Oleg Belyakov, head of the Military Industry Department of the Central Committee, complains, among other things, that No [adequate] attention has been paid to a proposal, extremely important from the military and political point of view, to create a fully automated retaliatory strike system that would be activated from the top command levels in a moment of a crisis This is exactly a Doomsday Machine that he is describing. The true Strangelovian moment comes at the end of the sentence quoted above -- the author adds, in parenthesis (with a notification to the adversary). Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret! The Soviet Union never built this automatic Doomsday Machine (also known as Dead Hand) -- the Perimeter communication system that is often mistaken for it is something quite different. So we will never know, had that system been built, would the Soviet leadership have waited till a Party Congress to make the announcement?

1AR A2: Econ Decline

Claims of Russian economic decline and disintegration are all conspiratorial and hype

Charles Clover, “Conspiracy theorists thrive on Russia anxiety”, 3/8/2009 Financial Times, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a9596ed4-0c14-11de-b87d-0000779fd2ac.html?ftcamp=rss&nclick_check=1

“The transition of the [economic] crisis into the political arena has already begun happening,” Gleb Pavlovsky wrote in the popular Moskovski Komsomolets tabloid. He warned of a “remake” of the 1991 street protests that helped bring down the Soviet Union, and the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine. “The sources of social protest should be sought in the corridors of power,” Mr Pavlovsky wrote. His and other gloomy predictions have left some analysts scratching their heads. Alexei Levinson, at the Levada Centre, a research company, said: “Do I see the potential for serious unrest? It is very dangerous to say no, because so many people are saying publicly that this is happening . . . But I simply don’t see it.” However, it was “just as true that the number of people saying they see this potential has shot up”, he added. “So that must be significant. It shows that the relationship to the authorities is changing.” Speculation has surrounded the relationship between president and prime minister since Mr Putin, head of state since 2000, stepped aside for Mr Medvedev last year. It is widely believed that Mr Putin, who was barred from a third consecutive presidential term by the constitution, plans to return to the Kremlin. That the prime minister’s political future is openly speculated on is, for some politicians, a watershed in Russia’s political life. “It is very conspiratorial,” said Vladimir Milov, former deputy energy minister and a leader of the opposition group Solidarnost.

No impact to Russian economic collapse

Ben Aris, 10-17-2011, “Crisis looms, but Russia well prepared,” http://rbth.ru/articles/2011/10/17/crisis_looms_but_russia_well_prepared_13580.html

But if the shock does come, Russia is better prepared than it was in 2008. Knowing a shock is coming is winning half the battle, as one of the reasons that the economy froze in 2008 and hit Russia so much harder than Western economies was that the 1998 devaluation was fresh in everyone’s mind. So they simply stopped doing business until it was clear how the crunch was going to play out; the fact that Russia’s economy has bounced back so fast will go a long way to muting the impact of this round of crisis — if it comes. Secondly, Russia is in a much stronger economic position than it was going into 2008. Most of the damage was done by the borrowing binge that preceded the 2008 collapse. Russian banks and companies had tapped international capital markets during the boom years. Worse, many companies had used their shares as collateral, which led to so-called “margin calls” during the very worst of the crisis. This time round there will be few, if any, margin calls, as the 2008 crisis squeezed all these deals out of the market. Stepping back a bit further, big companies have been starting to borrow again, but a second lesson from the crisis has been that the debt profile of Russian companies and banks is much better than two years ago: Companies have lengthened the maturities of their loans to medium-term debt while swapping a lot of their foreign borrowing for ruble loans. As the Russian government has plenty of cash and the banks are dominated by the state, the government is in a stronger position to restructure debt if a company gets into trouble, as it can all be done “in house.”

The Russian economy is resilient – even dips caused by oil prices will not cause collapse.

Sergei Guriev, Morgan Stanley Professor of Economics and Rector of the New Economic School in Moscow, “How to reform the Russian economy”. Centre For European Reform Policy Brief. July 2010. www.cer.org.uk/pdf/pb_russian_economy_jul10.pdf

Today’s leadership in Russia has more economic expertise and more experience with crisis management than the Soviet leaders had in the 1980s. The Russian economy is much more liberalised, and hence more flexible and adjustable in times of strain. So it is unlikely that Russia’s economy could implode like the Soviet one did. A more plausible scenario is slow growth over the medium term, interrupted by bouts of macro-economic volatility caused by oil price swings. Russia’s outlook is therefore similar to the experience of Latin America’s resource-dependent economies in the 20th century.