More neocon thinking: Putin's defence fixation deepens Russian budget problems
President Vladimir Putin's insistence on huge defence spending makes it hard to see how a government plan to make deep budget cuts will see Russia through a deepening economic crisis.
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov called on Wednesday for a 10 percent cut in planned expenditures, warning that if oil were to average $50 a barrel this year, the budget would face a shortfall of 3 trillion roubles (30.35 billion pounds).
But defence spending will not be affected because of a Putin directive that dramatically limits room for manoeuvre: military and security costs swallow up more than a third of the budget and are set to rise by about 30 percent this year.
Siluanov had signalled opposition to the huge outlay on the military. "One needs to redistribute and restructure expenditures in favour of infrastructure, education and so on. Such military expenditures are heavy to carry," he said. However, that was on Dec. 26 and on Wednesday he performed his about-face, acknowledging that defence was off-limits.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/01/15/uk-russia-crisis-budget-idUKKBN0KO25D20150115
10% cuts in government budgets for everything but the military which gets a 30% increase. Sounds like a neocon republican.
This indifference to the economic aspects of statecraft was a defining feature of the Bush administration, where treasury secretaries played a marginal foreign-policy role ... Seeing “economics” as separate from “foreign policy issues” ... is the weakness in Putin’s strategy today. But it’s a weakness that many American hawks share. For decades now, Kristol and McCain have insisted that America relentlessly expand its global military footprint and relentlessly boost its defense budget. I’ve never seen either make a serious effort to explain how this should be paid for.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/vladimir-putin-russian-neocon/284602/
