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Global Insights: Mistral Talks Reveal Russian Shipbuilding Maladies
During his sojourn in Paris last Friday and Saturday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his entourage of Russian economics ministers and business executives signed a number of important commercial agreements with their French counterparts. These two-dozen deals will result in increased French involvement in various Russian energy and automobile enterprises, in return for sizable injections of French financing and technology into these sectors.
"We are on the way to achieving this goal to transform our good, high-level political relations in the sphere of the real economy," Putin joyfully told journalists. "I think it is a real breakthrough in the economic cooperation sphere."
Yet, the most important possible outcome of Putin's jaunt has yet to be announced. One reason why Russia's most influential leader visited Paris over the weekend was to continue negotiations regarding the possible Russian purchase of the Mistral, an enormous amphibious warship capable of carrying hundreds of soldiers as well as more than a dozen tanks and helicopters to the shores of another country. The Russian press has been discussing such a deal since this August. But there is some evidence that negotiations between Russian government representatives and France's Thales Corp., which builds the Mistral-Class Force Projection and Command Ship, have been going on for over a year.
Russian officials have offered varying explanations for how they might use the Mistral, along with several other ships of the same class that they hope to construct in Russia under license. But the most obvious purpose would be to intimidate, and if necessary fight, the former Soviet republics that comprise Moscow's recalcitrant littoral neighbors. (...)
On the one hand, expressions of Russian interest in purchasing the Mistral represent skillful diplomacy. France is a prominent country known for balancing its position of influence within NATO and EU with a tradition for pursuing an independent stance on important foreign policy issues. During the Georgian War, for instance, French President Nicolas Sarkozy ... negotiated a six-point peace plan through shuttle diplomacy between Moscow and Tbilisi. While some of Georgia's strongest supporters in the EU objected to the terms, the deal allowed Russia to avert threatened EU sanctions.
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Most recently, the Russian government has sought to employ bilateral diplomacy with France, Germany, and other European countries to secure support for a new European security treaty that Russian policymakers hope could weaken NATO's predominant role in European security affairs. The Russian president's Web site explained that the treaty was meant to "formalize in . . . international law the principle of indivisible security -- a legal obligation according to which no state or international organization in the Euro-Atlantic region could strengthen its own security at the expense of the security of other countries or organizations."
On the other hand, Russia's reported interest in buying the Mistral also reflects the sorry state of the Russian Navy and Russian shipbuilding. Not only does the Russian Navy lack a large amphibious ship like the Mistral, but it is doubtful that Russian shipbuilders could construct such a complex vessel without foreign assistance.(...) Russian policymakers are being forced to consider abandoning the Soviet practice of military autarky and returning to the Czarist tradition of importing advanced foreign military equipment and experts.
Russia's shipbuilding industry still depends heavily on military contracts, and has never recovered from the collapse of the integrated Soviet economy, which prioritized its military-industrial complex with lavish financial, human, and other resources. During the past decade, the Russian Navy received less than a dozen new warships. At present rates of production, Russian shipbuilders might manufacture a comparable figure in the coming years.(...)
The same problems with Russian shipbuilding have prevented realization of proposals to provide Russia with a fleet of large and complex modern aircraft carriers. Russia's only remaining carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, has repeatedly gone out of service for essential repairs since its commissioning in the early 1990s. Currently, Russia does not even have a shipyard designed to build aircraft carriers. (...)Even during the Soviet period, the military had difficulties building carrier ships whose equipment and accompanying aircraft matched the capabilities of NATO carriers.
Russian shipbuilders have objected to the proposed purchase of the Mistral, arguing that the money would be better spent on buying Russian-made ships, which would generate jobs and revitalize Russian domestic production. (...)
Two major impediments, however, may delay or derail the transaction. First, the sale has provoked widespread alarm among Russia's neighbors that have strained relations with Moscow, as well as in the United States and other NATO countries uneasy about strengthening Russia's ability to conduct amphibious attacks against other countries. Security experts in Georgia and the Baltic states ...have expressed particular alarm about how Russia might use such a capability. Paris has thus far ignored the unease in these foreign capitals, but that might change.
Second, the Russian government may not be able to afford such ships. (...) Purchasing the Mistral alone could cost Russia approximately $750 million. Acquiring the means to enable Russian shipbuilders to construct additional such ships -- which would require buying a license and French technology, and hiring French trainers and technicians -- could require Moscow to spend billions more.
At a time when the Russian economy remains in a slump and low world energy prices deprive the Russian government of considerable export revenue, Russian policymakers might decide that having a fleet of such expensive, if highly capable, ships is once again beyond their means.
