Umstrittene Schweizer Sicherheitspolitik ... - ETH Zürich

Vladimir A. Orlov
modernized on a regular basis throughout the past decade. However,
they were not, above all because of a lack of money, but also because of
a lack of political decisions.
The plan is to complete the modernization and reduction drive by
2020. To have an idea of the drive’s character you ought to know that
the Russian Defence Minister currently spends his time not studying
war plans and war maps but calculating – performing not multiplications
but subtractions, trying to figure out where cuts can be made in
order to get the armed forces more efficient. This is why his approach is
not favoured by everybody in the armed forces. However, it is not the
Defence Minister’s own policy; in Russia, it is the President who defines
foreign policy and security policy. So, the aim is to modernize the army
and significantly cut either Russia’s excessive expenditure on security or
its expenditure on outdated programmes.
Having said that, I must draw your attention to an important statement
the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation made not far from
here, in Davos, in late January. His speech, of course, was mostly devoted
to the financial crisis, but one significant element of his speech was his
message about the global task to sit together and discuss a cut of military
expenditures. Although everybody knows that there is still one nation
which spends more on security than all other nations put together, the
Russian Prime Minister’s speech was not exclusively addressed to the US
but also to European nations and to Asian nations which are, unlike you,
increasing their military budgets. The message was also addressed to the
Russian Federation itself.
There is no easy solution in any country if it comes to addressing
defence budgets and modernizing the defence forces while trying to keep
military expenditure at a reasonable level or lowering it. This is exactly
the task we are tackling now through internal discussions.
Schneeberger Roger: I was surprised to hear that social unrest is not
on your list of concerns while migration is your number three concern.
What dangers do you think emanate from migration? Where could mass
migration come from? How do we prepare against it?
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