Do you need fighter jets and anti-aircraft guns to fight terrorists? That's apparently what the Shanghai Cooperation Organization thinks, notes Roger McDermott in an analysis of the SCO's recently concluded exercises in Kazakhstan:
Russian defense ministry controlled Zvezda TV, showed footage of the exercise which exemplified the dichotomy between the forces used and the unfolding “counter-terrorist” scenario: Su-25 fighter jets, soldiers in trenches, use of an antiaircraft missile system (Strela), commanders at an observation post, tank maneuvers, all apparently aimed at encircling a town to block the escape route of the “terrorists.” It appears that the exercise scenario in this instance envisaged the arrival of several massive groups of militants supported by “combat aviation,” gradually penetrating the territory of an SCO member state. Moreover, on September 22, Zvezda TV broadcast footage of a combined “massive strike” against “terrorists” using airpower and missiles launched from the Russian Tochka U complex.
McDermott is likely right to express skepticism about that "dichotomy." I don't know much about the Russian or Chinese defense industries, but it seems plausible that, just as in the U.S., their military-industrial complexes hold a lot of sway and are not interested in moving away from high-tech, big-ticket items toward a more human-centric counterinsurgency approach.
But who knows -- the Taliban used to operate in massed formations fighting this sort of conventional warfare. They even used to have an air force. Might China and Russia worry that in a post-America Central Asia that they could again become a serious conventional fighting force?
My money is on the military-industrial complex theory.
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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