ABSTRACT
The global financial crisis and subsequent recession/depression of 2008–10 have given Russia a reprieve from its “moment of truth” (Rosefielde 2009; Cooper, this volume). Until recently it seemed that unless the Kremlin disciplined the military–industrial complex to mass produce fifth-generation weapon systems, or embraced democratic free enterprise, Russia would be unable to support Vladimir Putin’s military and industrial ambitions, contenting itself instead with using natural resource rents to make insiders fabulously wealthy. However, hard times in America and the EU (Rosefielde and Mills 2012), Obama’s reset policy (see Marek Menkiszak’s and Pavel Baev’s chapters in this volume), and armsreduction program have increased Moscow’s degrees of freedom. Russia is not off the Chinese hook (Blank 2010), but there now seems to be time to temporize and dither.
