Russian Foreign Military Technical Cooperation And Its Big-power Strategy

Russia is one of the world's big-powers with important international influences. It has the cutting-edge technologies in many fields, and owns a complete military industrial system. Relying on these, Russia's external cooperation in military technology has been very active since the 1990s, with the arms export as its main content. At present, Russia's external military technical cooperation has been guaranteed by a set of relatively sound legal system and operational mechanism, which constitute an important part of the Russian foreign strategy. In 1995, Russian President Boris Yeltsin for the first time proposed in the State of the Union Address a full-scale diplomatic strategy. Since then, seeking to and consolidating Russia's status as a great power in the international arena, and exerting its international influence commensurate with its status as a big power has been one of important goals of Russian foreign strategy. And to cooperate with foreign countries in military technology is one of the effective ways to achieve this goal. Through the foreign cooperation in military technology, domestically, Russia has saved the endangered national defense industries, preserved its own scientific and technological potential, obtained a large amount of funds required by the economic recovery, and promoted the domestic social stability in transition period; abroad, Russia has consolidated and expanded its influence in the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, South America, and the Russian surrounding areas, enhanced cooperation with these areas, especially with the big-powers like China and India which play a decisive role on the world stage. At the same time, it has increased its bargaining chip with the United States. Since the 1990's, foreign military technical cooperation has become Russia's powerful tool to implement its big-power strategy, and has achieved many successes. But it also faced with some deep-seated problems unfavorable to its development. On the one hand, the price of Russian-made weapons and equipment are constantly rising owing to such factors as increasing prices on the domestic labor, raw materials, and ancillary costs. This makes it gradually lose its competitive price advantage in the international market. At the same time, technical problems have also constrained the development of Russian-made weapons, because Russia has a relatively backward technology in making the weapons and equipment, and sometimes it's difficult to meet customers' needs. On the other hand, the current arms market of the world is becoming saturated, and competition has intensified, which make Russia face many new challenges in the field of foreign military technology cooperation. The above-mentioned problems have also brought some negative impacts on Russia's seeking to the great power status in the international arena, and on its strategy of implementing the big-power strategy.