8/26/2009
6/17/2009
опять мусолят одно и тоже :)
Статьи немножко староваты и с замусоленными идеями, но выложу для коллекции :)
The Russian Economy and Russian Power
http://www.stratfor.com/
July 27, 2009
By George Friedman
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Georgia and Ukraine partly answered questions over how U.S.-Russian talks went during U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Russia in early July. That Biden’s visit took place at all reaffirms the U.S. commitment to the principle that Russia does not have the right to a sphere of influence in these countries or anywhere in the former Soviet Union.
The Americans’ willingness to confront the Russians on an issue of fundamental national interest to Russia therefore requires some explanation, as on the surface it seems a high-risk maneuver. Biden provided insights into the analytic framework of the Obama administration on Russia in a July 26 interview with The Wall Street Journal. In it, Biden said the United States “vastly” underestimates its hand. He added that “Russia has to make some very difficult, calculated decisions. They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they’re in a situation where the world is changing before them and they’re clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable.”
U.S. Policy Continuity
The Russians have accused the United States of supporting pro-American forces in Ukraine, Georgia and other countries of the former Soviet Union under the cover of supporting democracy. They see the U.S. goal as surrounding the Soviet Union with pro-American states to put the future of the Russian Federation at risk. The summer 2008 Russian military action in Georgia was intended to deliver a message to the United States and the countries of the former Soviet Union that Russia was not prepared to tolerate such developments but was prepared to reverse them by force of arms if need be.
Following his July summit, Obama sent Biden to the two most sensitive countries in the former Soviet Union — Ukraine and Georgia — to let the Russians know that the United States was not backing off its strategy in spite of Russian military superiority in the immediate region. In the long run, the United States is much more powerful than the Russians, and Biden was correct when he explicitly noted Russia’s failing demographics as a principal factor in Moscow’s long-term decline. But to paraphrase a noted economist, we don’t live in the long run. Right now, the Russian correlation of forces along Russia’s frontiers clearly favors the Russians, and the major U.S. deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan would prevent the Americans from intervening should the Russians choose to challenge pro-American governments in the former Soviet Union directly.
Even so, Biden’s visit and interview show the Obama administration is maintaining the U.S. stance on Russia that has been in place since the Reagan years. Reagan saw the economy as Russia’s basic weakness. He felt that the greater the pressure on the Russian economy, the more forthcoming the Russians would be on geopolitical matters. The more concessions they made on geopolitical matters, the weaker their hold on Eastern Europe. And if Reagan’s demand that Russia “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev” was met, the Soviets would collapse. Ever since the Reagan administration, the idee fixe of not only the United States, but also NATO, China and Japan has been that the weakness of the Russian economy made it impossible for the Russians to play a significant regional role, let alone a global one. Therefore, regardless of Russian wishes, the West was free to forge whatever relations it wanted among Russian allies like Serbia and within the former Soviet Union. And certainly during the 1990s, Russia was paralyzed.
Biden, however, is saying that whatever the current temporary regional advantage the Russians might have, in the end, their economy is crippled and Russia is not a country to be taken seriously. He went on publicly to point out that this should not be pointed out publicly, as there is no value in embarrassing Russia. The Russians certainly now understand what it means to hit the reset button Obama had referred to: The reset is back to the 1980s and 1990s.
Reset to the 1980s and 90s
To calculate the Russian response, it is important to consider how someone like Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin views the events of the 1980s and 1990s. After all, Putin was a KGB officer under Yuri Andropov, the former head of the KGB and later Chairman of the Communist Party for a short time — and the architect of glasnost and perestroika.
It was the KGB that realized first that the Soviet Union was failing, which made sense because only the KGB had a comprehensive sense of the state of the Soviet Union. Andropov’s strategy was to shift from technology transfer through espionage — apparently Putin’s mission as a junior intelligence officer in Dresden in the former East Germany — to a more formal process of technology transfer. To induce the West to transfer technology and to invest in the Soviet Union, Moscow had to make substantial concessions in the area in which the West cared the most: geopolitics. To get what it needed, the Soviets had to dial back on the Cold War.
Glasnost, or openness, had as its price reducing the threat to the West. But the greater part of the puzzle was perestroika, or the restructuring of the Soviet economy. This was where the greatest risk came, since the entire social and political structure of the Soviet Union was built around a command economy. But that economy was no longer functioning, and without perestroika, all of the investment and technology transfer would be meaningless. The Soviet
Union could not metabolize it.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was a communist, as we seem to forget, and a follower of Andropov. He was not a liberalizer because he saw liberalization as a virtue; rather, he saw it as a means to an end. And that end was saving the Communist Party, and with it the Soviet state. Gorbachev also understood that the twin challenge of concessions to the West geopolitically and a top-down revolution in Russia economically — simultaneously—risked massive destabilization. This is what Reagan was counting on, and what Gorbachev was trying to prevent. Gorbachev lost Andropov’s gamble. The Soviet Union collapsed, and with it the Communist Party.
What followed was a decade of economic horror, at least as most Russians viewed it. From the West’s point of view, collapse looked like liberalization. From the Russian point of view, Russia went from a superpower that was poor to an even poorer geopolitical cripple. For the Russians, the experiment was a double failure. Not only did the Russian Empire retreat to the borders of the 18th century, but the economy became even more dysfunctional, except for a handful of oligarchs and some of their Western associates who stole whatever wasn’t nailed down.
The Russians, and particularly Putin, took away a different lesson than the West did. The West assumed that economic dysfunction caused the Soviet Union to fail. Putin and his colleagues took away the idea that it was the attempt to repair economic dysfunction through wholesale reforms that caused Russia to fail. From Putin’s point of view, economic well-being and national power do not necessarily work in tandem where Russia is concerned.
Russian Power, With or Without Prosperity
Russia has been an economic wreck for most of its history, both under the czars and under the Soviets. The geography of Russia has a range of weaknesses, as we have explored. Russia’s geography, daunting infrastructural challenges and demographic structure all conspire against it. But the strategic power of Russia was never synchronized to its economic well-being. Certainly, following World War II the Russian economy was shattered and never quite came back together. Yet Russian global power was still enormous. A look at the crushing poverty — but undeniable power — of Russia during broad swaths of time from 1600 until Andropov arrived on the scene certainly gives credence to Putin’s view.
The problems of the 1980s had as much to do with the weakening and corruption of the Communist Party under former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev as it had to do with intrinsic economic weakness. To put it differently, the Soviet Union was an economic wreck under Joseph Stalin as well. The Germans made a massive mistake in confusing Soviet economic weakness with military weakness. During the Cold War, the United States did not make that mistake. It understood that Soviet economic weakness did not track with Russian strategic power. Moscow might not be able to house its people, but its military power was not to be dismissed.
What made an economic cripple into a military giant was political power. Both the czar and the Communist Party maintained a ruthless degree of control over society. That meant Moscow could divert resources from consumption to the military and suppress resistance. In a state run by terror, dissatisfaction with the state of the economy does not translate into either policy shifts or military weakness — and certainly not in the short term. Huge percentages of gross domestic product can be devoted to military purposes, even if used inefficiently there. Repression and terror smooth over public opinion.
The czar used repression widely, and it was not until the army itself rebelled in World War I that the regime collapsed. Under Stalin, even at the worst moments of World War II, the army did not rebel. In both regimes, economic dysfunction was accepted as the inevitable price of strategic power. And dissent — even the hint of dissent — was dealt with by the only truly efficient state enterprise: the security apparatus, whether called the Okhraina, Cheka, NKVD, MGB or KGB.
From the point of view of Putin, who has called the Soviet collapse the greatest tragedy of our time, the problem was not economic dysfunction. Rather, it was the attempt to completely overhaul the Soviet Union’s foreign and domestic policies simultaneously that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And that collapse did not lead to an economic renaissance.
Biden might not have meant to gloat, but he drove home the point that Putin believes. For Putin, the West, and particularly the United States, engineered the fall of the Soviet Union by policies crafted by the Reagan administration — and that same policy remains in place under the Obama administration.
It is not clear that Putin and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev disagree with Biden’s analysis — the Russian economy truly is “withering” — except in one sense. Given the policies Putin has pursued, the Russian prime minister must believe he has a way to cope with that. In the short run, Putin might well have such a coping mechanism, and this is the temporary window of opportunity Biden alluded to. But in the long run, the solution is not improving the economy — that would be difficult, if not outright impossible, for a country as large and lightly populated as Russia. Rather, the solution is accepting that Russia’s economic weakness is endemic and creating a regime that allows Russia to be a great power in spite of that.
Such a regime is the one that can create military power in the face of broad poverty, something we will call the “Chekist state.” This state uses its security apparatus, now known as the FSB, to control the public through repression, freeing the state to allocate resources to the military as needed. In other words, this is Putin coming full circle to his KGB roots, but without the teachings of an Andropov or Gorbachev to confuse the issue. This is not an ideological stance; it applies to the Romanovs and to the Bolsheviks. It is an operational principle embedded in Russian geopolitics and history.
Counting on Russian strategic power to track Russian economic power is risky. Certainly, it did in the 1980s and 1990s, but Putin has worked to decouple the two. On the surface, it might seem a futile gesture, but in Russian history, this decoupling is the norm. Obama seems to understand this to the extent that he has tried to play off Medvedev (who appears less traditional) from Putin (who appears to be the more traditional), but we do not think this is a viable strategy — this is not a matter of Russian political personalities but of Russian geopolitical necessity.
Biden seems to be saying that the Reagan strategy can play itself out permanently. Our view is that it plays itself out only so long as the Russian regime doesn’t reassert itself with the full power of the security apparatus and doesn’t decouple economic and military growth. Biden’s strategy works so long as this doesn’t happen. But in Russian history, this decoupling is the norm and the past 20 years is the exception.
A strategy that assumes the Russians will once again decouple economic and military power requires a different response than ongoing, subcritical pressure. It requires that the window of opportunity the United States has handed Russia by its wars in the Islamic world be closed, and that the pressure on Russia be dramatically increased before the Russians move toward full repression and rapid rearmament.
Ironically, in the very long run of the next couple of generations, it probably doesn’t matter whether the West heads off Russia at the pass because of another factor Biden mentioned: Russia’s shrinking demographics. Russian demography has been steadily worsening since World War I, particularly because birth rates have fallen. This slow-motion degradation turned into collapse during the 1990s. Russia’s birth rates are now well below starkly higher death rates; Russia already has more citizens in their 50s than in their teens. Russia can be a major power without a solid economy, but no one can be a major power without people. But even with demographics as poor as Russia’s, demographics do not change a country overnight. This is Russia’s moment, and the generation or so it will take demography to grind Russia down can be made very painful for the Americans.
Biden has stated the American strategy: squeeze the Russians and let nature take its course. We suspect the Russians will squeeze back hard before they move off the stage of history.
The Financial Crisis and the Six Pillars of Russian Strength
March 3, 2009
http://www.stratfor.com
By Lauren Goodrich and Peter Zeihan
Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, Russia has been re-establishing much of its lost Soviet-era strength. This has given rise to the possibility — and even the probability — that Russia again will become a potent adversary of the Western world. But now, Russia is yet again on the cusp of a set of massive currency devaluations that could destroy much of the country’s financial system. With a crashing currency, the disappearance of foreign capital, greatly decreased energy revenues and currency reserves flying out of the bank, the Western perception is that Russia is on the verge of collapsing once again. Consequently, many Western countries have started to grow complacent about Russia’s ability to further project power abroad.
But this is Russia. And Russia rarely follows anyone else’s rulebook.
The State of the Russian State
Russia has faced a slew of economic problems in the past six months. Incoming foreign direct investment, which reached a record high of $28 billion in 2007, has reportedly dried up to just a few billion. Russia’s two stock markets, the Russian Trading System (RTS) and the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX), have fallen 78 and 67 percent respectively since their highs in May 2008. And Russians have withdrawn $290 billion from the country’s banks in fear of a financial collapse.
One of Moscow’s sharpest financial pains came in the form of a slumping Russian ruble, which has dropped by about one-third against the dollar since August 2008. Thus far, the Kremlin has spent $200 billion defending its currency, a startling number given that the currency still dropped by 35 percent. The Russian government has allowed dozens of mini-devaluations to occur since August; the ruble’s fall has pushed the currency past its lowest point in the 1998 ruble crash.
The Kremlin now faces three options. First, it can continue defending the ruble by pouring more money into what looks like a black hole. Realistically, this can last only another six months or so, as Russia’s combined reserves of $750 billion in August 2008 have dropped to just less than $400 billion due to various recession-battling measures (of which currency defense is only one). This option would also limit Russia’s future anti-recession measures to currency defense alone. In essence, this option relies on merely hoping the global recession ends before the till runs dry.
The second option would be to abandon any defense of the ruble and just let the currency crash. This option will not hurt Moscow or its prized industries (like those in the energy and metals sectors) too much, as the Kremlin, its institutions and most large Russian companies hold their reserves in dollars and euros. Smaller businesses and the Russian people would lose everything, however, just as in the August 1998 ruble crash. This may sound harsh, but the Kremlin has proved repeatedly — during the Imperial, Soviet and present eras — that it is willing to put the survival of the Russian state before the welfare and survival of the people.
The third option is much like the second. It involves sealing the currency system off completely from international trade, relegating it only to use in purely domestic exchanges. But turning to a closed system would make the ruble absolutely worthless abroad, and probably within Russia as well — the black market and small businesses would be forced to follow the government’s example and switch to the euro, or more likely, the U.S. dollar. (Russians tend to trust the dollar more than the euro.)
According to the predominant rumor in Moscow, the Kremlin will opt for combining the first and second options, allowing a series of small devaluations, but continuing a partial defense of the currency to avoid a single 1998-style collapse. Such a hybrid approach would reflect internal politicking.
The lack of angst within the government over the disappearance of the ruble as a symbol of Russian strength is most intriguing. Instead of discussing how to preserve Russian financial power, the debate is now over how to let the currency crash. The destruction of this particular symbol of Russian strength over the past ten years has now become a given in the Kremlin’s thinking, as has the end of the growth and economic strength seen in recent years.
Washington is interpreting the Russian acceptance of economic failure as a sort of surrender. It is not difficult to see why. For most states — powerful or not — a deep recession coupled with a currency collapse would indicate an evisceration of the ability to project power, or even the end of the road. After all, similar economic collapses in 1992 and 1998 heralded periods in which Russian power simply evaporated, allowing the Americans free rein across the Russian sphere of influence. Russia has been using its economic strength to revive its influence as of late, so — as the American thinking goes — the destruction of that strength should lead to a new period of Russian weakness.
Geography and Development
But before one can truly understand the roots of Russian power, the reality and role of the Russian economy must be examined. From this perspective, the past several years are most certainly an aberration — and we are not simply speaking of the post-Soviet collapse.
All states economies’ to a great degree reflect their geographies. In the United States, the presence of large, interconnected river systems in the central third of the country, the intracoastal waterway along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, the vastness of San Francisco Bay, the numerous rivers flowing to the sea from the eastern slopes of the Appalachian Mountains and the abundance of ideal port locations made the country easy to develop. The cost of transporting goods was nil, and scarce capital could be dedicated to other pursuits. The result was a massive economy with an equally massive leg up on any competition.
Russia’s geography is the polar opposite. Hardly any of Russia’s rivers are interconnected. The country has several massive ones — the Pechora, the Ob, the Yenisei, the Lena and the Kolyma — but they drain the nearly unpopulated Siberia to the Arctic Ocean, making them useless for commerce. The only river that cuts through Russia’s core, the Volga, drains not to the ocean but to the landlocked and sparsely populated Caspian Sea, the center of a sparsely populated region. Also unlike the United States, Russia has few useful ports. Kaliningrad is not connected to the main body of Russia. The Gulf of Finland freezes in winter, isolating St. Petersburg. The only true deepwater and warm-water ocean ports, Vladivostok and Murmansk, are simply too far from Russia’s core to be useful. So while geography handed the United States the perfect transport network free of charge, Russia has had to use every available kopek to link its country together with an expensive road, rail and canal network.
One of the many side effects of this geography situation is that the United States had extra capital that it could dedicate to finance in a relatively democratic manner, while Russia’s chronic capital deficit prompted it to concentrate what little capital resources it had into a single set of hands — Moscow’s hands. So while the United States became the poster child for the free market, Russia (whether the Russian Empire, Soviet Union or Russian Federation) has always tended toward central planning.
Russian industrialization and militarization began in earnest under Josef Stalin in the 1930s. Under centralized planning, all industry and services were nationalized, while industrial leaders were given predetermined output quotas.
Perhaps the most noteworthy difference between the Western and Russian development paths was the different use of finance. At the start of Stalin’s massive economic undertaking, international loans to build the economy were unavailable, both because the new government had repudiated the czarist regime’s international debts and because industrialized countries — the potential lenders — were coping with the onset of their own economic crisis (e.g., the Great Depression).
With loans and bonds unavailable, Stalin turned to another centrally controlled resource to “fund” Russian development: labor. Trade unions were converted into mechanisms for capturing all available labor as well as for increasing worker productivity. Russia essentially substitutes labor for capital, so it is no surprise that Stalin — like all Russian leaders before him — ran his population into the ground. Stalin called this his “revolution from above.”
Over the long term, the centralized system is highly inefficient, as it does not take the basic economic drivers of supply and demand into account — to say nothing of how it crushes the common worker. But for a country as geographically massive as Russia, it was (and remains) questionable whether Western finance-driven development is even feasible, due to the lack of cheap transit options and the massive distances involved. Development driven by the crushing of the labor pool was probably the best Russia could hope for, and the same holds true today.
In stark contrast to ages past, for the past five years foreign money has underwritten Russian development. Russian banks did not depend upon government funding — which was accumulated into vast reserves — but instead tapped foreign lenders and bondholders. Russian banks took this money and used it to lend to Russian firms. Meanwhile, as the Russian government asserted control over the country’s energy industries during the last several years, it created a completely separate economy that only rarely intersected with other aspects of Russian economic life. So when the current global recession helped lead to the evaporation of foreign credit, the core of the government/energy economy was broadly unaffected, even as the rest of the Russian economy ingloriously crashed to earth.
Since Putin’s rise, the Kremlin has sought to project an image of a strong, stable and financially powerful Russia. This vision of strength has been the cornerstone of Russian confidence for years. Note that STRATFOR is saying “vision,” not “reality.” For in reality, Russian financial confidence is solely the result of cash brought in from strong oil and natural gas prices — something largely beyond the Russians’ ability to manipulate — not the result of any restructuring of the Russian system. As such, the revelation that the emperor has no clothes — that Russia is still a complete financial mess — is more a blow to Moscow’s ego than a signal of a fundamental change in the reality of Russian power.
The Reality of Russian Power
So while Russia might be losing its financial security and capabilities, which in the West tend to boil down to economic wealth, the global recession has not affected the reality of Russian power much at all. Russia has not, currently or historically, worked off of anyone else’s cash or used economic stability as a foundation for political might or social stability. Instead, Russia relies on many other tools in its kit. Some of the following six pillars of Russian power are more powerful and appropriate than ever:
Geography: Unlike its main geopolitical rival, the United States, Russia borders most of the regions it wishes to project power into, and few geographic barriers separate it from its targets. Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states have zero geographic insulation from Russia. Central Asia is sheltered by distance, but not by mountains or rivers. The Caucasus provide a bit of a speed bump to Russia, but pro-Russian enclaves in Georgia give the Kremlin a secure foothold south of the mountain range (putting the August Russian-Georgian war in perspective). Even if U.S. forces were not tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States would face potentially insurmountable difficulties in countering Russian actions in Moscow’s so-called “Near Abroad.” Russia can project all manner of influence and intimidation there on the cheap, while even symbolic counters are quite costly for the United States. In contrast, places such as Latin America, Southeast Asia or Africa do not capture much more than the Russian imagination; the Kremlin realizes it can do little more there than stir the occasional pot, and resources are allotted (centrally, of course) accordingly.
Politics: It is no secret that the Kremlin uses an iron fist to maintain domestic control. There are few domestic forces the government cannot control or balance. The Kremlin understands the revolutions (1917 in particular) and collapses (1991 in particular) of the past, and it has control mechanisms in place to prevent a repeat. This control is seen in every aspect of Russian life, from one main political party ruling the country to the lack of diversified media, limits on public demonstrations and the infiltration of the security services into nearly every aspect of the Russian system. This domination was fortified under Stalin and has been re-established under the reign of former President and now-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. This political strength is based on neither financial nor economic foundations. Instead, it is based within the political institutions and parties, on the lack of a meaningful opposition, and with the backing of the military and security services. Russia’s neighbors, especially in Europe, cannot count on the same political strength because their systems are simply not set up the same way. The stability of the Russian government and lack of stability in the former Soviet states and much of Central Europe have also allowed the Kremlin to reach beyond Russia and influence its neighbors to the east. Now as before, when some of its former Soviet subjects — such as Ukraine — become destabilized, Russia sweeps in as a source of stability and authority, regardless of whether this benefits the recipient of Moscow’s attention.
Social System: As a consequence of Moscow’s political control and the economic situation, the Russian system is socially crushing, and has had long-term effects on the Russian psyche. As mentioned above, during the Soviet-era process of industrialization and militarization, workers operated under the direst of conditions for the good of the state. The Russian state has made it very clear that the productivity and survival of the state is far more important than the welfare of the people. This made Russia politically and economically strong, not in the sense that the people have had a voice, but in that they have not challenged the state since the beginning of the Soviet period. The Russian people, regardless of whether they admit it, continue to work to keep the state intact even when it does not benefit them. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia kept operating — though a bit haphazardly. Russians still went to work, even if they were not being paid. The same was seen in 1998, when the country collapsed financially. This is a very different mentality than that found in the West. Most Russians would not even consider the mass protests seen in Europe in response to the economic crisis. The Russian government, by contrast, can count on its people to continue to support the state and keep the country going with little protest over the conditions. Though there have been a few sporadic and meager protests in Russia, these protests mainly have been in opposition to the financial situation, not to the government’s hand in it. In some of these demonstrations, protesters have carried signs reading, “In government we trust, in the economic system we don’t.” This means Moscow can count on a stable population.
Natural Resources: Modern Russia enjoys a wealth of natural resources in everything from food and metals to gold and timber. The markets may take a roller-coaster ride and the currency may collapse, but the Russian economy has access to the core necessities of life. Many of these resources serve a double purpose, for in addition to making Russia independent of the outside world, they also give Moscow the ability to project power effectively. Russian energy — especially natural gas — is particularly key: Europe is dependent on Russian natural gas for a quarter of its demand. This relationship guarantees Russia a steady supply of now-scarce capital even as it forces the Europeans to take any Russian concerns seriously. The energy tie is something Russia has very publicly used as a political weapon, either by raising prices or by cutting off supplies. In a recession, this lever’s effectiveness has only grown.
Military: The Russian military is in the midst of a broad modernization and restructuring, and is reconstituting its basic warfighting capability. While many challenges remain, Moscow already has imposed a new reality through military force in Georgia. While Tbilisi was certainly an easy target, the Russian military looks very different to Kiev — or even Warsaw and Prague — than it does to the Pentagon. And even in this case, Russia has come to rely increasingly heavily on its nuclear arsenal to rebalance the military equation and ensure its territorial integrity, and is looking to establish long-term nuclear parity with the Americans. Like the energy tool, Russia’s military has become more useful in times of economic duress, as potential targets have suffered far more than the Russians.
Intelligence: Russia has one of the world’s most sophisticated and powerful intelligence services. Historically, its only rival has been the United States (though today the Chinese arguably could be seen as rivaling the Americans and Russians). The KGB (now the FSB) instills fear into hearts around the world, let alone inside Russia. Infiltration and intimidation kept the Soviet Union and its sphere under control. No matter the condition of the Russian state, Moscow’s intelligence foundation has been its strongest pillar. The FSB and other Russian intelligence agencies have infiltrated most former Soviet republics and satellite states, and they also have infiltrated as far as Latin America and the United States. Russian intelligence has infiltrated political, security, military and business realms worldwide, and has boasted of infiltrating many former Soviet satellite governments, militaries and companies up to the highest level. All facets of the Russian government have backed this infiltration since Putin (a former KGB man) came to power and filled the Kremlin with his cohorts. This domestic and international infiltration has been built up for half a century. It is not something that requires much cash to maintain, but rather know-how — and the Russians wrote the book on the subject. One of the reasons Moscow can run this system inexpensively relative to what it gets in return is because Russia’s intelligence services have long been human-based, though they do have some highly advanced technology to wield. Russia also has incorporated other social networks in its intelligence services, such as organized crime or the Russian Orthodox Church, creating an intricate system at a low price. Russia’s intelligence services are much larger than most other countries’ services and cover most of the world. But the intelligence apparatus’ most intense focus is on the Russian periphery, rather than on the more expensive “far abroad.”
Thus, while Russia’s financial sector may be getting torn apart, the state does not really count on that sector for domestic cohesion or stability, or for projecting power abroad. Russia knows it lacks a good track record financially, so it depends on — and has shored up where it can — six other pillars to maintain its (self-proclaimed) place as a major international player. The current financial crisis would crush the last five pillars for any other state, but in Russia, it has only served to strengthen these bases. Over the past few years, there was a certain window of opportunity for Russia to resurge while Washington was preoccupied with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This window has been kept open longer by the West’s lack of worry over the Russian resurgence given the financial crisis. But others closer to the Russian border understand that Moscow has many tools more potent than finance with which to continue reasserting itself.
The Russian Economy and Russian Power
http://www.stratfor.com/
July 27, 2009
By George Friedman
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Georgia and Ukraine partly answered questions over how U.S.-Russian talks went during U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Russia in early July. That Biden’s visit took place at all reaffirms the U.S. commitment to the principle that Russia does not have the right to a sphere of influence in these countries or anywhere in the former Soviet Union.
The Americans’ willingness to confront the Russians on an issue of fundamental national interest to Russia therefore requires some explanation, as on the surface it seems a high-risk maneuver. Biden provided insights into the analytic framework of the Obama administration on Russia in a July 26 interview with The Wall Street Journal. In it, Biden said the United States “vastly” underestimates its hand. He added that “Russia has to make some very difficult, calculated decisions. They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they’re in a situation where the world is changing before them and they’re clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable.”
U.S. Policy Continuity
The Russians have accused the United States of supporting pro-American forces in Ukraine, Georgia and other countries of the former Soviet Union under the cover of supporting democracy. They see the U.S. goal as surrounding the Soviet Union with pro-American states to put the future of the Russian Federation at risk. The summer 2008 Russian military action in Georgia was intended to deliver a message to the United States and the countries of the former Soviet Union that Russia was not prepared to tolerate such developments but was prepared to reverse them by force of arms if need be.
Following his July summit, Obama sent Biden to the two most sensitive countries in the former Soviet Union — Ukraine and Georgia — to let the Russians know that the United States was not backing off its strategy in spite of Russian military superiority in the immediate region. In the long run, the United States is much more powerful than the Russians, and Biden was correct when he explicitly noted Russia’s failing demographics as a principal factor in Moscow’s long-term decline. But to paraphrase a noted economist, we don’t live in the long run. Right now, the Russian correlation of forces along Russia’s frontiers clearly favors the Russians, and the major U.S. deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan would prevent the Americans from intervening should the Russians choose to challenge pro-American governments in the former Soviet Union directly.
Even so, Biden’s visit and interview show the Obama administration is maintaining the U.S. stance on Russia that has been in place since the Reagan years. Reagan saw the economy as Russia’s basic weakness. He felt that the greater the pressure on the Russian economy, the more forthcoming the Russians would be on geopolitical matters. The more concessions they made on geopolitical matters, the weaker their hold on Eastern Europe. And if Reagan’s demand that Russia “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev” was met, the Soviets would collapse. Ever since the Reagan administration, the idee fixe of not only the United States, but also NATO, China and Japan has been that the weakness of the Russian economy made it impossible for the Russians to play a significant regional role, let alone a global one. Therefore, regardless of Russian wishes, the West was free to forge whatever relations it wanted among Russian allies like Serbia and within the former Soviet Union. And certainly during the 1990s, Russia was paralyzed.
Biden, however, is saying that whatever the current temporary regional advantage the Russians might have, in the end, their economy is crippled and Russia is not a country to be taken seriously. He went on publicly to point out that this should not be pointed out publicly, as there is no value in embarrassing Russia. The Russians certainly now understand what it means to hit the reset button Obama had referred to: The reset is back to the 1980s and 1990s.
Reset to the 1980s and 90s
To calculate the Russian response, it is important to consider how someone like Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin views the events of the 1980s and 1990s. After all, Putin was a KGB officer under Yuri Andropov, the former head of the KGB and later Chairman of the Communist Party for a short time — and the architect of glasnost and perestroika.
It was the KGB that realized first that the Soviet Union was failing, which made sense because only the KGB had a comprehensive sense of the state of the Soviet Union. Andropov’s strategy was to shift from technology transfer through espionage — apparently Putin’s mission as a junior intelligence officer in Dresden in the former East Germany — to a more formal process of technology transfer. To induce the West to transfer technology and to invest in the Soviet Union, Moscow had to make substantial concessions in the area in which the West cared the most: geopolitics. To get what it needed, the Soviets had to dial back on the Cold War.
Glasnost, or openness, had as its price reducing the threat to the West. But the greater part of the puzzle was perestroika, or the restructuring of the Soviet economy. This was where the greatest risk came, since the entire social and political structure of the Soviet Union was built around a command economy. But that economy was no longer functioning, and without perestroika, all of the investment and technology transfer would be meaningless. The Soviet
Union could not metabolize it.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was a communist, as we seem to forget, and a follower of Andropov. He was not a liberalizer because he saw liberalization as a virtue; rather, he saw it as a means to an end. And that end was saving the Communist Party, and with it the Soviet state. Gorbachev also understood that the twin challenge of concessions to the West geopolitically and a top-down revolution in Russia economically — simultaneously—risked massive destabilization. This is what Reagan was counting on, and what Gorbachev was trying to prevent. Gorbachev lost Andropov’s gamble. The Soviet Union collapsed, and with it the Communist Party.
What followed was a decade of economic horror, at least as most Russians viewed it. From the West’s point of view, collapse looked like liberalization. From the Russian point of view, Russia went from a superpower that was poor to an even poorer geopolitical cripple. For the Russians, the experiment was a double failure. Not only did the Russian Empire retreat to the borders of the 18th century, but the economy became even more dysfunctional, except for a handful of oligarchs and some of their Western associates who stole whatever wasn’t nailed down.
The Russians, and particularly Putin, took away a different lesson than the West did. The West assumed that economic dysfunction caused the Soviet Union to fail. Putin and his colleagues took away the idea that it was the attempt to repair economic dysfunction through wholesale reforms that caused Russia to fail. From Putin’s point of view, economic well-being and national power do not necessarily work in tandem where Russia is concerned.
Russian Power, With or Without Prosperity
Russia has been an economic wreck for most of its history, both under the czars and under the Soviets. The geography of Russia has a range of weaknesses, as we have explored. Russia’s geography, daunting infrastructural challenges and demographic structure all conspire against it. But the strategic power of Russia was never synchronized to its economic well-being. Certainly, following World War II the Russian economy was shattered and never quite came back together. Yet Russian global power was still enormous. A look at the crushing poverty — but undeniable power — of Russia during broad swaths of time from 1600 until Andropov arrived on the scene certainly gives credence to Putin’s view.
The problems of the 1980s had as much to do with the weakening and corruption of the Communist Party under former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev as it had to do with intrinsic economic weakness. To put it differently, the Soviet Union was an economic wreck under Joseph Stalin as well. The Germans made a massive mistake in confusing Soviet economic weakness with military weakness. During the Cold War, the United States did not make that mistake. It understood that Soviet economic weakness did not track with Russian strategic power. Moscow might not be able to house its people, but its military power was not to be dismissed.
What made an economic cripple into a military giant was political power. Both the czar and the Communist Party maintained a ruthless degree of control over society. That meant Moscow could divert resources from consumption to the military and suppress resistance. In a state run by terror, dissatisfaction with the state of the economy does not translate into either policy shifts or military weakness — and certainly not in the short term. Huge percentages of gross domestic product can be devoted to military purposes, even if used inefficiently there. Repression and terror smooth over public opinion.
The czar used repression widely, and it was not until the army itself rebelled in World War I that the regime collapsed. Under Stalin, even at the worst moments of World War II, the army did not rebel. In both regimes, economic dysfunction was accepted as the inevitable price of strategic power. And dissent — even the hint of dissent — was dealt with by the only truly efficient state enterprise: the security apparatus, whether called the Okhraina, Cheka, NKVD, MGB or KGB.
From the point of view of Putin, who has called the Soviet collapse the greatest tragedy of our time, the problem was not economic dysfunction. Rather, it was the attempt to completely overhaul the Soviet Union’s foreign and domestic policies simultaneously that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And that collapse did not lead to an economic renaissance.
Biden might not have meant to gloat, but he drove home the point that Putin believes. For Putin, the West, and particularly the United States, engineered the fall of the Soviet Union by policies crafted by the Reagan administration — and that same policy remains in place under the Obama administration.
It is not clear that Putin and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev disagree with Biden’s analysis — the Russian economy truly is “withering” — except in one sense. Given the policies Putin has pursued, the Russian prime minister must believe he has a way to cope with that. In the short run, Putin might well have such a coping mechanism, and this is the temporary window of opportunity Biden alluded to. But in the long run, the solution is not improving the economy — that would be difficult, if not outright impossible, for a country as large and lightly populated as Russia. Rather, the solution is accepting that Russia’s economic weakness is endemic and creating a regime that allows Russia to be a great power in spite of that.
Such a regime is the one that can create military power in the face of broad poverty, something we will call the “Chekist state.” This state uses its security apparatus, now known as the FSB, to control the public through repression, freeing the state to allocate resources to the military as needed. In other words, this is Putin coming full circle to his KGB roots, but without the teachings of an Andropov or Gorbachev to confuse the issue. This is not an ideological stance; it applies to the Romanovs and to the Bolsheviks. It is an operational principle embedded in Russian geopolitics and history.
Counting on Russian strategic power to track Russian economic power is risky. Certainly, it did in the 1980s and 1990s, but Putin has worked to decouple the two. On the surface, it might seem a futile gesture, but in Russian history, this decoupling is the norm. Obama seems to understand this to the extent that he has tried to play off Medvedev (who appears less traditional) from Putin (who appears to be the more traditional), but we do not think this is a viable strategy — this is not a matter of Russian political personalities but of Russian geopolitical necessity.
Biden seems to be saying that the Reagan strategy can play itself out permanently. Our view is that it plays itself out only so long as the Russian regime doesn’t reassert itself with the full power of the security apparatus and doesn’t decouple economic and military growth. Biden’s strategy works so long as this doesn’t happen. But in Russian history, this decoupling is the norm and the past 20 years is the exception.
A strategy that assumes the Russians will once again decouple economic and military power requires a different response than ongoing, subcritical pressure. It requires that the window of opportunity the United States has handed Russia by its wars in the Islamic world be closed, and that the pressure on Russia be dramatically increased before the Russians move toward full repression and rapid rearmament.
Ironically, in the very long run of the next couple of generations, it probably doesn’t matter whether the West heads off Russia at the pass because of another factor Biden mentioned: Russia’s shrinking demographics. Russian demography has been steadily worsening since World War I, particularly because birth rates have fallen. This slow-motion degradation turned into collapse during the 1990s. Russia’s birth rates are now well below starkly higher death rates; Russia already has more citizens in their 50s than in their teens. Russia can be a major power without a solid economy, but no one can be a major power without people. But even with demographics as poor as Russia’s, demographics do not change a country overnight. This is Russia’s moment, and the generation or so it will take demography to grind Russia down can be made very painful for the Americans.
Biden has stated the American strategy: squeeze the Russians and let nature take its course. We suspect the Russians will squeeze back hard before they move off the stage of history.
The Financial Crisis and the Six Pillars of Russian Strength
March 3, 2009
http://www.stratfor.com
By Lauren Goodrich and Peter Zeihan
Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, Russia has been re-establishing much of its lost Soviet-era strength. This has given rise to the possibility — and even the probability — that Russia again will become a potent adversary of the Western world. But now, Russia is yet again on the cusp of a set of massive currency devaluations that could destroy much of the country’s financial system. With a crashing currency, the disappearance of foreign capital, greatly decreased energy revenues and currency reserves flying out of the bank, the Western perception is that Russia is on the verge of collapsing once again. Consequently, many Western countries have started to grow complacent about Russia’s ability to further project power abroad.
But this is Russia. And Russia rarely follows anyone else’s rulebook.
The State of the Russian State
Russia has faced a slew of economic problems in the past six months. Incoming foreign direct investment, which reached a record high of $28 billion in 2007, has reportedly dried up to just a few billion. Russia’s two stock markets, the Russian Trading System (RTS) and the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX), have fallen 78 and 67 percent respectively since their highs in May 2008. And Russians have withdrawn $290 billion from the country’s banks in fear of a financial collapse.
One of Moscow’s sharpest financial pains came in the form of a slumping Russian ruble, which has dropped by about one-third against the dollar since August 2008. Thus far, the Kremlin has spent $200 billion defending its currency, a startling number given that the currency still dropped by 35 percent. The Russian government has allowed dozens of mini-devaluations to occur since August; the ruble’s fall has pushed the currency past its lowest point in the 1998 ruble crash.
The Kremlin now faces three options. First, it can continue defending the ruble by pouring more money into what looks like a black hole. Realistically, this can last only another six months or so, as Russia’s combined reserves of $750 billion in August 2008 have dropped to just less than $400 billion due to various recession-battling measures (of which currency defense is only one). This option would also limit Russia’s future anti-recession measures to currency defense alone. In essence, this option relies on merely hoping the global recession ends before the till runs dry.
The second option would be to abandon any defense of the ruble and just let the currency crash. This option will not hurt Moscow or its prized industries (like those in the energy and metals sectors) too much, as the Kremlin, its institutions and most large Russian companies hold their reserves in dollars and euros. Smaller businesses and the Russian people would lose everything, however, just as in the August 1998 ruble crash. This may sound harsh, but the Kremlin has proved repeatedly — during the Imperial, Soviet and present eras — that it is willing to put the survival of the Russian state before the welfare and survival of the people.
The third option is much like the second. It involves sealing the currency system off completely from international trade, relegating it only to use in purely domestic exchanges. But turning to a closed system would make the ruble absolutely worthless abroad, and probably within Russia as well — the black market and small businesses would be forced to follow the government’s example and switch to the euro, or more likely, the U.S. dollar. (Russians tend to trust the dollar more than the euro.)
According to the predominant rumor in Moscow, the Kremlin will opt for combining the first and second options, allowing a series of small devaluations, but continuing a partial defense of the currency to avoid a single 1998-style collapse. Such a hybrid approach would reflect internal politicking.
The lack of angst within the government over the disappearance of the ruble as a symbol of Russian strength is most intriguing. Instead of discussing how to preserve Russian financial power, the debate is now over how to let the currency crash. The destruction of this particular symbol of Russian strength over the past ten years has now become a given in the Kremlin’s thinking, as has the end of the growth and economic strength seen in recent years.
Washington is interpreting the Russian acceptance of economic failure as a sort of surrender. It is not difficult to see why. For most states — powerful or not — a deep recession coupled with a currency collapse would indicate an evisceration of the ability to project power, or even the end of the road. After all, similar economic collapses in 1992 and 1998 heralded periods in which Russian power simply evaporated, allowing the Americans free rein across the Russian sphere of influence. Russia has been using its economic strength to revive its influence as of late, so — as the American thinking goes — the destruction of that strength should lead to a new period of Russian weakness.
Geography and Development
But before one can truly understand the roots of Russian power, the reality and role of the Russian economy must be examined. From this perspective, the past several years are most certainly an aberration — and we are not simply speaking of the post-Soviet collapse.
All states economies’ to a great degree reflect their geographies. In the United States, the presence of large, interconnected river systems in the central third of the country, the intracoastal waterway along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, the vastness of San Francisco Bay, the numerous rivers flowing to the sea from the eastern slopes of the Appalachian Mountains and the abundance of ideal port locations made the country easy to develop. The cost of transporting goods was nil, and scarce capital could be dedicated to other pursuits. The result was a massive economy with an equally massive leg up on any competition.
Russia’s geography is the polar opposite. Hardly any of Russia’s rivers are interconnected. The country has several massive ones — the Pechora, the Ob, the Yenisei, the Lena and the Kolyma — but they drain the nearly unpopulated Siberia to the Arctic Ocean, making them useless for commerce. The only river that cuts through Russia’s core, the Volga, drains not to the ocean but to the landlocked and sparsely populated Caspian Sea, the center of a sparsely populated region. Also unlike the United States, Russia has few useful ports. Kaliningrad is not connected to the main body of Russia. The Gulf of Finland freezes in winter, isolating St. Petersburg. The only true deepwater and warm-water ocean ports, Vladivostok and Murmansk, are simply too far from Russia’s core to be useful. So while geography handed the United States the perfect transport network free of charge, Russia has had to use every available kopek to link its country together with an expensive road, rail and canal network.
One of the many side effects of this geography situation is that the United States had extra capital that it could dedicate to finance in a relatively democratic manner, while Russia’s chronic capital deficit prompted it to concentrate what little capital resources it had into a single set of hands — Moscow’s hands. So while the United States became the poster child for the free market, Russia (whether the Russian Empire, Soviet Union or Russian Federation) has always tended toward central planning.
Russian industrialization and militarization began in earnest under Josef Stalin in the 1930s. Under centralized planning, all industry and services were nationalized, while industrial leaders were given predetermined output quotas.
Perhaps the most noteworthy difference between the Western and Russian development paths was the different use of finance. At the start of Stalin’s massive economic undertaking, international loans to build the economy were unavailable, both because the new government had repudiated the czarist regime’s international debts and because industrialized countries — the potential lenders — were coping with the onset of their own economic crisis (e.g., the Great Depression).
With loans and bonds unavailable, Stalin turned to another centrally controlled resource to “fund” Russian development: labor. Trade unions were converted into mechanisms for capturing all available labor as well as for increasing worker productivity. Russia essentially substitutes labor for capital, so it is no surprise that Stalin — like all Russian leaders before him — ran his population into the ground. Stalin called this his “revolution from above.”
Over the long term, the centralized system is highly inefficient, as it does not take the basic economic drivers of supply and demand into account — to say nothing of how it crushes the common worker. But for a country as geographically massive as Russia, it was (and remains) questionable whether Western finance-driven development is even feasible, due to the lack of cheap transit options and the massive distances involved. Development driven by the crushing of the labor pool was probably the best Russia could hope for, and the same holds true today.
In stark contrast to ages past, for the past five years foreign money has underwritten Russian development. Russian banks did not depend upon government funding — which was accumulated into vast reserves — but instead tapped foreign lenders and bondholders. Russian banks took this money and used it to lend to Russian firms. Meanwhile, as the Russian government asserted control over the country’s energy industries during the last several years, it created a completely separate economy that only rarely intersected with other aspects of Russian economic life. So when the current global recession helped lead to the evaporation of foreign credit, the core of the government/energy economy was broadly unaffected, even as the rest of the Russian economy ingloriously crashed to earth.
Since Putin’s rise, the Kremlin has sought to project an image of a strong, stable and financially powerful Russia. This vision of strength has been the cornerstone of Russian confidence for years. Note that STRATFOR is saying “vision,” not “reality.” For in reality, Russian financial confidence is solely the result of cash brought in from strong oil and natural gas prices — something largely beyond the Russians’ ability to manipulate — not the result of any restructuring of the Russian system. As such, the revelation that the emperor has no clothes — that Russia is still a complete financial mess — is more a blow to Moscow’s ego than a signal of a fundamental change in the reality of Russian power.
The Reality of Russian Power
So while Russia might be losing its financial security and capabilities, which in the West tend to boil down to economic wealth, the global recession has not affected the reality of Russian power much at all. Russia has not, currently or historically, worked off of anyone else’s cash or used economic stability as a foundation for political might or social stability. Instead, Russia relies on many other tools in its kit. Some of the following six pillars of Russian power are more powerful and appropriate than ever:
Geography: Unlike its main geopolitical rival, the United States, Russia borders most of the regions it wishes to project power into, and few geographic barriers separate it from its targets. Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states have zero geographic insulation from Russia. Central Asia is sheltered by distance, but not by mountains or rivers. The Caucasus provide a bit of a speed bump to Russia, but pro-Russian enclaves in Georgia give the Kremlin a secure foothold south of the mountain range (putting the August Russian-Georgian war in perspective). Even if U.S. forces were not tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States would face potentially insurmountable difficulties in countering Russian actions in Moscow’s so-called “Near Abroad.” Russia can project all manner of influence and intimidation there on the cheap, while even symbolic counters are quite costly for the United States. In contrast, places such as Latin America, Southeast Asia or Africa do not capture much more than the Russian imagination; the Kremlin realizes it can do little more there than stir the occasional pot, and resources are allotted (centrally, of course) accordingly.
Politics: It is no secret that the Kremlin uses an iron fist to maintain domestic control. There are few domestic forces the government cannot control or balance. The Kremlin understands the revolutions (1917 in particular) and collapses (1991 in particular) of the past, and it has control mechanisms in place to prevent a repeat. This control is seen in every aspect of Russian life, from one main political party ruling the country to the lack of diversified media, limits on public demonstrations and the infiltration of the security services into nearly every aspect of the Russian system. This domination was fortified under Stalin and has been re-established under the reign of former President and now-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. This political strength is based on neither financial nor economic foundations. Instead, it is based within the political institutions and parties, on the lack of a meaningful opposition, and with the backing of the military and security services. Russia’s neighbors, especially in Europe, cannot count on the same political strength because their systems are simply not set up the same way. The stability of the Russian government and lack of stability in the former Soviet states and much of Central Europe have also allowed the Kremlin to reach beyond Russia and influence its neighbors to the east. Now as before, when some of its former Soviet subjects — such as Ukraine — become destabilized, Russia sweeps in as a source of stability and authority, regardless of whether this benefits the recipient of Moscow’s attention.
Social System: As a consequence of Moscow’s political control and the economic situation, the Russian system is socially crushing, and has had long-term effects on the Russian psyche. As mentioned above, during the Soviet-era process of industrialization and militarization, workers operated under the direst of conditions for the good of the state. The Russian state has made it very clear that the productivity and survival of the state is far more important than the welfare of the people. This made Russia politically and economically strong, not in the sense that the people have had a voice, but in that they have not challenged the state since the beginning of the Soviet period. The Russian people, regardless of whether they admit it, continue to work to keep the state intact even when it does not benefit them. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia kept operating — though a bit haphazardly. Russians still went to work, even if they were not being paid. The same was seen in 1998, when the country collapsed financially. This is a very different mentality than that found in the West. Most Russians would not even consider the mass protests seen in Europe in response to the economic crisis. The Russian government, by contrast, can count on its people to continue to support the state and keep the country going with little protest over the conditions. Though there have been a few sporadic and meager protests in Russia, these protests mainly have been in opposition to the financial situation, not to the government’s hand in it. In some of these demonstrations, protesters have carried signs reading, “In government we trust, in the economic system we don’t.” This means Moscow can count on a stable population.
Natural Resources: Modern Russia enjoys a wealth of natural resources in everything from food and metals to gold and timber. The markets may take a roller-coaster ride and the currency may collapse, but the Russian economy has access to the core necessities of life. Many of these resources serve a double purpose, for in addition to making Russia independent of the outside world, they also give Moscow the ability to project power effectively. Russian energy — especially natural gas — is particularly key: Europe is dependent on Russian natural gas for a quarter of its demand. This relationship guarantees Russia a steady supply of now-scarce capital even as it forces the Europeans to take any Russian concerns seriously. The energy tie is something Russia has very publicly used as a political weapon, either by raising prices or by cutting off supplies. In a recession, this lever’s effectiveness has only grown.
Military: The Russian military is in the midst of a broad modernization and restructuring, and is reconstituting its basic warfighting capability. While many challenges remain, Moscow already has imposed a new reality through military force in Georgia. While Tbilisi was certainly an easy target, the Russian military looks very different to Kiev — or even Warsaw and Prague — than it does to the Pentagon. And even in this case, Russia has come to rely increasingly heavily on its nuclear arsenal to rebalance the military equation and ensure its territorial integrity, and is looking to establish long-term nuclear parity with the Americans. Like the energy tool, Russia’s military has become more useful in times of economic duress, as potential targets have suffered far more than the Russians.
Intelligence: Russia has one of the world’s most sophisticated and powerful intelligence services. Historically, its only rival has been the United States (though today the Chinese arguably could be seen as rivaling the Americans and Russians). The KGB (now the FSB) instills fear into hearts around the world, let alone inside Russia. Infiltration and intimidation kept the Soviet Union and its sphere under control. No matter the condition of the Russian state, Moscow’s intelligence foundation has been its strongest pillar. The FSB and other Russian intelligence agencies have infiltrated most former Soviet republics and satellite states, and they also have infiltrated as far as Latin America and the United States. Russian intelligence has infiltrated political, security, military and business realms worldwide, and has boasted of infiltrating many former Soviet satellite governments, militaries and companies up to the highest level. All facets of the Russian government have backed this infiltration since Putin (a former KGB man) came to power and filled the Kremlin with his cohorts. This domestic and international infiltration has been built up for half a century. It is not something that requires much cash to maintain, but rather know-how — and the Russians wrote the book on the subject. One of the reasons Moscow can run this system inexpensively relative to what it gets in return is because Russia’s intelligence services have long been human-based, though they do have some highly advanced technology to wield. Russia also has incorporated other social networks in its intelligence services, such as organized crime or the Russian Orthodox Church, creating an intricate system at a low price. Russia’s intelligence services are much larger than most other countries’ services and cover most of the world. But the intelligence apparatus’ most intense focus is on the Russian periphery, rather than on the more expensive “far abroad.”
Thus, while Russia’s financial sector may be getting torn apart, the state does not really count on that sector for domestic cohesion or stability, or for projecting power abroad. Russia knows it lacks a good track record financially, so it depends on — and has shored up where it can — six other pillars to maintain its (self-proclaimed) place as a major international player. The current financial crisis would crush the last five pillars for any other state, but in Russia, it has only served to strengthen these bases. Over the past few years, there was a certain window of opportunity for Russia to resurge while Washington was preoccupied with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This window has been kept open longer by the West’s lack of worry over the Russian resurgence given the financial crisis. But others closer to the Russian border understand that Moscow has many tools more potent than finance with which to continue reasserting itself.
Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide
Подборка кучи ссылок (в основном для работы по США). Но для тех, кто занимается CI, ничего особо нового нет. Хотя, лучше гляньте сами:
Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Updated and Revised March 2009
By Sabrina I. Pacifici, Published on March 28, 2009, LLRX
Selected Web, Blogs, News, Video Search and Alerts Services
Web Search
Business.com - the business search engine,targeted to products, services and solutions. http://www.business.com/
Clusty "queries several top search engines, combines the results, and generates an ordered list based on comparative ranking" - http://clusty.com/Exalead - "search the entire Web for information in different formats (web sites, video, images, Wikipedia, Word documents, pdf files...)" - http://www.exalead.com/search
Gigablast - this flexible, robust, customizable search engine delivers search results via an XML feed, can detect and discard duplicate web pages, indexes PDF, Microsoft Word, Power Point, Excel, and Postscript documents, allows users to search within a set of search results, supports complex nested boolean queries using AND, OR and NOT operators. http://gigablast.com/
Google - use to search for company name, news, corporate documents and financial data, presentations, people. Ex.: stocks:dell
Use Google advanced search, http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en, to narrow and focus search results.
Google Universal Search - From upper left hand side of Google main page, users may choose: Web Search, Book Search, Images, Local/Maps, News, Video, Blog Search, Product Search. Search results will be returned from within the vertical content aggregation of each specific topic chosen.
Google Video search indexes Yahoo Video, MySpace TV shows, movies, music videos, documentaries, personal productions and more.
Justia - Reliable, tinely, comprehensive directory of legal resources, searchable/browsable by practice areas, topics and subject specific sources, cases in the news, legal blogs and podcasts - http://www.justia.com/ Law.com Quest - a legal search engine from Incisive Media, owner of leading legal newspapers and guides, including American Lawyer and National Law Journal. http://quest.law.com/Search/
MetaCrawler uses innovative metasearch technology to search the Internet's top search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search and Ask." http://www.metacrawler.com/. Another reliable metasearch engine is Dogpile Web Search, which indexes the same engines as does Metacrawler, but this site prominently displays its ongoing program to help rescue pets.
Reuters Business News, Top Stories, International Business, Financial News - Search quotes, news, video and pictures, http://www.reuters.com/business. Search industry profiles http://www.reuters.com/business/industries, sectors, benchmarking data, company rankings, metrics and more.
Search Engine Colossus - links to search engines from 311 countries and territories around the world - http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/
Sputtr (beta) meta search engine allows users to choose from over two dozen search sites (including content specific sites for maps, video, music, social networking, wikipedia, e-commerce, blogs) http://www.sputtr.com/
SurfWax - search for news, blogs and business data, includes RSS feed search and news tracking - http://www.surfwax.com/
USA.gov - U.S. Government's official web portal for all government transactions, services, and information. http://www.usa.gov/
Windows Live Search - search web, news, images, video, books, local, scholarly journal articles, conference proceedings, dissertations and academic books - http://www.live.com/
Yahoo! Search - search web, audio, directory, news, images, local, creative commons, products, travel, blogs, video. http://search.yahoo.com/
YouTube - considered by many students and researchers as a new search engine alternative - offering access to a plethora of videos, music, speeches (private sector, government personnel), corporate presentations, and a new site specifically for lectures by university professors (see http://youtube.com/edu). Use the Advanced Options search feature: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=&aq=f
Blog Search
BlogPulse - a service of Nielsenbuzz Metrics, is a blog search engine as well as "an automated trend discovery system for blogs." http://www.blogpulse.com/
Blogdigger - features include: media search for the latest audio, video, images and more; local blog search; sorting results by date and relevance; and locating who is linking to whom. http://www.blogdigger.com/index.html
Financial Blog Search - "Search over 100 of the top financial blogs at once." Note: this engine does not index a range of reputable topical blogs in the financial arena, but may be useful as a secondary resource in conjunction with other referenced blog search engines in this guide. http://microcapspeculator.googlepages.com/home
Google Blog Search indexes and allows users to search blogs that have an RSS feed, from around the world - http://www.google.com/blogsearch. See also Google Advanced Blog Search. Users may limit search parameters by author, date the posting was written (beginning in 2000), and specify required phrases or exact search terms. http://www.google.com/blogsearch/advanced_blog_search.
IceRocket Blog Search - search blogs, web, MySpace, Twitter, news, images. http://www.icerocket.com/
Justia Blawg Search - searchable directory of legal blog postings, continually updated. Sort results by date or relevance. Browse blogs by category, country, law school. http://blawgsearch.justia.com/
State of the AmLaw 200 Blogosphere, March 2008 - a directory of law firms who sponsor topical blogs - "Over 25% of AmLaw 200 law firms have blogs". See http://tinyurl.com/2yxpul
Technorati Blog Search - "Currently tracking over 100 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media." http://search.technorati.com/. See also Technorati Advanced Search - You can search by Keyword, Website URL, or Tag.
Taxonomy of Legal Blogs - directory of law and legal related blogs by category, topic, subject. http://3lepiphany.typepad.com/3l_epiphany/2006/03/a_taxonomy_of_l.html
Twitter (microblogging application - postings are limited to a maximum of 140 characters). Use the excellent, field specific Advanced Search page. See also http://www.twitprofiles.com/
News Search
Google News - Search and browse 25,000 news sources updated continuously. Includes press releases from Business Wire, Canada NewsWire, PR Newswire, U.S. Newswire. Users may customize/personalize the news page view, opt-in for email and or RSS alerts delivered to desktop or mobile devices. News results are available in: Standard Version Text Version Image Version. Users may choose to sort results by date, or sort by date with duplicates included. Users may also choose to view Local stories - near specific city, state or zipcide. http://news.google.com/
Justia News and Featured Cases -sources include: ABA Journal, Law.com, Legal Times, Jurist, and blawgs. http://news.justia.com/.
My Way - powered by Ask, aggregates top news by sector and source, - AP • New York Times • CBS • MSNBC • USA TODAY • FOX Newspage - personalization and email updates. No banners or pop up ads. http://www.myway.com/
NewsNow's "services include NewsNow.co.uk, one of the UK's most popular news portals...corporate services include online press cuttings, market intelligence, competitor tracking and website and intranet content. Provides real-time searching of 20,000 sources comprising international, national and regional papers, consumer, trade and technical titles, government press pages, press releases, blogs, webzines and newsletters in more than 15 languages from 84 countries." NewsNow
Newspaperindex.com - daily index of evaluated newspapers and front pages in every country. http://www.newspaperindex.com/
Reuters - breaking news, world, U.S., video, investing, and business news, with a focus on financial services, media and corporate markets. Search quotes, news, pictures and video. Continuously updated news ticker. Includes international editions - links at very bottom of home page. http://www.reuters.com/
Silobreaker is an online search service for news and current events...it recognises people, companies, topics, places and keywords; understands how they relate to each other in the news flow, and puts them in context for the user. http://www.silobreaker.com/
Yahoo News Search - Web Images Video Audio Directory Local News Shopping http://news.search.yahoo.com/. See also Yahoo Advanced Web Search, http://search.yahoo.com/search/options?fr=srch_more.
Yahoo Creative Commons Search - "this search helps you find content published by authors who want you to share or reuse it, under certain conditions." http://search.yahoo.com/cc?fr=srch_more
News Search Alerts
Google Alerts - updates from Web, news, groups, blogs, videos (daily or weekly), via keyword searches created by the user - http://www.google.com/alerts
FindLaw email alerts - daily opinion summaries, weekly opinion summaries, general topical newsletters - http://newsletters.findlaw.com/
NEWSiness.com - the latest news in brief, from top sources including CNN, Reuters, BBC, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, AP, MarketWatch, Bloomberg, CNNMoney/Fortune, BusinessWeek. Includes RSS feeds and news alerts. http://www.newsiness.com/.
Law.com Newswire - access to fee and free articles, news, updates - http://www.law.com/newswire/
MarketWatch.com from DowJones - Stock Market, Business and Financial News and Commentary, and Investor Research - http://tinyurl.com/y2uwjw
Wall Street Journal Alerts - non-subscribers can receive selected email newsletters free. http://www.wsj.com/
Yahoo! Alerts - news updates from the Web and blogs, via keyword searches created by the user - http://tinyurl.com/3mbqk
Selected Business Info Websites, Databases and Blogs - Fee and Free
Fee Based Sites - some with free component(s)
Accurint (owned by LexisNexis) - provides access to millions of data records on individuals and businesses - http://www.accurint.com/
AutoTrackXP (ChoicePoint) - "billions of current and historical records on individuals and businesses" - http://atxp.choicepoint.com/
Dialog (owned by ProQuest) - the database catalog contains descriptions for more than 1,200 databases available on the Dialog and DataStar services - http://www.dialog.com/
Dun & Bradstreet, D&B - global commercial database contains more than 125 million business records - http://www.dnb.com/us/
Factiva from Dow Jones - provides access to a collection of more than 14,000 business sources that include: The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Dow Jones and Reuters newswires and the Associated Press, as well as Reuters Fundamentals, and D&B company profiles - http://tinyurl.com/yx5qkx -- "Search the Factiva content set [http://www.factiva.com/sources/search.asp?node=menuElem1523] for local and global newspapers, newswires, trade journals, newsletters, magazines and transcripts". Fields - Publication Title, Product, Language, Geographical Region, Industry Sector.
Financial Times - world business, finance and political news (fee and free) - http://www.ft.com/home/us
Hoover's, Inc. "information on million public, non-public and international companies, 600 industries, and the people who lead them. "90 day archive for 3,000+ news sources for 1 million companies" - daily company news alerts [note - users may choose from different service levels with differences in content] - http://www.hoovers.com/
Hoover's Online - free version allows users to browse companies using A-Z directory, browse companies by geography, view free industry videos, view company fact sheets, press releases, financial statements, marketing data. Includes access to The Hoover's 100, a monthly list of the companies most searched on Hoover's - http://www.hoovers.com/free/
Investext - "index to company, industry, and geographic research reports written by analysts at more than 600 leading investment banks, brokerage houses and consulting firms worldwide," - PDF Bluesheet from Dialog (4) http://library.dialog.com/bluesheets/html/bl0745.html
KnowX.com - search for businesses, people and assets - free to search, fee to view records. http://www.knowx.com/
LexisNexis atVantage, subscription req'd - "...helps you analyze and track your firm's growth opportunities with clients and prospects, research industry and market trends, and evaluate competing firms." http://law.lexisnexis.com/atvantage
Global Securities Information, Inc. (Thomson Reuters) - subscription req'd, "content that ranges from a listing of SEC filings dating back to 1967 to over 188,000 Annual Reports to Shareholders from 35,196 companies in 116 countries." http://www.gsionline.com/livedgar/index.html. See also http://www.gsionline.com/Products/index.html#LIVEDGAR
Standard & Poor's - "With over $4.5 trillion benchmarked to Standard & Poor's family of indices, including the S&P 500, the S&P Global 1200, the S&P Europe 350, and S&P/Citigroup Global Equity Indices, Standard & Poor's is the world's largest index provider." http://tinyurl.com/2j4z9m 10K Wizard: SEC Filings - this service (now owned by Morningstar) uses proprietary technology to create comprehensive access to EDGAR filings, and the searchable database contains all electronically filed SEC documents including: 700+ forms indexed, 5+ million filings, archives from before 1994 (Pre-Edgar), and real-time SEC updates. Users may search and retrieve filings in PDF, HTML, RTF and EXCEL.
Standard & Poor's - subscription req'd, credit ratings, indices, investment research and data - http://tinyurl.com/y6wd3d- subscription req'd, credit ratings, indices, investment research and data -
Thomson Firm360 Monitor Suite - litigation profiles, deal monitor, report builder - http://www.firm360.com/signon/default.aspx?ReturnUrl=/default.aspx
ViewsWire - Business Intelligence on 203 Countries from the Economist Intelligence Unit, http://www.viewswire.com/index.asp?rf=0
Free Sites - some with registration and/or fee components
AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch - Search by Company Name, Ticker Symbol, Industry, Total Compensation - http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/
Business Wire - free access for current 30 days - "Business Wire is the leading source for press releases, photos, multimedia and regulatory filings from companies and groups throughout the world." http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/index.jsp
CAROL - Company Annual Reports Online for the United Kingdom - http://www.carol.co.uk/CNN Money Company Research Lookup - background information, vital statistics and earnings estimate information. http://money.cnn.com/news/crcCORI Contracts Database - "The CORI K-Base is a growing Knowledge Base of Contract information, featuring a library of executed contracts and contract forms for a wide array of transaction types and industries. Over 600,000 contracts can be accessed using our full-text search engine. First-time users must complete a free registration." http://ronald.cori.missouri.edu/cori_search/
Dun & Bradstreet - subscription req'd - D&B’s global commercial database contains more than 125 million business records. http://www.dnb.com/us/. Also try ZapData - which "gives you access to the entire D&B national database of nearly 16 million company records for an affordable price. Find new customers and grow your sales by building targeted lists and more. Prospects Lists, Company Lookups , Industry Reports. http://www.zapdata.com/
EDGAR Full-Text Search - "This page allows you to search the full text of EDGAR filings from the last four years. The full text of a filing includes all data in the filing as well as all attachments to the filing." http://searchwww.sec.gov/EDGARFSClient/jsp/EDGAR_MainAccess.jspEIU.com - from the Economist intelligence unit - subscription or pay as you go options available, "analysis and forecasts on more than 200 countries and eight key industries." http://www.eiu.com/index.asp?rf=0 Europages - has 1.500.000 European and international suppliers, manufacturers and distributors listed in its BtoB directory. http://www.europages.co.uk/
The Register of European Patents provides detailed information on all European and Euro-PCT patent applications. The system provides bibliographic data such as title of the invention, classification, publication dates, name and address of the applicant, inventor, attorney and the latest information about the status of the granting procedure of the patent application."
Fortune 500 Daily and Breaking Business News - http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/Forbes Lists (companies, sectors, markets, people, products --- biggest, best, richest, etc.) - http://www.forbes.com/lists/
Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki - This is a directory of Fortune 500 companies that have business blogs, defined as: active public blogs by company employees about the company and/or its products. "According to our research, 60 (12%) of the Fortune 500 are blogging as of 02/11/09." http://www.socialtext.net/bizblogs/index.cgi
Google Finance - updated market summary, recent quotes, today's news, sector summary, today's movers - http://finance.google.com/finance
MarketWatch.com from DowJones - stock market quotes, business news, financial news - http://www.marketwatch.com/news/default.asp?siteid=&avatar=seen&dist=ctmwMSN Money Central - stock company reports - http://moneycentral.msn.com/companyreport
Moodys.com - subscription req'd, credit ratings, research and risk analysis - http://www.moodys.com/cust/default.asp
MyWay.com Business News - http://news.myway.com/index/id/business%7Cap.htmlReuters Stock Information - headlines, company information, analyst research, industry watch. Some data requires registration - http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks
Scorecard - "profiles the environmental record of companies whose chemical release and waste management practices are tracked by major U.S. regulatory programs" - http://www.scorecard.org/env-releases/facility-search.tcl- "profiles the environmental record of companies whose chemical release and waste management practices are tracked by major U.S. regulatory programs" -
SEC Info - registration req'd - data from the SEC EDGAR database. Search by Name, Industry, Business, SIC Code, Area Code, Topic, CIK, Accession Number, File Number, Date, ZIP.
Time: Company Profiles, Business Information, Business and Economy - http://www.time.com/time/insidebiz/
Thomas Global Register - "Search the most complete, up-to-date directory of worldwide industrial Information from over 700,000 suppliers in 11 languages from 28 countries." - http://www.thomasglobal.com/
ThomasNet "is an industrial search engine that provides one source for finding the exact product, service, or supplier ñ quickly and efficiently." http://www.thomasnet.com/
Thomson Firm360 Monitor Suite - Litigation and Deal Monitor http://www.firm360.com/signon/default.aspx?ReturnUrl=/default.aspx - subscription req'd
United States Patent Office - Patent Full-Text and Full-Page Data Images, http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html
Who Owns What - Columbia Journalism Review - http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/
Yahoo Economic Calendar/Financial Calendars - http://biz.yahoo.com/c/e.htmlYahoo Financial News - Aggregates news by specific providers/fee and free, including: AP, Bankrate.com, bizjournals.com, BusinessWeek Online, Business 2.0, Daily FX, ETFZone.com, Forbes, Fortune, FT.com, Investor's Business Daily, Kiplinger.com, Law.com, MarketWatch, Morningstar.com, Motley Fool, Reuters, SmartMoney.com, TheStreet.com, TradingMarkets.com, USATODAY.com, The Wall Street Journal. These links are located on navigation bar, left side of page. http://us.biz.yahoo.com/top.html
Selected Financial Blogs
Blog Catalog - Finance Blogs - includes links and thumbnails to corporate and individual blogs from around the world. http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/finance
DealBook, from the New York Times - mergers, acquisitions, venture capital, hedge funds, http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/
Deal Journal - from the Wall Street Journal (free) - http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/?mod=djm_shdealblog
Financial Times Tech Blog - http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/
footnoted.org - "Each day, the site takes a closer look at the things that companies try to bury in their routine SEC filings." http://footnoted.org/
Naked Capitalism - Topics covered - http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/
Real Time Economics - Economic insight and analysis from The Wall Street Journal. http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/
Seeking Alpha - Stock market opinion and stock analysis - U.S. Markets, Global Markets, ETFs, sectors, transcripts. http://seekingalpha.com/
Wall Street Journal Market Beat (free) - WSJ.com’s inside look at the markets. http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/
Selected Online People Tracking Sources Accurint (owned by LexisNexis), provides access to millions of data records on individuals and businesses - http://www.accurint.com/
Ancestry.com - "genealogy, family trees and family history records online," fee req'd - http://www.ancestry.com/
AutoTrackXP (ChoicePoint) - "billions of current and historical records on individuals and businesses" - http://atxp.choicepoint.com/Dun & Bradstreet - a leading source of business information, subscription req'd - http://www.dnb.com/US
Avvo.com - Find and rate any licensed attorney - "...website that rates and profiles every lawyer so consumers can choose the right lawyer...he website currently includes profiles and ratings on every licensed attorney in Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington. Avvo will be adding more states on a regular basis." http://www.avvo.com/
FamilySearch.org is a non-profit service sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: "The largest collection of free family history, family tree and genealogy records in the world." http://www.familysearch.org/
FindLaw Search for a Lawyer or Law Firm - http://lawyers.findlaw.com/lawyer/lawyer_dir/search/jsp/name_search.jspForbes.com People Tracker - search for over 120,000 executives and celebrities, free but reg. req'd. http://www.forbes.com/cms/template/peopletracker/index.jhtml
Google - Search web, images, news, video, gmail, http://www.google.com/
Google's University Search "...enables you to narrow your search to a specific school website. Try it for things like admissions information, course schedules, or alumni news. To get into your target school" a an alpha list of names and links is provided. http://www.google.com/options/universities.html
Gumshoe Librarian 2006 - by Barbara Fullerton and Sabrina I. Pacifici - Resources, services, databases and finding aids and tools from around the world. http://www.llrx.com/features/features/gumshoe06.htm
Infobel World - Telephone Directories - information for more than 216 countries, http://www.infobel.com/teldir/default.asp
Justia Lawyer Directory - Find Attorneys, Law Firms, Legal Aid and Legal Services - http://lawyers.justia.com/
KnowX.com - public records on people and businesses, subscription req'd - http://www.knowx.com/
Martindale.com, search for credentials on over 1 million participating lawyers and law firms, http://www.martindale.com/
PeopleSearch.net - metasearch engine, http://peoplesearch.net/peoplesearch/peoplesearch_deluxe.html
Pipl People Search - "Pipl's query-engine helps you find deep web pages that cannot be found on regular search engines."Search Systems - over 45,000 free searchable public records databases, including international (fee and free access) - http://www.searchsystems.net/
Thomson Legal Record "is a unique research tool, combining an attorney's litigation history on Westlaw with the attorney's profile on FindLaw. It provides a simple, efficient, fully documented resource for legal and corporate professionals seeking experienced litigators and a verifiable basis for decision-making." http://legalrecords.findlaw.com/ss/search_index.jsp
Yahoo! People Search - free phone number, reverse phone number and email search. Premium search includes unlisted and cell phone numbers. http://people.yahoo.com/
Zaba Search - free people search and public information search engine - fee based component. http://www.zabasearch.com/
ZoomInfo.com - search for info on people, companies and jobs (no fee) ["37 million business professionals and 3.5 million companies across virtually every industry"] PowerSearch available for a fee - http://www.zoominfo.com/
Television and Radio News Transcripts – including streaming audio/video
AOL Video - "AOL Video has millions of free, high quality videos including music videos, news clips, movie trailers, viral videos, and full-length TV shows." http://video.aol.com/
blinkx - "Now, with an index of over 35 million hours of searchable video and more than 450 media partnerships, including national broadcasters, commercial media giants, and private video libraries..." http://www.blinkx.com/
Bloomberg.com TV and Radio - 24-hour business and financial news. Fee. http://www.bloomberg.com/tvradio/index.html?Intro=intro_tvradio
CBSNews.com - breaking news headlines, links to investigative shows and news programs, as well as video and text. http://www.cbsnews.com/
Critical Mention - "CriticalTV is a comprehensive web-based television search and monitoring service that allows users to search, track and view critical information from television news. The platform provides real-time monitoring and email alerts for organizations that require up-to-the-minute news about their company, customers and competitors. CriticalTV allows users to easily find a video clip online immediately after its broadcast, instantly share the clip within a workgroup via secure video-email or a private video gallery, and order a professional transcript or hard copy online." Subscription only. http://www.criticalmention.com/web/index.php
Exaled Video search - "...access millions of video clips indexed from popular online video portals, including YouTube, Dailymotion, Metacare, Vodeo, Kewego and IFILM Web sites." http://www.exalead.com/video/homepage?q=
Google Video - "The Google Video index is the most comprehensive on the Web, containing millions of videos indexed and available for viewing. Using Google Video, you can search for and watch an ever-growing collection of TV shows, movie clips, music videos, documentaries, personal productions and more from all over the Web." http://video.google.com/ - [see also YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/, owned by Google]
Roosevelt Media - "RooseveltMedia.com is a complete recording, transcribing, monitoring, archiving, and delivery solution for anyone needing to track TV and radio news" - Fee. http://www.rooseveltmedia.com/
Yahoo! Video Search - "Yahoo! Video allows you to search millions of videos from across the Web." http://video.search.yahoo.com/
ShadowTV - streaming video service, Fee - http://www.shadowtv.com/index2.html
TVEyes - "TVEyes makes TV and radio broadcasts searchable by keyword, phrase or topic - just as you would use a search engine for text. TVEyes Media Monitoring Suite is a subscription-based product used by PR professionals, Fortune 500 companies, Political Campaigns, Government Agencies, and anyone who needs to know what is being broadcast on TV and radio in real-time." http://www.tveyes.com/
"The Tyndall Report monitors the weekday nightly newscasts of the three American broadcast television networks: ABC World News with Charles Gibson, CBS Evening News with Katie Couric and NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams...The Tyndall Blog monitors and comments on each night's newscasts and links to the stories that the networks aired." http://tyndallreport.com/Federal News Service - available via database, browser and RSS. Fee. http://www.fednews.com/NPR: Transcripts - fee - individual shows or subscriptions. http://www.npr.org/transcriptsVanderbilt Television News Archive - "The Television News Archive collection at Vanderbilt University is the world's most extensive and complete archive of television news. The collection holds more than 30,000 individual network evening news broadcasts from the major U.S. national broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, and more than 9,000 hours of special news-related programming including ABC's Nightline since 1989." http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/
YouTube - "YouTube [owned by Google] is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on and across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email." http://www.youtube.com/Legislative Monitoring and TrackingCapitolHearings.org - http://www.capitolhearings.org/
Congressional Quarterly (CQ) - via the website users may obtain RSS feeds and email updates (find, track and report); news, bill tracking, transcripts. Free and fee. http://www.cq.com/corp/show.do?page=products
Free Today from Congressional Quarterly - daily selection of free articles, CQ columns, top stories, campaign blogs, political toolkit, Election Guide Index. http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5
OpenCongress Wiki - "The citizen's encyclopedia on Congress that you can edit." http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Wiki_Home
C-SPAN - video and audio search engine. http://www.cspan.org/
FedNet.net, real time live webcasts of: Congressional Hearings; Floor Debates; White House briefings; Regulatory hearings; Press conferences. Fee. http://www.fednet.net/
Gallerywatch.com - premier legislative tracking and monitoring service; offers users the ability to create customized delivery of services, including time sensitive alerts and updates, via website, email updates, and RSS. Bill tracking and monitoring, daily links to HotDocs, full-text CRS reports, legislator and agency press releases, National Journal services. Fee. http://www.gallerywatch.com/
Congress.org (free) http://www.congress.org/ and CongressNow (subscription) http://congressnow.gallerywatch.com/Default.aspx
GovTrack.us - "GovTrack.us helps you keep tabs on the U.S. Congress. This site is not affiliated with the U.S. government; it is non-commercial, non-partisan, and an open source project....it is an independent tool to help the public research and track the activities in the U.S. Congress, promoting government transparency and civic education through novel uses of technology. You'll find here the status of U.S. federal legislation, voting records in the Senate and House of Representatives, and information on Members of Congress, as well as congressional committees and the Congressional Record. The site is a research tool, but also a tracking service (providing user specified email updates and RSS feeds)." http://www.GovTrack.us/
Roll Call Newspaper Online - free headlines, and a free Election Map - http://www.rollcall.com/
The Hill.com - free Capitol Hill paper that includes blogs (http://blog.thehill.com/), podcasts and video clips. http://www.hillnews.com/THOMAS - From the Library of Congress, legislative information, status of legislation, links to committee reports. http://thomas.loc.gov/
Washingtonwatch.com tracks the bills in Congress, along with estimates about their costs or savings, when available. http://www.washingtonwatch.com/
E-Newsletters, Online Newspapers, Journals and News SourcesBetter Management.com - "provides articles, webcasts, and conferences addressing Performance Management, Financial Management, Business Intelligence, IT management, and other critical business management issues." http://www.bettermanagement.com/
Biz Journals - Free Search Watch alerts for registered users. "Bizjournals is the online media division of American City Business Journals, the nation's largest publisher of metropolitan business newspapers. It operates the Web sites for each of the company's 41 print business journals and operates a web-only site with local business news and information for Los Angeles." http://www.bizjournals.com/Bloomberg - (fee and free) market data, news and commentary (national and international); Bloomberg Radio, Bloomberg TV. http://www.bloomberg.com/CNNMoney.com - [note: Fortune, Money, Business 2.0 and Fortune Small Business are owned by the Time Inc. Business & Finance Network and may be linked to from http://money.cnn.com/. This family of magazines is available free online.]Financial Times - free and fee; email updates and RSS feeds available to subscribers. Daily blog updates, video and podcasts. Comprehensive coverage of global markets. http://www.ft.com/home/usForbes - video network, features, blogs, columns, special reports - Europe, US and Asia. http://www.forbes.com/ Fortune - features, video, RSS, newsletters. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/
Google Finance - Market Summary, Today's Headlines, Company Facts and Financials, Related company data, a Company Summary, Management info, blog posts and links to topical discussions. http://finance.google.com/financeInvestors Business Daily - some free, mostly fee. http://www.investors.com/Moreover - list of pre-built available categories for news feeds (business, industries, finance, companies, etc.) - http://w.moreover.com/site/products/ind/rss_feeds.htmlTheDeal.com, subscription req'd, blogs are free. "reports, analyzes and disseminates business and financial news that offers fresh insights on the deal economy." http://www.thedeal.com/blogs/ Time.com: Inside Business - http://www.time.com/time/insidebizWall Street Journal - http://online.wsj.com/home/us: registered subscribers may opt-in for email updates, RSS, customized homepage, company and industry news trackers. Many articles are now available free to readers without a subscription. All WSJ blogs are free. http://online.wsj.com/public/page/8_0019.html
Wall Street Journal Market Data Center - Free market data, indexes, stock quotes, and more. http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/marketsdata.html?mod=topnav_0_0012Yahoo! Finance - market summaries, currencies, videos, quotes, rates, news features, opinions. http://finance.yahoo.com/Yahoo! Financial News - top financial news. http://biz.yahoo.com/ne.html. See also Yahoo Tech Ticker, "a daily video-centric blog focused on the incredible world of technology investing." http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker
Monitoring Trends, Companies and Products – Selected News Aggregators, RSS Feeds, Blog Search Engines
"The Competitive Intelligence Foundation's State of the Art: Competitive Intelligence Research Report helps chart the progress of the competitive intelligence (CI) field. This report provides CI practitioners significant information on how competitive intelligence can support their organizational environment with information that can be used by all practitioners to improve their effectiveness." Free executive summary (16 pages, PDF) http://www.scipstore.org/pdf/f_060608_stateofart_sum.pdf
News AggregatorsDmoz - open directory project directory of aggregator tools and links to updated resources on news aggregators and RSS Web content syndication format. http://tinyurl.com/5gl6Bloglines - Stay up-to-the minute on news, blogs and feeds. http://www.bloglines.com/
Google Reader - stay abreast of lthe atest news, blog postings, share and update friends and colleagues, read anywhere, via PC or mobile devices. www.google.com/readerNewzCrawler - "is an rss/atom reader, news aggregator, browser and blog client for Windows which provides access to news content from various sources." http://www.newzcrawler.com/NewsGator - basic service is free; upgrades for a fee for enterprise (e.g., results delivery to Microsoft Outlook email) http://www.newsgator.com/
Ultimate RSS Toolbox - 120+ RSS resources - http://mashable.com/2007/06/11/rss-toolbox/
Selected RSS Feeds from Business/Legal Related News SourcesBBC - excellent resource/how-to guide - podcasts, emails alerts, mobiles, news feeds. http://tinyurl.com/2wzugBizjournals.com - feeds for local business news and industry. http://www.bizjournals.com/rss_promo/
Financial Times - http://www.ft.com/servicestools/newstracking/rss
Forbes.com - http://www.forbes.com/fdc/rss.shtmlLaw.com - http://www.law.com/service/rss.shtml
MarketWatch - http://www.marketwatch.com/rss/default.aspNew York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/PR Newswire - http://www.prnewswire.com/rss/main.shtmlReuters - http://www.reuters.com/tools/rss
Wall Street Journal News Feeds and Podcasts - http://online.wsj.com/public/page/0_0813.html?mod=topnav_0_0012Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/rss/index.htmlYahoo! News - http://news.yahoo.com/rss- - -
Yahoo! Finance Company News RSS URL Generator - Enter stock symbol(s) http://biz.yahoo.com/rss.html
Identification of Company Legal RepresentationAmLaw Lists and Rankings (Am Law 100, Am Law 200, Global 100, etc.) AmLaw Lists and Rankings (Am Law 100, Am Law 200, Global 100, etc.) - http://www.law.com/career_center/lists_rankings.shtml
CourtLink, "calendar proceedings (docket) of a lawsuit, and the documents that are filed during the course of that suit" - http://www.lexisnexis.com/courtlink/online/Case law searches, state and federal, via Lexis or Westlaw
Directory of Corporate Affiliations - http://www.corporateaffiliations.com/
Disclosure Online Database-US Public Company Profiles (Lexis), "contains business and financial information extracted from annual and periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for over 10,000 publicly-owned companies" - http://w3.nexis.com/sources/scripts/info.pl?3723
Jury verdict and settlement databases - For example the JV-ALL file on Westlaw - http://west.thomson.com/store/product.aspx?product_id=RM159035Law firm websites - firm and practice specific entries, press releases, news, blogs and client alerts - be sure to track and monitor information from this range of publications.
LawCrawler - Legal web and database search engine. http://lawcrawler.findlaw.com/
Martindale.com - "Use this Lawyer Locator to find the credentials of more than one million lawyers and firms." http://www.martindale.com/
Mergerstat M&A - "The Mergerstat database also includes more than 50,000 International transactions. Mergerstat covers U.S. transactions and crossborder transactions involving a U.S. parent company where the equity value is greater than $1 million and represents at least a 10 percent interest." http://w3.nexis.com/sources/scripts/info.pl?156282Nelson's Public Company Profiles - "Public Company Profiles comprise brief descriptions of 22,000 publicly tradedcorporations worldwide and include contact information, key executives and business descriptions." http://w3.nexis.com/sources/scripts/info.pl?165421 (Lexis)
Pacer - "The PACER Service Center is the Federal Judiciary's centralized registration, billing, and technical support center for electronic access to U.S. District, Bankruptcy, and Appellate court records." Requires username and password - fees apply - http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/
Patent records, USPTO - http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.htmlSDC Mergers & Acquisitions - http://w3.nexis.com/sources/scripts/info.pl?173725Secretary of State and Other Business Filings Databases, published by LLRX.com - "All 50 states make some level of corporate and business filings available online. In a few instances only limited information (such as name availability) is retrievable. The majority of the states, however, use their Web presence to disseminate a range of public business records -- and most of them offer access at no charge." http://www.llrx.com/features/columns/roundup29.htmSECInfo.com - "Search by Name, Industry, Business, SIC Code, Area Code, Topic, CIK, Accession Number, File Number, Date, ZIP." http://www.secinfo.com/
Standard & Poor's Corporate Register, "The SPCORP file, derived from the Standard & Poor's Register of Corporations, is the most comprehensive directory available of America's top corporations and their key personnel." http://w3.nexis.com/sources/scripts/info.pl?3669
Trademark Electronic Search System, USPTO - http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htmVentureSource for private companies, fee - http://www.venturesource.com/login/index.cfm?CFID=244623&CFTOKEN=29277224America's Corporate Finance Directory - http://www.lexisnexis.com/corpfinancedir and http://w3.nexis.com/sources/scripts/info.pl?156585: also useful for identification of other outside service providers, including auditor, banker, pension manager, insurance carriers, investment banker, etc.
Westlaw CourtExpress - dockets and document retrieval services for state and federal jurisdictions, http://courtexpress.westlaw.com/
Selected Online Tools for Competitor MonitoringWebsite TrackersCopernic Agent - subscription, intelligent web search and management application - http://www.copernic.com/en/products/agent/index.html
"Domain Tools has been tracking the whois history of millions of domains since 2000. Domain History gives you access to our massive database of historical whois records. Supported TLDs are .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us, and .info. DomainTools offers an historical lookup of registrations back to 2001," http://domain-history.domaintools.com/
InfoMinder - subscription service to track and monitor changes to websites, blogs, RSS feeds and wikis - http://www.infominder.com/webminder/index.jspWebSite Watcher - monitor websites for updates and changes - http://aignes.com/Web2Mail Lite - read, receive and browse the web by email - http://www.web2mail.com/lite/welcome.phpChangeDetection - notifies users every time there is a change in designated websites - http://www.changedetection.com/Tracerlock - web monitoring/clipping service - http://www.tracerlock.com/
Westlaw Watch and LexisNexis TrackersWestlaw Watch - "delivers selected Westlaw content to individuals via email or your organization's intranet or portal", subscription req'd - http://west.thomson.com/westlawwatch/
LexisNexis Trackers - subscription req'd, "full-text articles on current news, business, and legal information from more than 7,100 respected publications" - http://www.lexisnexis.com/currentawareness/trackers/Whoís Mailing What - sells competitive intelligence data on what kind of direct mail programs other major firms are conducting - category 586 is legal services. http://www.whosmailingwhat.com/?FUSEACTION=&FA=&HOWMUCHTIME=MarkMonitor - domain name filings provide insight into new law firm directions, service offerings - http://www.markmonitor.com/
Benchmarking Altman Weil Publications - Law Firm Survey; Law Department Surveys; Survey Executive Summaries - fee only - http://www.altmanweil.com/index.cfm/fa/sp.home/surveys.cfm
American Bar Association (ABA) Market Research Department Statistical Resources - http://www.abanet.org/marketresearch/resource.html
American Lawyer - now owned by incisive media - subscription (law firm and lawyer surveys, reports, articles, market data) - http://www.law.com/jsp/tal/index.jsp. Sign up for free email updates: http://store.law.com/registration/register.asp?w=tal&subscribeTo=tal:limited
AmLaw 200 - 2008: begin on this page and proceed to free registration to view the following data if you are currently not a paid subscriber: The Am Law 200: Gross Revenue; The Am Law 200: Revenue Per Lawyer; The Am Law 200: Value Per Lawyer; The Am Law 200: Profits Per Partner; The Am Law 200: Measure Twice.American Banker's Top Lead Legal Advisers, "A comprehensive database of banking and financial services rankings, league tables, and vital statistics. Includes all tables published in the print edition of American Banker, and more. Organized by category. With historical data." http://www.americanbanker.com/rankingthebanks.html
Canadian Business Intelligence Pathfinder - "Information to help you plan your business intelligence strategies. Find help with forming market research and marketing plans, access company databases, and contact experts in market research. Keep your intelligence strategies current and competitive with these online resources." http://www.strategieinnovation.gc.ca/gol/innovation/site.nsf/en/in03621.html
Chambers and Partners - "searchable database of the top lawyers in 175 countries, providing independent rankings and editorial commentary" - http://www.chambersandpartners.com/
"CorporateAffiliations.com (LexisNexis) provides current, accurate corporate linkage information and company profiles on nearly 200,000 of the most prominent global public and private parent companies and their affiliates, subsidiaries and divisions—down to the seventh level of corporate linkage." http://www.corporateaffiliations.com/
Counsel to Counsel Resources and Summary Reports - http://www.martindale.com/xp/c2c/Media_Features/articles_list.xml
ExecRelate - "find NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX board member biographical details and see how they’re connected, view company hierarchies to find connections among current customers and their parent companies, and track merger and acquisition information to keep informed about marketplace changes. http://www.execrelate.com/Nonsub/home.asp
FRASER (Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research) - "The Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research is a project by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to expand on its mission to provide economic information and data to researchers interested in the U.S. economy. On this web site you will find links to scanned images (in Adobe Acrobat PDF format) of historical economic statistical publications, releases, and documents." http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/
Fortune 500 annual ranking of America's largest corporations, 2008 - http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2008/
GPO Economic Indicators, 1995 to Present - "Available from April 1995 forward, this monthly compilation is prepared for the Joint Economic Committee by the Council of Economic Advisors and provides economic information on prices, wages, production, business activity, purchasing power, credit, money and Federal finance." http://www.gpoaccess.gov/indicators/index.html
"The IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2008 (WCY) analyses and ranks the ability of nations to create and maintain an environment that sustains the competitiveness of enterprises. Considered the worldwide reference point to world competitiveness, it has been published without interruption since 1989 and ranks 55 national economies using 323 criteria. http://www.imd.ch/research/publications/wcy/World-Competitiveness-Yearbook-2008-Results.cfm"Leadership Networks™ is an...interactive networking database of "who knows whom" in the leadership of the United States. Powered by our Leadership Library® database of accurate and up-to-date professional information, Leadership Networks™ shows in a visually compelling form the type and strength of key links and connections among leaders in the public and private sectors, including board relationships, education, career history, and family ties." http://www.leadershipdirectories.com/products/ln.htm
"Marquis Who's Who has grown to include the biographies of millions of leaders and achievers from around the world and from every significant field of endeavor." http://www.marquiswhoswho.com/
NALP Directory of Legal Employers - "Available from April 1995 forward, this monthly compilation is prepared for the Joint Economic Committee by the Council of Economic Advisors and provides economic information on prices, wages, production, business activity, purchasing power, credit, money and Federal finance." http://www.nalpdirectory.com/
PROFIT 100 Rankings - "The exclusive list of Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies: who they are, where they're from and what they do." http://www.canadianbusiness.com/rankings/profit100/list.jsp
U.S. Census Bureau, Current Industrial Reports - "The CIR program has been providing monthly, quarterly, and annual measures of industrial activity for many years. The primary objective of the CIR program is to produce timely, accurate data on production and shipments of selected products. The data are used to satisfy economic policy needs and for market analysis, forecasting, and decision-making in the private sector." Includes Mining, Manufacturing and Construction Statistics. http://www.census.gov/cir/www/
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis - "The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) promotes a better understanding of the U.S. economy by providing the most timely, relevant, and accurate economic accounts data in an objective and cost-effective manner." http://www.bea.gov/
U.S. Commercial Service - Market Research Library - "The U.S. Commercial Service is the trade promotion unit of the International Trade Administration. U.S. Commercial Service trade specialists in 107 U.S. cities and in more than 80 countries work with your company to help you get started in exporting or increase your sales to new global markets." http://www.buyusainfo.net/adsearch.cfm?search_type=int&loadnav=no
Country Profiles
BBC News Country Profiles - "Full profiles provide an instant guide to history, politics and economic background of countries and territories, and background on key institutions. They also include audio or video clips from BBC archives." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/country_profiles/default.stm
CIA World Factbook - Country information has been updated as of 19 March 2009. Comprehensive, accurate, extensive data on over 270 countries around the world. For each country, Includes data on people, geography, government, economy, communications, transportation, military and transnational issues. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html
Country Profiles - Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK): "The following Country Profiles have been prepared by FCO desk officers and aim to provide a general overview of the country concerned. They include information on the country's recent history, recent political developments, relations with the international community and bilateral political and commercial relations with the UK, as well as links to other relevant pages on the FCO website." http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1007029394365
Economist.com - Country Briefings - "News, country profiles, forecasts, statistics" on more than 80 countries.
Index Mundi, Country Facts - "This site contains detailed country information, charts, and maps compiled from multiple sources." http://www.indexmundi.com/
Library of Congress Country Profiles - "This series of profiles of foreign nations is part of the Country Studies Program...The profiles offer brief, summarized information on a country's historical background, geography, society, economy, transportation and telecommunications, government and politics, and national security." http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/profiles.html
World Bank Key Development Data and Statistics - Country Profiles - "Country profiles are drawn from the World Development Indicators (WDI) database - the World Bank's primary database for cross-country comparable development data. The indicators shown here are also available through an online Quick Query tool that provides free access to a limited set of the WDI Online subscription database." Link
World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) - "analyses and ranks the ability of nations to create and maintain an environment that sustains the competitiveness of enterprises. Considered the worldwide reference point to world competitiveness, it has been published without interruption since 1989 and ranks 55 national economies using 323 criteria." http://www.imd.ch/research/publications/wcy/index.cfm
CI Pathfinders and Link Collections
BRINT - "Business Technology Management and Knowledge Management" - http://www.brint.com/Competitive Intelligence Center Library - http://www.competitivereviews.com/library.htmlHelicon's Articles and Book Reviews on CI and Related Topics - http://www.helicongroup.com/Helicon
Web Directories and Portals
A to Z Index of the Business Reference Services Web Site (Library of Congress) - http://www.loc.gov/rr/business/azindex.html
CEO Express - fee and free, with links to dozens of reliable, business related resources - http://www.ceoexpress.com/default.aspCI Resource Index - over 2,000 links to corporate and association data, books, newsletters, journals, seminars and more. http://www.bidigital.com/ci/
FindArticles - free access to millions of articles (premium content as well) - http://findarticles.com/
HighBeam (fee and free) "is a magazine and newspaper archive, online library and research tool for individuals, students and small businesses. We collect millions of research articles from published sources you know and trust – and put them all in one place." - http://www.highbeam.com/
HighWire Press - free and free, "1232 journals and 5,607,502 full text articles from over 140 scholarly publishers. HighWire-hosted publishers have collectively made 1,861,920 articles free." http://highwire.stanford.edu/Fuld & Company, Internet Intelligence Index - links to over 600 intelligence-related sites - http://www.fuld.com/fuld-bin/f.wk?fuld.i3.homeLexisNexis - fee/subscription - http://www.lexis.com/ or http://www.nexis.com/MagPortal - search engine and directory for locating online magazine articles from over 200 periodicals - http://www.magportal.com/c/bus/Portal to International Business Resources - "A rich collection of thousands of resources selected based on content and usability. This section also includes our proprietary Market Potential Indicators and the Database of International Business Statistics." http://globaledge.msu.edu/ibrd/ibrd.aspWestlaw - fee/subscription - http://www.westlaw.com/Wall Street Executive Library - Directory of over 1,450 sources that includes: national/international news; company and industry, government, marketing and advertising, statistics and economic research - http://www.executivelibrary.com/
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