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 Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.
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The acronym "TASS" meant "Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union." When we emigrated from Soviet Russia and came to New York in 1972, I soon found that the CIA's testimony in Congress described Soviet Russia, on the basis of TASS reports, as spending far less on the military budget than did the United States. The CIA refused to believe me that this is impossible if only because the Soviet dictators were developing post-nuclear superweapons (a lot of money!) until the dictatorship fell in 1991, and the newly elected President Yeltsin opened to international inspection the giant biosection of the nationwide archipelago of development of post-nuclear superweapons. According to the TASS reports the CIA used, Soviet Russia spent far less on the military budget than did the United States. The CIA's testimony in Congress was thus comical, and my article on the subject in "Commentary" magazine was outlined or reprinted by over 500 periodicals, including the electoral magazine of Ronald Reagan, who met me and made my "input" public — to no avail, since the CIA declared the U.S. President's statement "evilempirism"!
Well, what was TASS?
A Soviet correspondent sent "news" as a TASS report, that is, as propaganda. Simultaneously, he sent news (on blue paper) as a secret report, that is, more truthful data, to be read secretly by several hundred top officials. Finally, he sent news as a TOP secret report, that is the TRUTH, as he saw it, to the dictator himself.
If such a triple system of propaganda, semi-truth and truth was applied to international events, the lies about domestic data (such as the Soviet military spending) were prepared within the innermost depths of the dictatorship and passed to TASS to divulge these propaganda lies all over the world.
Hence TASS data as the CIA copied them were sheer propaganda, such as lies, showing that the military budget of Soviet Russia was far smaller than that of the United States. The TASS reports the CIA copied were freely available in the United States (no need to send spies to Moscow to penetrate the top secret safes of the Soviet Ministry of Defense!). The goal of Soviet deception? To make the United States believe that Soviet Russia is pathetically peaceful, and when the critical Soviet post-nuclear superweapons were ready, to face the United States and the West in general with the the ultimatum: "Surrender unconditionally or be annihilated!" Remember how Japan surrendered unconditionally after two U.S. "atom bombs" were dropped on its two cities in 1945? Well, Japan had attacked the Untied States in 1941, but surely such a preliminary condition would have not been obligatory for the Soviet dictators!
In front of me is a Xinhua News Agency report that "Shina Daily" (a leading Chinese English-language newspaper) posted online on March 11, 2006.
Compared with 17.8 percent of the United States, 11.4 percent of France and 9.25 percent of Germany, China's defense budget in 2005 accounted for only 7.34 percent of the budgeted fiscal expenditure, even lower than that in the 1970s, Guo said.
Who is Guo? An "expert"!
China's vast territory demands the safeguard of advanced military equipment, which, however, needs great upgrade and reinforcement at present, said Guo Xinning, a researcher with the strategic institute under the University of National Defense.
You see? Everything as in the best of democracies! The military budget to be approved by "the Chinese parliament," and meanwhile "experts" like Guo discuss it publicly.
But why did Xinhua report that "China's defense budget for 2006 will rise 14.7 percent"? For verisimilitude! The 14.7 percent increase does not change the picture of China's smallest military budget. But it shows how truthful, honest, conscientious the Chinese democracy (nay, superdemocracy!) is!
Even after China's military budget rises 14.7 percent, it will be in 2006 US $35 billion, while the U.S. military budget was $330.8 billion even in 2002, before the war in Iraq.
Xinhua does not mention the fact that for the money paid to one American employee it is possible to employ 10 or 20 equivalent Chinese employees (or maintain 30 or 40 soldiers).
Owing to the high cost of employment of U.S. manpower, trillions of dollars are now publicly mentioned in the United States as the cost of the U.S. war in Iraq is discussed, while the geostrategic value of the war is zero or worse. But not a cent has been allocated by U.S. Congress to Eric Drexler, the theorist of genius who described molecular nano weapons in 1986, or to his Foresight Institute he co-founded with his wife in the same year.
How did the Chinese people react to the announced 14.7 percent increase of China's military budget, according to Xinhua?
An online critic commented on the message board of www.sina.com that China should raise its defense budget to 10 percent of its whole fiscal budget, as the country "stands on a weak base" of national defense.
"There's no reason for China to have a lower defense expenditure than other countries," another critic said.
You see? Fortunately, "the supreme leaders" of China are more peaceful or pacifist than the Chinese people, and keep the country's military budget so low that the CIA and DIA (the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency) will weep (poor China!) when copying the Xinhua figures and the U.S. government and U.S. Congress will weep when reading these figures in the CIA and DIA reports.
However, a country's victory depends not only on how much it spends on the military budget, but also on what weapons it develops. The United States spent on the development of nuclear weapons a small portion of its military budget from 1939 to 1945. The driving forces in the Manhattan Project were émigrés from Europe. But Japan surrendered unconditionally to nuclear weapons.
The effect of post-nuclear superweapons, which China has been developing since 1986 (Project 863), will be the same. Yet few Americans have even heard of Project 863, and so they can well believe Xinhua's figures, showing how peaceful China is compared with France or Germany, to say nothing of the United States, especially after 2002, when the United States began to establish world freedom and democracy, starting with oil-rich countries, but has been stopped in Iraq by the Sunni guerrillas.
Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.
The CIA did not know what TASS was, just as today the CIA does not know what Xinhua is, and China, where the first test of its nuclear weapons took place in 1964, is believed to be a citadel of peace in contrast to Iraq in 2003, or Iran in 2006, with their nuclear weapons expected ere long, requiring an urgent invasion to prevent such a fatal danger to mankind.