Thanks to unprecedented oil prices, the Kremlin has tons of money. It is now trying to use this windfall to modernize the country and has given tasks to both of the likely presidential successors. First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has been assigned the four national projects, but it is becoming clearer there that the money is simply going to go to the bureaucrats.

Now Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov is also at work. In speech after speech, Ivanov has been insisting the military-industrial complex can drive the Russian economy. As proof, he has noted that defense industries account for more than 70 percent of all high-tech products and employ more than 50 percent of the country's scientists. Ivanov also maintains that by 2115 Russian defense industries will devote more than 70 percent of their production capacity to the manufacture of civilian goods.