Posted on 10/15/2013 5:47:08 PM PDT by cunning_fish
How do you settle a rather sizeable bill for your milk delivery? If you are a cash-strapped superpower the answer is, apparently, to offer up a pair of fighter jets and a nuclear submarine as payment.
The extraordinary offer was made by Russia to New Zealand in 1993, a new book reveals.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was struggling to pay the $100m it owed New Zealand for a range of imported dairy products.
In a meeting with Russian officials to thrash out payment terms, Jim Bolger, then New Zealand prime minister, was "absolutely stunned" to be offered the military hardware in lieu of money, according to author Clive Lind.
Lind, who interviewed Bolger and former New Zealand Dairy Board chairman Dryden Spring, who was also present at the meeting, said the offer had been made by Alexander Shokhin, then deputy prime minister of Russia.
"The Russians were trying to come up with lines of credit before Shokhin mentioned there were other funding arrangements," Lind told Guardian Australia. "He pointed out that MiG jets were highly desirable and that they also had surplus tanks to offer. Jim Bolger had to explain that he wasn't in the market for second-hand tanks."
Perhaps most remarkably, Shokhin then offered a nuclear submarine to wipe out Russia's buttery debt. Noting that New Zealand was a staunchly non-nuclear-powered country, he suggested hooking the vessel up to the national grid and using it as a power plant for a coastal city.
"Bolger recalled the reaction he would have got if he returned to a nuclear-free New Zealand and told people that he hadn't got any money for them but had secured a nuclear submarine instead," Lind said. "It simply wasn't going to fly."
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
A funny ha ha story until you consider what other hardware was offered to whom ...
when I was a child in NZ in the 50s there was a saying “guns or butter”
must have been as typo..
it seems it was “guns for butter”
The photo with the article shows a MIG 15 or a MIG 17, both 1950’s era fighters. Are they saying that the Russians offered New Zealand Korean War technology to pay off their debt?
AFAIK, Mig-29s were offered.
From “One, Two, Three”
Peripetchikoff: We have trade agreement with Cuba. They send us cigars, we send them rockets.
C.R. Macnamara: Good thinking.
C.R. MacNamara: You know something? You guys got cheated. This is a pretty crummy cigar.
Peripetchikoff: Do not worry. We send them pretty crummy rockets.
I heard one time Elton John was offered lots of caviar and mink coats to perform in Russia. I know he's done gigs there so maybe he's set for caviar.
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o.o
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I knew Commie nations were strapped for hard cash but that kind of ‘deal’ for entertainment leaves even me wordless.
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