The Russian Military Power and Policy
Steven E. Miller and Dmitri Trenin, editors
The Russian Military
American Academy Studies in Global Security Carl Kaysen, John Steinbruner, and Martin B. Malin, editors Robert Legvold, ed., Thinking Strategically: The Major Powers, Kazakhstan, and the Central Asian Nexus Robert Legvold, Celeste A. Wallander, ed., Swords and Sustenance: The Economics of Security in Belarus and Ukraine Steven E. Miller, Dmitri V. Trenin, ed., The Russian Military: Power and Policy
The American Academy Studies in Global Security book series is edited at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and published by The MIT Press. Please direct any inquiries about the series to: American Academy of Arts and Sciences 136 Irving Street Cambridge, MA 02138-1996 Telephone: (617) 576-5000 Fax: (617) 576-5050 e-mail:
[email protected] Visit our Website at www.amacad.org
The Russian Military: Power and Policy Steven E. Miller and Dmitri V. Trenin, editors
American Academy of Arts and Sciences Cambridge, Massachusetts The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England
© 2004 by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 136 Irving Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-1996 All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in ITC Galliard by Anne Read. Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Russian military: power and policy edited by Steven E. Miller and Dmitri Trenin p. cm.—(American Academy studies in global security) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-13450-0 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-262-63305-1 (pbk: alk. paper) 1. Russia (Federation)—Armed Forces. 2. Russia (Federation)—Military policy 3. Russia (Federation)—Defenses. I. Miller, Steven E. II. Trenin, Dmitri III. Series. UA770.R843 2004 3550.033047—dc22 2004050463
The views expressed in this volume are those held by each contributor. They do not necessarily represent the position of the Officers and Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Contents vii
FOREWORD
xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
xiii 1
GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS INTRODUCTION
Moscow’s Military Power: Russia’s Search for Security in an Age of Transition Steven E. Miller 43
CHAPTER 1
The Trajectory of the Russian Military: Downsizing, Degeneration, and Defeat Pavel K. Baev 73
CHAPTER 2
The Social and Political Condition of the Russian Military Aleksandr Golts 95
CHAPTER 3
Military Reform: From Crisis to Stagnation Alexei G. Arbatov 121
CHAPTER 4
Russia, Regional Conflict, and the Use of Military Power Roy Allison 157
CHAPTER 5
The Economics of Defense in Russia and the Legacy of Structural Militarization Vitaly V. Shlykov 183
CHAPTER 6
Nuclear Weapons in Current Russian Policy Rose Gottemoeller 217
CONCLUSION
Gold Eagle, Red Star Dmitri V. Trenin 233
CONTRIBUTORS
237
INDEX
Foreword
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his book is one of five volumes on security challenges to the international community posed by developments within the vast territory of what was once the Soviet Union. It would take a very long series indeed to explore in detail all of the security relationships among the successor states of the former Soviet Union. The issues selected for further study in this series we believe are among the most important. The approach to these issues is a practical one: rather than settle for generalizations driven by broad analytical categories, each book deals with a specific manifestation of a selected problem and studies it from the “ground up.” The current volume deals directly with the military profile of the key country in the region, Russia. Not much can be said about the broader international significance of security trends within the former Soviet Union without having some sense of what kind of military power Russia is today. The Russian armed forces remain a scaled-down and much battered version of their Soviet predecessor. This book examines how the Russian military has absorbed the shock of the collapse of empire and simultaneously resisted efforts at serious reform. The authors draw the many dimensions of Russia’s military physiognomy—the evolution of defense policy, the socioeconomic condition of the military, Russia’s use of force in regional conflicts, and its approach to nuclear weapons—into a single composite picture. The book provides a broad assessment of how Russia fits into both regional and international contexts as a military actor. The next volume to appear in the series will consider the relationship of mutual and national security in the Caucasus region, with a focus on Georgia. Not only is that country undergoing painful political and economic transformation, but it also suffers from violent internal conflicts that resonate with interregional tensions. Add to this the involvement of many external players, as well as the influence of oil politics, and the picture grows very complex. This book will seek to explain how this tortured and multilayered context is affecting the way Georgia contends with secessionist violence, approaches its defense establishment, thinks T H E R U S S I A N M I L I TA RY
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F O R E WO R D
about the role of the military in foreign policy, and manages military relations with its neighbors and outside powers. A previous volume in the series, Swords and Sustenance: The Economics of Security in Belarus and Ukraine (2004), tackles the problem of how economic factors impinge on the national security policies of the states of this region. Unique as some features of Belarus and Ukraine are, the way that economic considerations shape and complicate their national security agendas applies in crucial respects to virtually all of the post-Soviet states because of their geopolitical environment and legacy as Soviet republics. Their environment means Russia looms large as potential partner or potential threat, while Europe and the United States are potential partners or problems as well. Their legacy of political and economic integration within the Soviet Union created a high level of dependence on Russia and distance from the Western global economy, affecting the costs and benefits of alternative security policies. The intermingling of economic and security factors is further deepened by the fact that these countries remain in the earlier stages of their post-Soviet political and economic transitions, rendering their choice often a matter of national sovereignty and survival. The first volume in the series, Thinking Strategically: The Major Powers, Kazakhstan, and the Central Asian Nexus (2003), assesses how systematically, ambitiously, and skillfully the major powers have thought about and pursued their vital stakes in Central Asia. It does so by comparing the policies of China, Japan, Russia, Europe, and the United States toward a key country in this crucial region, Kazakhstan. Without pretending that the knowledge generated in a specific case study can be applied perfectly to the policies of the major powers in other parts of the former Soviet Union, the book’s basic insights, made richer by the concrete instance from which they are derived, deepen our understanding of what roles the major powers are playing in the massive hinterland of Europe and Asia. A forerunner to the books in the series, Belarus at the Crossroads (1999), shares the same conception and examines what kinds of security issues are overlooked when the complex challenges raised by the larger post-Soviet space are reduced to the single dimension of Russia’s relationship with the West. The book illuminates the way in which Belarus in its external relations considerably complicates European security issues as NATO expands and analytical energies are focused on resolving Russia’s relationship with it.
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We thank the Carnegie Corporation of New York for its support of the project, which has been carried out under the auspices of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and its Committee on International Security Studies. Robert Legvold is the intellectual and organizational force behind the entire project. We are grateful for the important work he has done to advance our understanding of the international implications of developments within the post-Soviet space. Carl Kaysen and John Steinbruner Co-chairs, Committee on International Security Studies April 2004
ix
Acknowledgments
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any debts accumulate in the process of completing a project such as this one. With sincere gratitude, we wish to acknowledge those who have made significant contributions to this project and book. We are indebted most fundamentally to Robert Legvold, who conceived of the broader exercise of which this is a part and who entrusted us with the opportunity to spearhead this portion of his vision. Bob has been a wise counselor, steady hand, and incisive critic throughout this project. We are most grateful to the Carnegie Corporation of New York for its generous financial support, and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in particular to its Committee on International Security Studies (CISS), for providing the institutional home for this project. Indeed, this book would never have been completed without the indispensable assistance of Martin Malin, program director of CISS. Marty has been a model colleague, judiciously balancing patience and persistence, while playing an instrumental role in facilitating progress at every step along the way. This project would not have succeeded without him. Particular thanks are also due to Marty’s colleague at CISS, Leigh Nolan, who coordinated the entire process of turning rough draft manuscripts into books in both Russian and English. We would like to express our appreciation to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London for providing the venue for our authors’ review meeting. And of course we wish to thank those who participated in that workshop and who took upon themselves the burden of offering detailed and extremely helpful comments on early drafts of the chapters for this book—including Robert Legvold, Michael Orr, Barry Posen, Brian Taylor, and two anonymous reviewers. Anyone who has ever tried to push a book across the finish line understands what a large chore it is and how important it is that the final stages of the process rest in good hands. We have been most fortunate in this respect. Diane McCree has undertaken the editing of this volume on an extremely tight schedule with her customary meticulous professionalT H E R U S S I A N M I L I TA RY
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ism. Her help was essential to the completion of this book. Similarly, we have benefited from the efforts of Anne Read, who provided the typesetting, and Lois Malone, who prepared the index. Our sincere thanks to them all. Finally, we wish to offer thanks to our six contributors, whose commitment to this project made this book possible. Without their serious involvement and their protracted effort, this volume would never have materialized. Steven E. Miller Dmitri V. Trenin April 22, 2004
Glossary of Acronyms
ABM
Antiballistic Missile (e.g. ABM Treaty, 1972)
C3I
command, control, communication, and intelligence
CFE
Conventional Forces in Europe
CIS
Commonwealth of Independent States
CPF
collective peacekeeping forces
CST
Collective Security Treaty (1992)
CTR
Cooperative Threat Reduction Program
DIC
defense industrial complex
DPA
Movement in Support of the Army, the Defense Industry, and Military Science
FSB
Federal Security Service
HEU
highly enriched uranium
IAPO
Irkutsk aviation plant
ICBM
intercontinental ballistic missile
IFOR/SFOR
Implementation Force/Stabilization Force (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
INF
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
ISAF
International Security Assistance Force (Afghanistan)
KFOR
Kosovo Force
KnAAPO
Komsomolsk-on-Amur aviation plant
MIC
military-industrial complex
MOD
ministry of defense
NAPO
Novosibirsk aviation plant
NCI
Nuclear Cities Initiative
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NMD
national missile defense
NPT
Nonproliferation Treaty
PNIs
presidential nuclear initiatives
SPS
Union of Right Forces
SRF
strategic rocket forces
START I, START II
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties
TANTK
industry complex converted to Sukhoi aviation company
TLE
Treaty-Limited Equipment (under CFE)
TMD
Theater Missile Defense Demarcation agreement
UNPROFOR
United Nations Protection Force (Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Macedonia)
WSSX
Warhead Safety and Security Exchange Agreement
INTRODUCTION
Moscow’s Military Power: Russia’s Search for Security in an Age of Transition STEVEN E. MILLER
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or three decades,” Robert Legvold wrote in 1977, “Soviet power has obsessed American foreign policy. By it we have judged our own; because of it we have committed ourselves far from home and justified our commitment in terms of the menace it represents; around it we have made a world order revolve. For us, Soviet power has been the ultimate measure and the central threat, a seminal idea and a source of orientation.”1 The hard core of Soviet power was, of course, a formidable military widely regarded for much of the Cold War as superior to the combined defense exertions of a global coalition of industrial democracies. In the Soviet era, the Western security debate was haunted by images of a Soviet military juggernaut. Soviet military power was thought by many to be capable of conquering Europe, dominating Eurasia, and besting the United States in the global competition between East and West. The Soviet Union was a superpower largely because of its ability to generate enormous military power. The demise of the Soviet Union left behind this vast military machine, now broken into pieces and serving various newly independent masters. From the vantage point of more than a decade beyond the Cold War, we can see now that the political and economic conditions that permitted and sustained the Soviet military establishment did not survive into the post-Soviet period. Rather, a diverse collection of new and unexpectedly independent states struggled in extremely difficult circumstances 1
Robert Legvold, “On Power: The Nature of Soviet Power,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 56, no. 1 (October 1977), pp. 49–71 at p. 49. T H E R U S S I A N M I L I TA RY
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to stand alone, orient themselves in the world, and fashion a security posture that provided at least some protection of their interests. The largest inheritance from the Soviet military juggernaut remained in Moscow’s hands, including (in the end) sole possession of the Soviet Union’s huge nuclear weapons inventory and complex. Moscow inherited as well whatever residual superpower mind-set was left behind in the rubble of the Soviet Union. Moscow still governed the largest and most powerful state in the territories of the former Soviet Union and the only one of the newly independent states that could have any pretensions to being a great power on the global stage. The fate of Russia’s military inheritance, the content of Russia’s defense policy, therefore, has enormous implications not only for the security of the Russian state but also for the security order in the post-Soviet space (which encompasses much of Eurasia) and even for global security. True, Russia’s power is no longer the center of international concerns, the threat of its military might no longer grips us obsessively, and the global order is no longer defined by alignment with or against Moscow. Nevertheless, Russia’s military policy and power remain a major consideration in Eurasia and, in its nuclear component, retains global significance. The overarching purpose of this volume is to assess the military that Russia now possesses. What sort of military capability has it built for itself? What policies or doctrines have shaped its defense posture? What capacities and constraints have influenced the ability of the new Russian state to generate military power? To a large extent, the answers to these questions are found in the story of the military reforms that Russia has undertaken, or failed to undertake, in the period since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The starting point for any such assessment is an understanding that Russia is literally a new state, one that occupies a very different security situation from that which confronted Moscow during the Soviet period. It is not simply the Soviet Union writ small. Russia is, in terms of population, roughly half the size of the Soviet Union. Its territory is significantly smaller. It has different borders and different neighbors, especially in the south and west. It is shorn of allies. It no longer possesses forward military deployments in the heart of Europe. Its industrial infrastructure, including its defense industrial base, is lacking major elements that are now located in other countries. And, of course, Russia has come to occupy a fundamentally different geostrategic position in the international system: it has generally friendly relations with the United States; it
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is in many ways a part of, rather than a threat to, Europe; and it is primarily a regional rather than a global actor. Russia’s leaders have had to attempt to fashion security policies and build military capacity that reflect these new realities. They have also had to do so in the midst of a very difficult transition after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia has experienced political turbulence, social dislocation, and severe economic distress. Above all, Russia’s prolonged economic struggles have profoundly affected its ability to preserve, sustain, and afford the military capabilities it inherited from the Soviet Union. Over the course of the 1990s, the capitol that once commanded an apparent military juggernaut witnessed the substantial melting away of much of its military power. The plunge of its economy, the inability of the state to reliably collect taxes, the rampant corruption in both its private and public sectors, all combined to deeply constrain the ability of the Russian government to field military forces. This reality can improve as Russia’s domestic scene stabilizes and its economy strengthens, but it has been one of the decisive facts of Russian security policy since the 1990s. For more than a decade, Russia’s leaders have struggled with these new circumstances, seeking to devise a security policy and a defense posture that protects Russia’s borders and interests and projects Russia’s influence. What answers have they found? What choices have they made? What trade-offs have they confronted? What kind of military policy and posture has resulted so far and where are security trends leading it? BEFORE AND AFTER: RUSSIA’S MILITARY INHERITANCE
The story of Russian military power inevitably begins with the organizations, concepts, forces, and equipment that Russia inherited from the Soviet Union. That inheritance emerged from a past in which Moscow’s assemblage of military capability was as formidable as any in the world. Indeed, at the beginning of the 1980s, a common view in the West held that the Soviet Union had achieved military superiority. In fact, Ronald Reagan and his administration came to power in 1981 firmly believing this view and determined to do better at contesting the rise of Soviet military power. The shadow of the Soviet military produced such fear that some in the new administration assumed their posts while believing that the United States faced a national security emergency. Ironically, by the end of the 1980s, it had become clear that the Soviet Union was a wan-
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ing power and the intervening Gorbachev revolution had already begun the process of shrinking and restructuring the Soviet military.2 Moreover, the quality of the Soviet military machine was long subject to debate. Without question, however, by the 1980s the USSR had fashioned a massive military instrument, with huge and steadily modernizing holdings of major categories of combat equipment and an estimated 5 million men under arms in the active duty forces. One standard source, for example, reported that the Soviet Union had 5.3 million men in the armed forces in 1985, before the Gorbachev reductions, and approximately 4 million under arms in 1991, after Gorbachev’s reforms.3 Estimating Soviet defense expenditures was always a difficult and much contested exercise (and remains so even in retrospect), but most assessments of Soviet defense spending put it in the range of $250 billion to $300 billion in 1980s’ dollars (numbers that would be much higher if adjusted for inflation and converted into 2004 dollars).4 Buttressing Soviet conventional capabilities, of course, was an enormous nuclear capability, including many thousands of warheads and several thousand delivery systems. With the rapid and unexpected slide of the Soviet Union toward dissolution in 1991, this accumulation of military investments and assets became both one of the great stakes in the unfolding melodrama of disintegration and one of the great sources of concern as outsiders watched the Soviet empire crumble.5 How would this proud and capable military organization respond to the threat, or the fact, of disintegration? Would the military machine itself be broken apart, reflecting the political fractures that appeared as Moscow’s grip on its constituent republics was lost? Would the Soviet military be content to stand aside from the politics of the moment and allow its fate to be determined by political forces beyond its control? Would the command and control of nuclear weapons remain in safe and sober hands in the event of a turbulent transition? In the latter months of 1991, questions that were worrying but hypothetical 2
The evolution of the Soviet military under Mikhail Gorbachev is treated in detail in Coit D. Blacker, Hostage to Revolution: Gorbachev and Soviet Security Policy, 1985–1991 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993). 3 International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), The Military Balance, 1992–1993 (London: Brassey’s, 1992), p. 218. 4 See, for example, the annual IISS Military Balances from that period. 5 The most extensive account of the fate of the Soviet military during the Gorbachev period and immediately thereafter is William E. Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
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rapidly became immediate and practical challenges. The Soviet Union fell apart, dissolving into 15 independent states, and the disposition of the Soviet military became a question that could not be avoided. Even after the Soviet Union collapsed, there was some hope (in Moscow and in the Soviet military) that a centralized joint military command could be preserved, presiding over a common military organization. The instrument of such hope was the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), created in no small measure to provide an institutional framework within which a centralized military command over a single integrated military might be workable. It soon became apparent, however, that this outcome would not be acceptable to all of the newly independent states. A number of them were insistent that national militaries must be created to reflect and to defend the newfound sovereignty of these states. The military that Russia inherited, therefore, derived from a rapidly moving and somewhat disorganized process of breaking up the Soviet military and creating national militaries in the 15 newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. The non-Russian republics generally championed the principle that they should be able to claim ownership of the forces and equipment on their territory. Moscow hoped to retain both ownership and control of such forces and to perpetuate a military presence in many of its newly independent neighbors. Indeed, it was commonly believed in Moscow that minority Russian populations in the newly independent states would need the protection of Russian forces. The first months after the collapse of the USSR were filled with acrimonious discussion among the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union about how Soviet military power was to be distributed among them. Facilitating a solution to a problem that might have remained highly contentious was the existence of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty and NATO’s strong desire to see that treaty ratified and enter force despite the collapse of the Soviet Union. Under pressure from the West to abide by the Soviet Union’s arms control commitments and understanding that the United States and its allies regarded the fate of the CFE agreement as a serious test of their suitability as negotiating partners, the states of the former Soviet Union reached agreement at Tashkent on May 15, 1992, on how to allocate the Soviet allotments of the five categories of Treaty Limited Equipment (TLE) specified in the CFE agreement. Seeking to build good relations with the United States and the West, Russia grudgingly accepted an arrangement that (while
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TABLE 1
Russia’s Allotment of Soviet Military Equipment, 1992. Treaty Limited Equipment
Tanks Artillery Armored combat vehicles Combat aircraft Helicopters Total TLE equipment
Soviet Union
Russia
20,725 13,938 29,890 6,611 1,481 72,645
10,333 7,719 16,589 4,161 1,035 39,837
Note: This table is adapted from a table in Richard Falkenrath, Shaping Europe’s Military Order: The Origins and Consequences of the CFE Treaty (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1995), pp. 150–179 and pp. 190–211.
sidestepping the underlying issue of ownership) suggested the distribution of almost half of the Soviet Union’s holdings of major military equipment to the other former Soviet republics. This agreement was negotiated in haste, primarily with an eye to satisfying NATO’s concerns rather than according to any coherent military scheme.6 As can be seen in Table 1, Russia’s own allocations from the Soviet inventory would make it the largest military power in the former Soviet space, in possession of significant quantities of military equipment. But it would be a much smaller military power than the USSR, with holdings of military assets that reflected the strategic priorities and investment decisions of the Soviet Union. The allocation of Soviet manpower was ungoverned by the CFE and Tashkent agreements and posed a much murkier picture. Many ethnic Russians served in units based in other, now independent republics. Many non-Russians served in units within Russia. Citizenship was an option for ethnic Russians in non-Russian republics, but it was uncertain how many Russian officers and soldiers would opt to remain where they were. The officer corps, heavily Russian in ethnic composition, was widely scattered geographically. It was far from clear how military manpower was to be divided up among the newly independent republics. At issue was the distribution of some 4 million people. It was 6
The link between CFE and the distribution of Soviet military assets is treated in detail in Richard A. Falkenrath, Shaping Europe’s Military Order: The Origins and Consequences of the CFE Treaty (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), pp. 150–179 and pp. 190–211.
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certain, however, that Russia would end up with the largest share of the manpower inheritance from the Soviet Union. Indeed, the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated that in 1992 the active Russian forces numbered 2,720,000.7 While the disposition of Soviet conventional forces was gradually being determined, the world was captivated by a melodrama involving the huge Soviet nuclear arsenal.8 Under all circumstances, Russia would have emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union as a significant nuclear power. But outside the former Soviet Union, it was almost universally believed that Russia should be the only nuclear power left behind by the Soviet Union. Wider proliferation within the former Soviet Union was deemed highly undesirable, and Western diplomacy made strenuous efforts to promote the consolidation of the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal within Russia. This was no small chore, since Soviet tactical nuclear weapons were deployed throughout most of the 15 republics and Soviet strategic weapons were deployed in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, as well as Russia. Driven by worries that some newly independent states might succumb to the nuclear temptation, officials in Moscow gave high priority in 1992 and 1993 to ensuring the denuclearization of all former Soviet republics other than Russia. With the success of these efforts, Russia became the sole nuclear successor state of the former Soviet Union and retained pretensions to being a nuclear superpower even if it was a superpower in no other respect. The military that Russia inherited, in short, reflected no reasoned military judgment, no coherent strategic design, no considered calculation of Russia’s needs and interests. Rather, it was left with large shards of military capability extracted from the wreckage of the Soviet Union, the misshapen residue of a superpower that no longer existed. In both the conventional and nuclear realms, Russia’s inheritance was heavily influenced by Western interests and preferences. Far from starting with a clean slate, the new 7
International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 1992–1993, p. 92. 8 For a detailed overview of this issue, see Steven E. Miller, “Western Diplomacy and the Soviet Nuclear Legacy,” Survival, vol. 34, no. 3 (autumn 1992), pp. 3–27. The argument that Russia should be the sole nuclear successor state is fully articulated in Ashton Carter, Kurt Campbell, Steven Miller, and Charles Zraket, Soviet Nuclear Fission: Control of the Nuclear Arsenal in a Disintegrating Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, November 1991).
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Russian state commenced its existence in substantial but still only partial possession of a willful military organization designed to advance and defend the interests of an extinct state whose strategic requirements were at best only imperfectly relevant to the new country governed by Moscow. This flawed inheritance represented the raw material out of which Russia would need to fashion for itself a military instrument. BUILDING RUSSIA’S MILITARY: IMPERATIVES FOR REFORM
There was never any reason to assume that the military Russia inherited from the Soviet Union would be suitable for its needs. On the contrary, almost everything about that military inheritance bore the mark of Soviet conditions that no longer obtained or were irrelevant in the context of a transforming and democratizing Russia. Hence, Russia faced from the beginning an urgent, but daunting, task of military reform. It was widely assumed, both within and outside Russia, that far-reaching reforms would be necessary if Russia were to create a military compatible with the interests and resources of the new Russian state. The imperative for reform derived most pressingly from several realities of the immediate post-Soviet period, realities that were partly practical, partly political, and partly strategic. Deteriorating Forces The practical realities for the Russian military started with the poor shape of the forces Russia inherited from the Soviet Union. As British analyst C. J. Dick has written, “The Russian army has been in decline since before it came into existence—that is to say that the Soviet Army, its foundation, was increasingly in a state of disrepair as the Gorbachev era progressed.”9 Similarly, William Odom writes evocatively that “in a mere six years, the world’s largest and arguably most powerful military melted like the spring ice in Russia’s arctic rivers as it breaks up, drifts in floes, and slowly disappears.”10 Thus, Russia did not inherit a fit and fine military machine but a deteriorating and already troubled force. As Aleksandr
9
C. J. Dick, “Russian Military Reform: Status and Prospects” (Camberley, UK: Conflict Studies Research Centre, June 1998), http://www.fas.org/nuke/ guide/russia/agency/Russian_Mil_Reform_Status_Prospects, p. 1 of web version. 10 Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military, p. ix.
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Golts illustrates in these pages, the decline in these forces persisted after the Soviet collapse, producing terrible problems of desertion, a large exodus from the officer corps, a breakdown of the conscription system, rampant corruption, and widespread ineffectiveness of many units for any meaningful military purpose. Commenting more recently on Russia’s military, Dale Herspring writes, “The military, after all, is in disarray. Things are so bad that…it would take years if not decades” to restore Russian military power.11 Likewise, Brian Taylor observed in late 2000 that the Russian military is “inadequately paid and housed, short of qualified junior officers, corrupt, and struggling to maintain a large and outdated technological infrastructure and equipment base.”12 Surely, it has been thought, military reform would result from Russia’s efforts to eliminate these problems. Maldeployed Forces A second practical reality suggested that military reform was necessary: Russia’s military was not merely in decline, but maldeployed. Large numbers of the best Soviet forces had been deployed in Eastern Europe, on the territory of Moscow’s Warsaw Treaty Organization allies. At the end of the Soviet period, these forces were withdrawn from these forward deployments in countries where they were no longer welcome but were relocated largely according to logistical rather than strategic criteria. That is, they were moved to locations in Russia where there were bases to house them, not to places where there were threats or where they might be needed. As Pavel Baev notes in his chapter below, in the worst instances forces and equipment were essentially left at railway sidings when there was no place to accommodate them, and top-line units were relocated to remote places where their relatively high capabilities were squandered. Bases and garrisons on the Soviet Union’s European frontiers in the west were now in the possession of other newly independent states, such as Ukraine and Belarus. Large portions of Russia’s new border followed what had formerly been internal lines of division between Soviet republics, and lacked any defensive infrastructure that would allow
11
Dale R. Herspring, “Putin and Military Reform: Some Hesitant First Steps,” Russia and Eurasia Review, September 10, 2002, http://www.cdi.org/ russia/222-6.cfm, p. 1 of web version. 12 Brian Taylor, “The Duma and Military Reform,” PONARS Policy Memo no. 154 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, October 2000), p. 2.
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Russia to sensibly base forces in border regions. A disproportionate number of Russia’s forces were based north and west when many of Russia’s potential security challenges were south and east. Clearly the new Russian state was going to have to rethink and rationalize its pattern of bases and deployments. This, it was believed, would be another goad to reform. Defense Spending Collapses Russia’s need to address the problems it inherited from the Soviet military and to adapt that military to its own security requirements was heightened by a third compelling (and, it has turned out, protracted) practical reality: after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow simply did not have the financial resources to provide enormous sums to the Russian ministry of defense. Instead, Russia’s defense budget experienced a stunning plunge. Reliable statistics are unavailable, and the chaotic conditions that existed in the aftermath of the Soviet disintegration made it even more difficult than usual to estimate Moscow’s defense spending. (For a time, some standard sources simply ceased to publish figures for Russian defense spending.13) There are significant discrepancies in estimates from one source to the next, but all agree that Moscow’s defense spending tumbled sharply in the 1991–92 transition from the Soviet to the post-Soviet period, and it has never come close to recovering to Soviet-era defense spending levels. This is illustrated in Table 2, which offers one estimate of the pattern of Russian defense spending. Other estimates suggest even steeper declines, albeit with open acknowledgment that the margins of error are large.14 Table 2 shows a rapid, prodigious, and so-far permanent decline in Russian defense spending. According to these data, in 1992, defense expenditures were only 25 percent of the previous year. The military budget then declined still further, to the point that in the late 1990s, Russia was spending less than 10 percent of the levels sustained in the late 1980s. The details of trends in Russian defense spending vary from estimate to estimate, but there is no question that the sums available since 13
See, for example, SIPRI, SIPRI Yearbook, 1992: World Armaments and Disarmament (London: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 260, which offered no figures on Russian defense spending for the entire period from 1982 onward. 14 See, for example, SIPRI, SIPRI Yearbook, 2003: Armaments, Disarmament, and International Security (London: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 350, which suggests that Russian defense spending was in the range of U.S.$10–$15 billion per year from the early 1990s onward.
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TABLE 2
Moscow’s Military Expenditures Year
1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998
2000 Estimate (constant 2000 bn dollars)
443.3 405.9 376.2 324.5 86.9 74.1 71.7 46.6 42.1 45.9 —
2003 Estimate (constant 1999 bn dollars)
— — — — 72.9 62.2 60.1 40.2 36.3 40.4 28.8
Note: These data are taken from “Russian Military Budget,” Global Security.org, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/mo-budget, p. 2. It provides a table that includes several different estimates of Russian defense spending, two of which are reproduced here. It is notable that the more recent estimates, based on further analysis and the latest data, retroactively reduce the estimated level of spending.
1992 are significantly less than was true in the Soviet period. What this means is that since the emergence of an independent Russia, Moscow has been spending only a fraction of what was necessary to maintain its inheritance of armed forces as an effective military capability. According to the data in Table 2, Russia has been trying to run the largest fraction of a military once accustomed to $450 billion per year on a budget of $40 billion. Since the early 1990s, this budgetary reality has been regarded as a powerful motivating force for reform. On its face, it seemed simply untenable to retain anything like the inherited military force while spending anything like the amounts that Russia was able to devote to defense. Viewed in this context, Russian military reforms seemed not simply imperative, but inevitable. And indeed, these severe budget constraints have had a significant impact by compelling large reductions in Russia’s armed forces—but without provoking the thoroughgoing reforms many thought (and still think) necessary. Unaffordable Defense Industry Russia’s need for reform was compounded by a fourth practical reality: the new Russian state inherited most of the Soviet Union’s vast and vora-
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cious defense industrial sector.15 As Viktor Shlykov demonstrates vividly in his chapter in this volume, in the Soviet Union the defense industry occupied a remarkably privileged position in which its nearly insatiable appetite for resources was accorded unrivaled priority by the Soviet government. The Soviet defense industry, wrote Julian Cooper in a 1991 assessment, was “the privileged heart of the state-dominated economy” and “the principal beneficiary of the centralized system of non-market, administrative allocation of resources.”16 The result, as the U.S. Department of Defense reported ominously in the late 1980s, was “the world’s largest military-industrial complex,” with massive productive capacity, maintained at “immense cost.”17 This complex represented a huge investment of the national wealth—some 15–30 percent of the Soviet gross domestic product, depending on the estimate. It employed many millions of people. And it produced huge quantities of military equipment for an enormous, very well funded, rapidly modernizing military that, after the Soviet collapse, was no longer either well funded or rapidly modernizing. Indeed, in the turbulent and crisis-prone economic circumstances that existed in Russia in the early 1990s, there was very little demand for or ability to purchase new weapons systems. As one 1996 assessment concluded, “the former Soviet military-industrial complex has virtually ground to a halt. Plants that once rolled out thousands of tanks are now standing idle.”18 Russia inherited the capacity to manufacture large numbers of weapons that it did not need and could not afford. Ironically, the problem of coping with the Soviet defense industrial legacy was exacerbated by Russia’s inheritance of most, but not all, of the Soviet military-industrial complex. After the dissolution of the USSR, some 25 percent of that highly centralized and tightly integrated complex was in the hands of other newly independent states.19 Thus, though the 15
For an overview of this inheritance and its implications, see Julian Cooper, “The Soviet Defence Industry Heritage and Economic Restructuring in Russia,” in Lars Wallin, ed., The Post-Soviet Military-Industrial Complex (Stockholm: Swedish National Defence Research Establishment, 1994), pp. 29–48. 16 Julian Cooper, The Soviet Defense Industry: Conversion and Economic Reform (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1991), pp. 1, 5. 17 U.S. Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power: An Assessment of the Threat, 1988 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 1988), p. 32. 18 Steve Macko, “Russia’s Crumbling Military,” EmergencyNet News Daily Report, September 1, 1996, http://www.emergency.com/russ-mil. 19 See SIPRI Yearbook, 1992, p. 205, which estimates that Russia possessed 75.1
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Russian military-industrial inheritance was too big to be affordable or appropriate, it was also too small to be comprehensive or completely coherent. Here, then, was another potent factor that seemed to demand military reform. Indeed, because of the prominence of the military sector in economic terms, reform in the defense industrial sector was clearly an important component of, if not a prerequisite for, Russia’s much needed economic reform. Conversion of the Russian military-industrial complex was thought to be a critical necessity, one that would both motivate and accompany wider military reforms.20 These practical realities together constituted what seemed to be an overwhelming case for military reform. The armed forces inherited by Russia were oversized, deteriorating, maldeployed, severely underfunded, and linked to a bloated and unaffordable defense industry. The ability of this inheritance to generate effective combat power or perform other significant missions was in doubt and declining. In the early 1990s, it was common to say that Russian military power was simply wasting away. Clearly, from a practical point of view, something would need to be done to transform the Russian military into an effective instrument for the Russian government. An Obsolete Strategic Concept The case for military reform was further reinforced by fundamental strategic and political considerations. In terms of broad strategy, the most basic challenge for Russia has been to define itself—its national identity— and its place in the world.21 As was the case with military capabilities (the
percent of Soviet defense enterprises. On the conversion of Russia’s defense industrial inheritance, see Kevin O’Prey, A Farewell to Arms? Russia’s Struggles with Defense Conversion (New York: Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1995). 21 Thoughtful discussions of Russia’s place in the world include Fiona Hill, “The Borderlands of Power: Territory and Great Power Status in Russia at the Beginning and at the End of the 20th Century,” in Zvi Gitelman, Lubomyr Hajda, John-Paul Himka, and Roman Solchanyk, eds., Cultures and Nations of Central and Eastern Europe: Essays in Honor of Roman Szporluk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press for Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2000); and Sergei Medvedev, “Russia at the End of Modernity: Foreign Policy, Security, Identity,” in Sergei Medvedev, Alexander Konovalov, and Sergei Oznobishchev, eds., Russia and the West at the Millennium: Global 20
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hardware of military power), the Soviet Union passed on to Russia a conceptual inheritance of geostrategic calculations and military doctrine (the software of military power) that fit awkwardly with the realities of the new Russian state. Russia is now a smaller state with different geography. It is not a global superpower. It is not locked in mortal antagonism with the United States. It has a completely different relationship with the states of Western Europe. It has different states along most of its periphery. The Soviet military of the 1980s reflected the threat perceptions, ambitions, strategies, and political rivalries of a wholly different state playing a wholly different role on the world stage. Russia would need to find its own place in the world, and its choices would (or should) have large implications for shaping the military that Russia would need. Basic issues were and are in play. Does Russia see itself as a European or an Asian power? Does it envision integration or uneasiness with its former adversaries in Western Europe? What sort of relationship is desirable and possible with Washington and Beijing? How is Russia going to relate to what was, for a time at least, called the near abroad—the vast expanse of territory immediately beyond Russia’s frontiers, now governed by more than a dozen independent, and in many cases troubled, states? Most broadly, of course, the newly born Russia needed to tackle for the first time what ought to be the basic building blocks of any state’s security policy: to define its interests, to identify the threats to those interests, and to choose the military means available and appropriate for addressing those threats. In the early 1990s, it seemed inevitable that Russia would need to redefine itself and that this redefinition would lead to the embrace of strategic concepts reflecting the new circumstances of the state now governed from Moscow. This redefinition of Russia and choice of an appropriate strategic doctrine could have huge implications for the Russian military. Indeed, ideally the reform of Russia’s military would be governed by a strategic concept that spelled out interests, threats, and requirements. As indicated in the pages that follow, Russia has in fact struggled since
Imperatives and Domestic Policies (Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany: George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, August 2002), pp. 33–54. Also relevant here are a number of the essays in Celeste A. Wallender, ed., The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy after the Cold War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press for the John M. Olin Critical Issues Series, 1996).
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its birth in 1991 to fashion a strategic concept—a national security doctrine—that was consistent with its new international position, realistic in its appraisal of potential threats and defense requirements, compatible with the resources it has available for defense, and able to command wide domestic support. Importantly, to be meaningful in a practical sense, such a strategic concept would need to govern the perceptions and behavior of the Russian ministry of defense and would need to be genuinely influential in the establishment of defense spending priorities and in the shaping and deployment of forces. In the period since 1991, there have been a number of efforts to articulate and codify a new Russian national security doctrine—including the draft National Security Concept of 1992, the National Security Concept of 1997, the National Security Concept of 2000, and yet another articulated in 2003.22 The substantive content and evolution of these concepts are spelled out in the chapters that follow, particularly in Pavel Baev’s account of the ebb and flow of Russian national security policy during the 1990s. Thus, the expectation that Russia would seek to define a new strategic concept was proven correct. As it turned out, however, Russia’s sequence of articulated strategic concepts has had little impact in terms of military reform. They have variously embraced unrealistic threat assessments, or lacked requisite internal support, or ignored severe resource constraints, or otherwise failed to meet the test of practicality. They have never provided a template for military reform that was regarded by civilian and military leaders as governing future military policy. Indeed, as Mark Kramer wrote about the National Security Concept of January 2000, “Many documents that take effect in Russia are almost immediately forgotten and end up having no influence on policy. Few people remember what the earlier [strategic] Concept said or even that there was such a Concept. It may well be that the latest document, too, will amount to very little.”23 In addition, it has turned out that many Russians, including in the political elite and the military, have been reluctant to abandon the aspiration of great power status, preferring instead “sustained efforts” aimed at
22
A concise overview of these efforts up to 2000 can be found in Celeste A. Wallender, “Russian National Security Policy in 2000,” PONARS Policy Memo no. 102 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, January 2000). 23 Mark Kramer, “What Is Driving Russia’s New Strategic Concept?” PONARS Policy Memo no. 103 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, January 2000), p. 3.
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“upholding Russia’s greatness.”24 But at the outset of the new Russian state it was believed that, as Moscow defined its new international role and adopted a new strategic concept, military reform would follow inexorably. Only thus would Russia end up with a military capability compatible with its requirements. This, it was widely believed, would be another significant motive for military reform. A Totalitarian Military To these practical and strategic pressures for military reform must be added a profound political factor: Russia is not simply a new state; it is a state in the midst of fundamental political and social transformations aiming at democracy, an open and transparent society, and a market economy. Russia would need to construct a military apparatus that was consistent with its new domestic political realities. Certainly the Soviet-style defense bureaucracy and military organization that Moscow inherited would not be appropriate in a democratizing Russia. That leaden administrative legacy reflected a totalitarian past that most Russians wished to leave behind. The Soviet defense establishment had been a largely autonomous structure accustomed to having state and society serve its needs, rather than the other way around. It was allowed to function in a largely unaccountable way, exempt from public scrutiny and political oversight. This pattern would not be acceptable in a democratic Russia. Hence, if and as Russia’s political reforms progressed and succeeded, this suggested once again that military reform would be necessary and inevitable. Further, it was commonly believed that democratic reform of the military was essential to the entire military reform project. So long as the Russian military, entirely comfortable in its Soviet ways, remained unanswerable to political authority, the prospects for achieving needed large-scale reforms were greatly diminished. A democratic Russia would require a military it could control and shape. Accordingly, the democratization of the Russian defense establishment was arguably the critical first step in the military reform project. As Jacob Kipp has written, the initial phase of Russian military reform should be “overcoming the Soviet legacy of a militarized state, society, and economy. This requires the
24
Pavel Baev, “Putin Reconstitutes Russia’s Great Power Status,” PONARS Policy Memo no. 318 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, November 2003), p. 1.
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creation of an effective system of civilian control over the military.”25 It seemed reasonable to assume that a Russian military that was subordinated to civilian authority, subjected to legislative accountability, and required to meet the standards of a more open and transparent society would, as a matter of course, be a different and much reformed military. A politically transformed Russia would produce a reformed Russian military. Or so it seemed.26 Disaster in Chechnya As if there were not already reasons enough to think that Russian military reform was essential, by 1994 Russia found itself embroiled in a tragic and ill-fated military misadventure in Chechnya that dramatically displayed the inadequacies and deficiencies of the Russian military.27 In Chechnya, Russia’s armed forces proved incapable of dealing with even a relative minor challenge from a small force engaged in low-intensity insurgency operations. Russian forces were unquestionably revealed to be poorly trained, poorly motivated, poorly led, poorly armed, and poorly supported.28 As Roy Allison discusses in his chapter, Russia’s primitive approach to the first Chechen war, including the massive, gruesome, and largely indiscriminate use of firepower, reflected a near-total failure on the part of the Russian military to adapt to low-intensity conflicts and insurgencies that it was most likely to face along its troubled southern periphery.
25
Jacob Kipp, “Russian Military Reform: Status and Prospects” (Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies Office, June 1998), http://www.fas.org/ nuke/guide/russia/agency/rusrform, p. 3 of web version. 26 For an early, quite pessimistic, and unfortunately rather accurate assessment of Russian efforts to democratize the military, see Stephen J. Blank, Russian Defense Legislation and Russian Democracy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, August 17, 1995). Blank concludes that “Russia is regressing in civil-military affairs and democracy” (p. 32). 27 A detailed account of Russia’s experience in Chechnya may be found in Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999). The story is brought up to date in Matthew Evangelista, The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union? (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2003). 28 The revealed inadequacies of Russia’s military are discussed, for example, in Olga Oliker and Tanya Charlick-Paley, Assessing Russia’s Decline: Trends and Implications for the United States and the U.S. Air Force (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2002), pp. 70–72.
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Russia has fared somewhat better in the second Chechen War, which commenced in 1999. But it still has yet to achieve clear victory.29 And overall, Russia’s military experience in Chechnya demonstrated that Russia’s armed forces were deeply troubled and surprisingly ineffective. After Chechnya, it could hardly be clearer that Russia did not possess a military instrument capable of addressing the security challenges that it was most likely to face. What more definitive illustration of the need for reform could there be?30 Viewed overall, there appear to be a compelling set of factors pushing for military reform in Russia. Indeed, many have recurrently argued that Russia faces a crisis in its military that makes military reform urgent and essential.31
29
On Russia’s continuing military difficulties in Chechnya, see Aleksandr Golts, “Putin and the Chechen War: Together Forever,” Moscow Times, February 11, 2004. 30 In the literature on military innovation, defeat is identified as a potentially powerful goad to reform. But there exists a lively debate in this literature on the causes of successful military innovation, in which a variety of causal forces contend, including international, organizational, cultural, technological, and strategic factors. Russia’s military reform efforts fall within this broader context and represent an interesting case in which the sources and barriers to military innovation contest with one another. For a sample of the literature on military innovation, see Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), which examines international and organizational causes of innovation; Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), which particularly explores the sources of innovation within military establishments; Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), which emphasizes strategic cultural explanations for military policy outcomes; and Michael O’Hanlon, Technological Change and the Future of Warfare (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2000), which assesses the impact of technology on military doctrine. 31 A good example is Stephen J. Blank, Russia’s Armed Forces on the Brink of Reform (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, March 16, 1998). Blanks suggested at that time that the Russian military was “fast approaching a point of no return” (p. v).
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OPTIONS FOR RUSSIAN MILITARY REFORM
In view of the powerful arguments for pursuing military reform in Russia, it is not surprising that this subject has been on the policy agenda in Moscow ever since the dismemberment of the Soviet Union. Indeed, if anything is surprising, it is that military reform has not been more frequently and more prominently at the top of the policy agenda. There has been a persistent debate about military reform, but its public visibility and political salience has fluctuated significantly. The greatest fault line in Russia’s military reform debate lies between those powerful forces—notably the Russian defense establishment—that oppose reform (for the most part, so far successfully) and those who advocate significant reforms. This schism existed even within the Russian government, as in the friction during the late 1990s between Boris Yeltsin’s reform-oriented Defense Council and the ministry of defense.32 But there are also debates among the reformers about the character and content of needed reforms, the proper sequence of reforms, priorities among reforms, the appropriate level of defense spending to support reforms, and so on. These disagreements may weaken the reformers in their battle with the opponents of reform, but in truth the differences among reformers are small compared to the vast gap between proponents and opponents of reform. Indeed, though various Russian parties and defense analysts offer their distinctive versions of a reform program, the differences in detail matter less than the substantial common ground found in the reformist community concerning the main direction of needed reform. What reforms are being proposed by some and resisted by others? The military reform agenda in Russia flows directly from the imperatives to reform as outlined above. The complicated and unsettled political circumstances in Russia sometimes produce a messy and disorganized reform debate, in which specific issues are addressed out of logical order or in isolation from closely related questions. Sometimes a particular issue (such as how to recruit manpower for the Russian military) takes on a symbolic role as the battleground between reformers and opponents of reform. But it is possible to lay out Russia’s options for military reform in
32
See, for example, Alexander Konovalov and Sergei Oznobischev, “Russian Armed Forces: Perspectives of Military Reform and Evolution of Military Doctrine” (Moscow: Institute for Strategic Assessments, June 1999), especially pp. 18–24, which survey a number of military reform proposals and describe the tension between the Defense Council and the ministry of defense.
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an orderly and analytical fashion (while recognizing that the debate in Russia does not follow this orderly pattern). According to Russia’s military reformers, what does Russia need? A More Democratic Military The defense organization inherited from the Soviet Union was an artifact of a deeply totalitarian political order. Russia needs a military establishment compatible with a democratic system. Above all, this implies a virtual revolution in civil-military relations, leading to a situation in which the military is subordinate to civilian authorities. This broad objective in turn leads to a series of desired reforms. Civilians ought to play a much larger role in the Russian ministry of defense, including at the highest levels. The Russian military establishment should be much more transparent, so that its policies and activities are more visible to and more debatable by Russia’s burgeoning civil society. Russia’s military needs to be more accountable to political authorities and should be routinely subjected to legislative oversight by lawmakers in possession of enough information to render informed judgments. And, importantly, Russia’s civilian authorities should possess ultimate control of the purse strings; the Russian military alone should not determine how Russia’s defense dollars are spent. A More Realistic and Appropriate Strategic Concept The Russian military has been reluctant to abandon the familiar and congenial strategic concepts left over from the Soviet period. In particular, as noted especially in the chapters by Pavel Baev and Alexei Arbatov, the Russian military has continued to persevere in the belief that a large-scale armored war with the industrial West represents the most important planning contingency. Russia’s military does not want to abandon the NATO threat, despite the vast international changes that have occurred since the end of the Soviet Union. This continued embrace of the centerpiece of Soviet geostrategic thought reflects a desire by the Russian military to retain its privileged status, to command enormous resources, and to justify huge forces organized largely along Soviet lines. It also forms the basis for hopes that Russia’s military may one day be restored to its superpower status. Not only Russia’s military but also some in the Russian political elite continue to covet great power status or at least to desire an assertive foreign policy, including expectations of regional dominance.33 33
See, for example, Stefan Wagstyl and Andrew Jack, “West Watches Nervously
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Russia’s military reformers reject this mentality as both unrealistic and inappropriate. It is unrealistic because Russia simply does not have the resources to compete militarily with the West, nor does it need to do so in the new international circumstances. Arguably, Russia is more likely to join NATO than to fight it. What sense does it make, then, to base defense policy on the premise of a large war in Europe? Moreover, this old Soviet mentality is inappropriate because it pays little heed to the security threats and challenges that Russia actually needs to address. For most reformers, Russia’s defense policy needs especially to focus on the threats and problems that emanate from its southern periphery (including in borderlands of Russia itself, such as Chechnya). Russia’s real security challenges bear little resemblance to the requirements associated with the massive threat from the West. They involve instead various lowintensity operations, including peacekeeping, counterinsurgency, antiguerrilla campaigns, and counterterrorism. Because Russia’s military has been governed by a different strategic concept, its forces have proven to be ill suited for and often not terribly effective in these roles. As Baev argues in his chapter, the Russian military has been unwilling and unable to perform needed missions because it has focused on preparations for contingencies that are unrealistic and unnecessary. According to Russia’s military reformers, the Russian military needs to be governed by a new strategic concept, one that more realistically assesses and addresses the security situation of the new Russian state. If such a concept were both adopted and enforced, this would have powerful repercussions for the entire broad military reform effort. An Appropriately Funded Military The Soviet military was the beneficiary of enormous budgets and huge commitments of economic resources. For the post-Soviet Russian military, the story has been very nearly the opposite. Its existence has been dominated by the reality of severe budgetary constraints. Russia’s internal instabilities and economic difficulties have greatly limited the resources available to be allocated to the ministry of defense. As Arbatov suggests in his chapter, Russia must live with an acute tension between the desirable and the affordable. as the Kremlin Raises Its Flags,” Financial Times, March 3, 2004, which describes the growing aggressiveness of Russian external policy and suggests that Moscow is increasingly domineering toward its neighbors, especially those of the former Soviet Union.
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The annual budget process within the Duma provides a political context within which military reform issues are raised. But it also provides a financial context within which military reforms must be considered if they are to be realistic. What reforms are possible within existing financial constraints? What additional capabilities would be possible if additional funding were available? As Arbatov’s chapter illustrates, many of Russia’s military reformers believe that defense spending is too low, that it has fallen below the level necessary to provide Russia with the military it needs to advance its interests. Hence, reformers tend to favor increases in defense spending— though the extent of the proposed increases is relatively modest, given the continuing financial problems of the Russian government. But the issue is not simply one of spending more. Military reformers believe that Russia must spend differently, that it cannot continue to allow Russia’s defense establishment to spend as if it were the Soviet military writ small. This is a major reason why reformers are concerned about civil-military relations (so that civilian authorities can compel different and more suitable spending priorities). And it explains why Russia’s military reformers champion a different sort of military. A More Professional Military One key element of the different military sought by the reformers is a shift to a professional, all-volunteer force (often referred to, in the Russian context, as a contract manpower system). This approach stands in stark contrast to the mass mobilization army, built by universal conscription, which is preferred by the Russian defense establishment. The conscription system can, of course, produce a much larger military than is possible with a professional army. Even the United States, with all its wealth, moved to a smaller force when conscription was ended during the Vietnam War. But to Russia’s military reformers, reliance on mass conscription results in large numbers of dispirited, poorly trained soldiers, who are formed into units that do not provide useful increments of effective military power. Indeed, many units in the Russian military are regarded as ineffective and undeployable in any serious contingency, but they nevertheless consume resources that might otherwise be spent more meaningfully. Further, the mass mobilization military associated with ongoing conscription is inextricably linked to the Soviet obsession with war against NATO in Europe—a strategic notion the reformers regard as anachronistic and wish to jettison. Russia would be better off, argue the reformers, with a considerably
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smaller but fully professional force, one that was much better trained and composed of units that are reliable and truly useful to decision makers when military power must be deployed. With a smaller force, Russia would need to eliminate the large surplus of officers that it inherited from the Soviet Union. Necessary and justified in a mobilization-based military, these officers represent costly redundancies in a professional force. Rather than emphasize the limited training of large numbers of conscripts, a professional force would focus on the creation of considerably smaller numbers of well-trained personnel. Such a force, the reformers believe, would provide more usable military capability than the ramshackle conscript force that Russia presently possesses. This question of how to recruit military manpower has been one of the fierce battlegrounds in Russia’s military reform debate. Moving to a contract system that resulted in a small professional force would, once and for all, mean the end of the mass Soviet army. It would mean the end of hopes for military resurrection along Soviet lines. It would mean the end of planning for large wars against NATO. It would mean the end of the military careers of many now-surplus military officers. For these reasons, military reformers see the professionalization of the Russian military as a key to success, while the opponents of reform are absolutely determined to resist moves in this direction. These lines of contention are clearly reflected in the Arbatov chapter below. A More Modern and More Ready Military With the end of the Soviet Union, modernization of Russia’s military came to a screeching halt. Few new weapons systems were procured. Even fewer were designed and developed. For Russia’s defense establishment, the 1990s were a lost decade in terms of modernization. For Russia’s military reformers, this reality is flatly contrary to the plain lessons of the period. From the 1991 Gulf War onward, it was apparent that the exploitation of advanced technology was hugely advantageous in terms of military effectiveness. Breathtaking displays of high-technology military prowess, especially by U.S. forces in Kosovo and during the second Gulf War, only reinforced the conclusion that Russia’s security would not be well served by a military relying on obsolescent and technologically backward equipment. To Russia’s military reformers, these realities have huge implications for Russia’s defense policy. Reformers argue, for example, that the Russian military needs to change the balance of effort between current subsistence and investment in future capabilities. In their view, the future is being shortchanged as
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the Russian defense establishment devotes a large portion of its resources simply to sustaining the current large conscription-based force. Reformers are particularly concerned about the deteriorating technological level of the Russian military. They urge that priority be given to military research and development and to qualitative enhancements of equipment. As Arbatov argues in his chapter, a “massive rearmament” of the Russian military is necessary to make up for the lost decade of modernization. A closely related issue concerns the readiness of Russia’s military forces. Many of the units in Russia’s military are held at low levels of readiness and are not usefully deployable in most conceivable contingencies. It would be much better, argue the reformers, to have a considerably smaller force that maintained higher levels of readiness. Such forces would actually have utility in scenarios in which Russia’s leaders wanted or needed to use force, and would be deployable rapidly instead of requiring a period of mobilization and training before being available. To many reformers, questions of modernization and readiness are linked to the manpower recruitment question. Presently, the Russian defense establishment expends a considerable fraction of its resources simply sustaining the manpower, retaining the units, and preserving the weaponry for the conscription-based mass mobilization army inherited from the Soviet Union. A much smaller professional force, though more costly on a per capita basis, would be easier to refit with modernized equipment, would almost inherently be capable of higher levels of readiness, and if sized wisely could even free up budgetary resources that could be shifted to investment and modernization accounts (as the calculations in Arbatov’s chapter suggest.) An Operationally Relevant Military Russia’s military leaders face an array of security challenges, especially along Russia’s southern periphery, that involve low-intensity conflicts and challenges (ranging from terrorism and guerrilla campaigns to peacekeeping and peace-enforcement operations). In tackling these challenges, they must rely on a military instrument that is not at all optimized for these now-common contingencies. As noted, the Russian military retains strong preoccupations left over from the Soviet period, centered on visions of large-scale armored warfare. In a reformed military, advocates insist, there would exist a substantial capability trained, armed, and oriented toward the scenarios in which the Russian military now frequently operates.
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IMPEDIMENTS TO REFORM
The Russian state was born into circumstances in which there existed compelling, powerful, seemingly inexorable imperatives for military reform. Within the new Russia, as we have seen, there has arisen a sensible, comprehensive, coherent agenda of military reform aimed at addressing the various problems and deficiencies that would seem to demand reform. And yet, the striking conclusion to be drawn from the evidence since 1991 (and the arresting theme of the chapters that follow) is that remarkably little reform has been achieved. To be sure, there have been many notable changes in the Russian military—most visibly, the reductions compelled by financial exigencies. But the result has been not a new Russian military, but a smaller and deformed version of the Soviet military. As Stephen Blank has concluded, Russia has comprehensively failed to respond to most of the imperatives for reform: “Russia has failed to develop a coherent governmental structure to make and implement effective or sensible defense policy. It has not built effective, civilian, democratic control of its multiple militaries and the burgeoning number of paramilitary and privately controlled armed forces. It has neither developed nor upheld a concept of Russian national interest or a strategy for defending them commensurate with Russia’s real potential and forces. It has neither created forces that can counter threats to Russia’s national interests nor defined either the threats or those interests.”34 Neither political transformation at home nor fundamental international realignment, neither catastrophic budget declines nor defeat in war, has sufficed to produce fundamental military reform in Russia. This suggests that however strong the imperatives to reform may seem, they are insufficient to overcome the powerful impediments to reform that exist in Russia. Obviously, a willful Russian military staunchly resisting change is at the heart of the explanation for the failure of Russian military reform to date. As one assessment observed, the Russian military has been “mired
34
Blank, Russia’s Armed Forces on the Brink of Reform, p. 1. See also Stephen Blank, “This Time We Really Mean It: Russian Military Reform,” Russia and Eurasia Review, January 7, 2003, p. 5, where he similarly concludes, “Despite seventeen years of calls for military reform, dating back to Mikhail Gorbachev, nothing substantial has come to pass. Instead, Russia’s multiple military organizations have obstructed all efforts to create a professional, democratically accountable, or technologically capable army adapted to today’s real threats and able to fight a war against them.”
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in efforts to preserve the past” and has “wished to preserve a Soviet-style army, retaining as much of the Soviet system as possible.”35 But the opposition of the Russian military to reform does not in itself provide a satisfactory explanation for the largely abortive character of the military reform effort. Why has the Russian military succeeded in thwarting reform? Why has it been able to triumph over both the factors that seemed to compel reform and the articulate advocates of reform? More than a dozen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, why has the Russian military been permitted to limp along in a deficient and demoralized condition while defeating all serious efforts to reform it? How can it be that the Russian military’s only meaningful victories have been at the expense of domestic advocates of reform? The potential obstacles to reform turn out to be numerous and powerful (as might be expected given that they have stymied the various potent factors promoting reform). At least ten explanations are evident in the debate on this issue—explanations that are almost surely cumulative rather than mutually exclusive. The following considerations contribute to an understanding of the failure of reform despite the imperative to reform. One cluster of explanations for the failure of military reform in Russia focuses on domestic political considerations and emphasizes the shortcomings and incapacities of the political authorities and political elites who have proven unable to muster a winning internal coalition on this set of issues. The Weakness of Russia’s Political Authorities Surmounting the opposition of Russia’s military will require forceful intervention from Russia’s political leadership. Only this will compel Russia’s reluctant military high command to embrace changes that they despise and that will destroy the military they wish to preserve. But in the turbulent and uncertain political conditions that have existed in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, no leader has wanted to confront the Russian military. In this argument, Russia’s political leaders have been too weak, and Russia’s military has been too strong politically, to allow 35
Colin Robinson, “Russian Armed Forces: Reaching Fitfully toward a Professional Force” (Washington, DC: Military Reform Project, Center for Defense Information, July 26, 2002), http://www.cdi.org/mrp/russian-mr, p. 1 of web version.
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for the kind of civilian intervention in military affairs that would produce fundamental reform. As one expert has concluded, “The failure of Russian defense reform could be traced back, through the defects of civilian control, to the shortcomings of Russia’s democratization process.”36 Because the internal political variable is so important in determining the fortunes of military reform in Russia, changes of leadership and fluctuations in the standing and influence of key figures are major considerations in assessing the state of the reform debate. Thus, when Vladimir Putin arose suddenly and unexpectedly to the heights of power in Russia (first as prime minister and then as president), the implications of this development for the Russian military became a subject of discussion and debate in the military reform literature. Some argued that Putin would be strong and determined enough to move forward with reforms. Herspring has suggested, for example, that “Putin is moving ahead to reform the military.…He is now focusing his attention on the kind of fundamental military reform so critical to Russia’s future.”37 Others noted Putin’s affinity for the Russian military and his desire for good relations with the high command (not least because of his desire to prosecute the second Chechen War, which made the military crucial to his policy); this suggested that he was unlikely, at least in the short run, to force major reforms on the Russian military. On the contrary, Putin and the military were in the midst of a “honeymoon.”38 But on balance the tendency is to emphasize the powerful factors that make it unlikely for Putin to proceed successfully with a military reform policy. Whatever Putin’s predispositions, Kimberly Zisk argues, there are “brakes on the reform process.”39 Similarly, Brian Taylor concludes that “the multiple and severe obstacles to Russian military resurgence have not disappeared.”40 One large barrier to the assertion of civilian control lay in the occasional need of Russia’s political leaders to rely on the Russian military to face down their internal challengers, as was the case with President Yeltsin 36
Zoltan Barany, “Defense Reform, Russian Style: Obstacles, Options, Opposition,” University of Texas, Austin, February 2004, p. 4. 37 Herspring, “Putin and Military Reform,” p. 1. 38 The “honeymoon” image is employed, for example, in Brian Taylor, “Putin and the Military: How Long Will the Honeymoon Last?” PONARS Policy Memo no. 116 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, April 2000). 39 Kimberly Marten Zisk, “Putin and the Russian Military,” PONARS Policy Memo no. 155 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, October 2000), p. 2. 40 Taylor, “Putin and the Military,” p. 5.
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in the early 1990s. Another such barrier derived from the potential fear that acting vigorously against the military’s interests could provoke military intervention in Russia’s domestic politics, with possibly fateful consequences. As Taylor notes, throughout the Yeltsin decade “the possibility of a [military] coup was…a hot topic.”41 And at a minimum, the military (especially in its broadest manifestations, including the defense industry) represented an interest group numbering in the millions—a group too large to be easily antagonized by democratically accountable politicians. In short, in domestic political terms, there was simply nothing to be gained, and potentially much to be lost, for a political leader to engage in a frontal confrontation with the Russian military over reform. Uncertain Commitment to Democracy Moscow’s Soviet-style military was thought to be incompatible with a genuine democratic transformation in Russia. Hence, political reform would lead necessarily to military reform. However, Russia’s move toward genuine democracy has been halting, uncertain, and incomplete. As one set of experts at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has concluded, “Russia’s political system is neither a full-blown dictatorship nor a consolidated democracy, but something in between.”42 Hence, the winds of democracy have never blown powerfully enough to compel military reform. Further, recent trends in Russia, especially under President Putin’s increasingly powerful tenure in office, appear to be headed in the opposite direction. Writes James Goldgeier, for example, “Russia has become increasingly authoritarian under President Vladimir Putin.”43 The Carnegie group similarly states unconditionally that “Russia is moving in an autocratic direction.”44 41
Brian D. Taylor, Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 318. Taylor argues that the long-established organizational culture of the Russian military militated strongly against a military coup, but this did not prevent the fear of such a coup from shadowing Russia’s domestic politics. 42 Michael McFaul, Nilolai Petrov, and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Post-Communist Political Reform (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004), p. 1. 43 James Goldgeier, “A New European Divide,” Washington Post, March 28, 2004. On the same theme, see Alex Rodriguez, “Russia’s Putin: Monarch in All But Name,” Chicago Tribune, March 28, 2004. 44 McFaul, Petrov, and Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy, p. 2.
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In the aftermath of Russia’s 2004 presidential election, in which President Putin was not seriously challenged, his grip on power appears firm and unshakeable. As Alexei Arbatov intimates in his chapter below, there appears to be a growing priority to build up internal security forces to control dissent and opposition, even at the expense of needed national security capabilities. As Arbatov also points out, the transparency, accountability, and public debate on military policy that are commonplace in democratic settings have yet to truly materialize in Russia— undoubtedly because progress toward democratic reform has been so circumscribed. In short, the failure to move steadily and progressively in the direction of democratic transformation has undercut one of the expected pressures for military reform. An undemocratic military may be compatible with the more autocratic regime that could be emerging in Russia. Other Priorities on a Crowded Policy Agenda If Russia’s leaders had only to worry about military reform, then something substantial might have been accomplished by now. But instead they have been preoccupied with other major concerns of massive proportions. This has been a period of thoroughgoing transition in which Russia’s elite has had to contend with political upheaval, widespread social dislocation, acute economic problems and occasional economic crises, and a revolution in foreign policy, not to mention a brutal and intractable civil war. Military reform has not been the only priority—indeed, far from it—and it has rarely if ever been the highest priority. In this wider context, it is not at all surprising that Russia’s leaders have been distracted from the task of military reform. They have had many other urgent concerns on their minds. The Indifference of the Political Class to Military Reform If Russia’s political elite regarded military reform as an issue of the highest order and urgency, then reform would figure more prominently in the hierarchy of priorities, and more serious exertions would have been undertaken to push forward needed innovations. Instead, Russia’s elite has grown substantially indifferent to military issues.45 In part this is due to the overcrowded agenda of policy issues of wider or more immediate implications. In part it is due to the perception that the Soviet Union’s
45
I owe this point to Dmitri Trenin, who offered this proposition at our London workshop in May 2003.
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vast investment in military power did not protect it from decline and collapse; indeed, the Soviet preoccupation with military power may have hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union. In part it may be due to a perception that for the foreseeable future Russia faces no major security threat (Russia’s security challenges along the southern periphery are real and troublesome, but involve minor powers and relatively small-scale contingencies). In part it may be due to a (potentially self-fulfilling) belief that meaningful large-scale military reform in not possible in the current political and economic environment in Russia. Whatever the explanation, military issues have not gripped the wider political elite in Russia, and this has circumscribed the political support and momentum for military reform. Absence of Consensus about Military Reform Another political factor that has vitiated momentum toward military reform has been the failure of any reformist vision to inspire wide consensus across the relevant portions of Russian opinion. As noted, the most profound schism exists between a deeply conservative military hoping to preserve as much as possible the legacies of the past and civilian reformers hoping to build a new military for a new Russia. This has resulted in endless intense disputation about doctrine, preconditions for reform, objectives of reform, and so on. These bitter disputes have produced not progress but “deadlock,” with reform stalemated and disagreements unresolved.46 Further, while there are many common elements in the reformist agenda, there is no single reform plan to which any Russian government has been wholeheartedly committed nor any single program around which the reformist elements, of varying parties and persuasions, have coalesced. Hence, the unalterable resolve of the Russian military is pitted against proreform forces that are less united, less committed to a common agenda, and less able to dominate and prevail in the security policy debate. Juxtaposed against this set of political factors suggesting the narrow, weak, and unfocused character of support for military reform is a cluster of explanations that emphasize the advantages that the Russian military establishment brings to this battle over the future of Russian security policy.
46
Tonya Putnam and Alexander Golts, “The Vestiges of State Militarism: Why Military Reform Has Failed in Russia,” Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, October 27, 2003. Putnam and Golts use the word “deadlock” to describe this situation, but conclude that this factor is not a wholly satisfactory explanation for the failure of reform.
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The Tradition of Deference to the Military To these domestic political calculations can be added a more fundamental factor: the long tradition in Russia, dating to deep into the czarist period, of treating the Russian military with deference and regarding it as outside the realm of legitimate civilian control. From the time of Peter the Great and Russia’s rise as a great power, the military had been regarded as “the cornerstone of the Russian state.” This notion of the military as the foundation is powerfully embedded in Russian history and political culture, and has persisted across several centuries despite the political convulsions that replaced czarist rule with the Soviet regime and replaced the Soviet system with the present postcommunist order. This “state militarism,” as Tonya Putnam and Aleksandr Golts put it, involves a deeply rooted pattern of high authority and broad autonomy for the Russian military that makes it extremely effective at resisting unwanted reform efforts.47 No Reform While Fighting in Chechnya? The deficiencies and failures of the Russian military in Chechnya have been offered as strong evidence of the need for reform. In a bitter irony for reformers, however, the war in Chechnya is frequently adduced as a rationale for at least postponing reform. How wise is it, critics ask, to undertake fundamental reform of a military in the middle of a war? How can the Russian military be expected to focus its energies on reform when it is bogged down in a protracted conflict? And how can Russia’s political leadership be expected to compel military reform against the preferences of a reluctant high command when it needs that military organization to fight, die, and succeed in Chechnya? “The slog and humiliation of the first Chechen war,” Brian Taylor argues, “ruined any chances for more serious military reforms.”48 Similarly, Dmitri Trenin has written, “As long as the war continues, the High Command will have a powerful argument and political clout against a radical military reform.…The divisive and corrosive effect of the Chechen war on Russian society as a whole becomes a massive roadblock on the way to Russia’s moderniza-
47
Ibid. The brief treatment here is a summary of the argument offered by Putnam and Golts as the most fundamental explanation for the failure of Russian military reform. The first quotation is found at p. 25 of their manuscript. 48 Taylor, “The Duma and Military Reform,” p. 1.
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tion and transformation. Military reform gets stalled.”49 Thus, both supporters and opponents of reform make use of the war in Chechnya when arguing their cause, and it is by no means certain that, so long as fighting persists, the reformers have the better of the argument. A perverse implication of this point, however, is that the Russian military has little incentive to settle the Chechen conflict while it serves as a potent barrier to reforms that the military regards as deeply undesirable. Western Policies Buttress the Russian Military The Russian debate on military reform is, of course, influenced by relevant events and developments in the international arena. In particular, the Russian military’s argument that it must retain a capability for dealing with a potential threat from the West—from NATO and the United States—has gained reinforcement from an array of U.S. and Western policies that many in Moscow view as hostile or significantly contrary to Russian interests. In American security policy, for example, there has been a persistent theme of preserving capabilities that provide a “hedge” against the possible resurgence of a Russian threat. This leads to the perpetuation of a nuclear posture that continues to be substantially oriented toward Russia, to offer just one prominent illustration. Similarly, the collision of Western and Russian policies in the Balkans led many Russians to conclude that NATO was prepared to act with disregard for Russian preferences and interests and that NATO was capable of undertaking “aggression” (at it seemed to Russian eyes) in Europe. Particularly poisonous, in this context, was the NATO policy of expansion into Eastern Europe, moving NATO’s frontiers closer to Russia’s borders. Such policies have had a discernible impact on Russian perceptions and on Russian security thinking. The National Security Concept of 2000, for example, was notably harsher toward and more suspicious of the West, and restored the scenario of repelling aggression from the West to articulated Russian doctrine. This evolution was, as Mark Kramer has written, provoked by such events as “the Kosovo crisis, proposals for the further 49
Dmitri V. Trenin, The Forgotten War: Chechnya and Russia’s Future, Policy Brief no. 28 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, November 2003), p. 5. Also suggesting that Chechnya has become a major asset for the Russian military in the battle against reform is Pavel Baev, “The Russian Army and Chechnya: Victory Instead of Reform?” in Stephen Cimbala, ed., The Russian Military into the Twenty-first Century (London: Frank Cass, 2001), pp. 75–96.
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expansion of NATO, disagreements about nuclear arms control.”50 Similarly, Taylor has more generally concluded that “U.S. policies on the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Kosovo, and national missile defense have undermined voices in Russia calling for more significant military reform.”51 In short, in championing its arguments and preferred policies, the Russian military has found some ammunition in the behavior of outside powers. This fact has influenced the course of the reform debate in Russia. The picture so far portrays a weakly motivated and highly distracted civilian leadership and a highly motivated and variously advantaged Russian military. This explains, to a considerable extent, the political dynamic associated with military reform in Russia over the past dozen years. But there remain at least two additional considerations that are significant in understanding the lack of progress toward meaningful military reform— one a significant constraint, one a significant alternative. Lack of Financial Resources The constraint is related to Russia’s ongoing fiscal difficulties. Ironically, the same severe lack of financial resources that makes military reform seem imperative simultaneously makes it seem impossible. As one analyst has concluded, “A major barrier to any sensible reform has been the lack of money.”52 Alexander Konovalov and Sergei Oznobischev conclude that financial constraints are “the main obstacle to military reform.”53 This is true because while military reform is a route to a very different Russian military establishment, it is not necessarily a cheaper one. Indeed, some elements of the military reform agenda—professionalizing manpower, exploiting advanced technology, modernizing equipment, rationalizing infrastructure—are potentially quite costly. Moreover, there are large transitional costs that Russia will struggle to afford. Moving to a much smaller professional force, for example, will result in the retirement of large numbers of surplus officers whose retirement costs will be considerable. Opponents of military reform suggest, on the basis of such considerations, that reform is simply infeasible given existing and
50
Kramer, “What Is Driving Russia’s New Strategic Concept?” p. 1. Taylor, “Putin and the Military,” p. 5. 52 Frank Umbach, “Dilemmas of Russian Military Modernization,” Transatlantic International Politik, January 2002, p. 26. 53 Konovalov and Oznobischev, “Russian Armed Forces,” p. 29. 51
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expected budget levels. Proponents of reforms attempt to articulate visions of reforms that Russia can afford even within the current budget realities (as illustrated in the Arbatov chapter below). There seems to be wide agreement, however, that Russia’s fiscal constraints represent a significant impediment to military reform. The Nuclear Alternative For all of its post-Soviet troubles, Russia remains a nuclear superpower. (Indeed, this is the one respect in which Russia possesses any claim to continued superpower status.) This means that Russia has the alternative to rest its security ultimately on nuclear threats and nuclear options. In any large-scale contingency, Russia’s nuclear capabilities would inevitably be a significant factor and would provide Russia with very serious escalatory potentials. Thus, one answer to the inadequacies of Russia’s conventional forces is to embrace a security concept heavily reliant on nuclear weapons. And indeed, to a considerable extent this is what Russia has done, as indicated in Rose Gottemoeller’s chapter. It explicitly repudiated the no-first-use doctrine that had been promulgated by the Soviet Union—on the grounds that conventional weakness makes it possible that Russia would need to use nuclear weapons first against large conventional attacks. It has openly echoed the doctrine once associated with NATO, in which nuclear weapons are regarded as the equalizer that makes up for conventional inferiority. It has judged that financial exigencies compel a significant reliance on nuclear weapons (though maintaining Russia’s nuclear forces is not cheap and can force painful trade-offs with conventional force maintenance and modernization).54 Indeed, Gottemoeller describes an extensive nuclearization of Russian policy. As Frank Umbach has observed, “Many Russian security and defense experts advocated placing a greater reliance on nuclear weapons to compensate for the deficiencies of the country’s conventional forces. Not only strategic, but also tactical nuclear weapons played a much more important role in Russia’s defense posture, and particularly in the Far East opposite
54
See, for example, Nikolai Sokov, “Kosovo Syndrome and the Great Nuclear Debate of 2000,” PONARS Policy Memo no. 181 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, December 2000), which discusses the intense debate in Russia between those within the military promoting a nuclear emphasis and those urging conventional modernization. Sokov concludes, however, that economic considerations “cause greater reliance on nuclear weapons” (p. 5).
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China.…This new emphasis…suggested an excessive reliance on nuclear forces for virtually any military-political contingency.55 The availability of this nuclear alternative vitiates the momentum for military reform. The many deficiencies of Russia’s conventional forces are more tolerable because there exists the option to rely on nuclear weapons. The urgency associated with military reform is undermined because there is an ultimate nuclear guarantee of Russia’s security. In sum, there are an array of explanations that have been offered to account for that failure of military reform in Russia. These nine explanations are not all equally embraced by experts seeking to explain the course of military reform in the period since 1991. Indeed, some specialists reject the explanatory power of this or that explanation. The aim here has not been to assess the relative explanatory power of these explanations but to accumulate the explanations that are evident in the discussion of this issue—none of which are mutually exclusive. What is incontrovertible is that in combination this collection of factors has sufficed to block major progress toward significant military reform in Russia. The imperative to reform seemed powerful. The impediments to reform have so far proven more powerful still. THE PLAN OF THE BOOK
The foregoing discussion has sought to sketch in broad terms the contours of the military reform issue in Russia. This framework is intended to provide background to the more detailed chapters that follow. In this volume, six experts examine six key features of Russia’s military, seeking to illuminate the responses of Russia’s government and military to these challenges and the policies and capabilities that have resulted from their perceptions and decisions. The Evolution of Russian National Security Policy In chapter 1, Pavel Baev describes and assesses the evolution of Russian national security policy since 1992. This overview lays out a series of phases in Moscow’s approach to handling its military establishments and
55
Frank Umbach, Future Military Reform: Russia’s Nuclear and Conventional Forces, no. D65 (Camberley, UK: Conflict Studies Research Centre, August 2002), pp. 13–14. Umbach provides an extensive discussion of this “excessive reliance” on nuclear weapons.
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assesses the interactions between civilian and military in shaping the course of military policy in Russia. Baev portrays a grim picture of Russian military capabilities and offers his explanation for the failure to undertake needed improvements and innovations. After years of stagnation, Baev concludes, the Russian military is now desperately in need of “radical modernization.” The Social and Political Condition of the Russian Military In chapter 2, Aleksandr Golts addresses the social and political condition of the Russian military. Russia inherited a large mass army filled with literally millions of conscripts. In the conditions that existed at the time the Soviet Union collapsed, these conscripts were poorly paid, when paid at all, and experienced an unpleasant and impoverished quality of life. It is hardly surprising that there were large numbers of dispirited, poorly motivated troops in the Russian military. How was Russia to recruit and retain the motivated and well-trained personnel that are essential to a modern military? How could Moscow render military service attractive and socially valued? Golts describes the serious breakdown of the manpower recruitment system in Russia. Russia also inherited a huge professional officer corps, accustomed to privileged status, lifelong employment, relatively abundant resources, and unquestioned obedience from those below in the chain of command. But Moscow neither needed, nor could afford, this surplus of officers. But encouraging or compelling retirement produced painful burdens in terms of pensions, housing, and reemployment. And for those officers who remained within the military, there was the shock of adjustment to a new environment for the military, in which status was lacking, resources were scarce, the troops were troublesome, and career prospects uncertain. What sort of officer corps did Russia need and how could it create such a corps? Golts outlines the high levels of dissatisfaction in Russia’s officer corps and suggests that their plight can be regarded as akin to serfdom. Russia also inherited a uniformed defense ministry and a high command accustomed to a totalitarian system of civil-military relations, to almost unquestioned claim on the nation’s resources, to high levels of political influence, and to social distinction and public acclaim. This military establishment suddenly found itself in the midst of a messy democracy-in-the-making. Its authority was questioned, its resources were slashed, its social standing declined, and it found itself answering to civilian authorities, including civilians appointed to high positions in the ministry of defense. How did Russia bridge this transition and construct a
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new role for the military in its internal politics and a new, more democratic, mode of civil-military relations? Golts, like Baev, emphasizes the high command’s success in preserving its political clout and winning policy battles, and highlights the paradoxical contrast between the poor condition of the Russian military and the strong influence of Russia’s military leadership. Military Reform In chapter 3, Alexei Arbatov provides a perspective on the current state of the military reform debate in Russia. Writing as both analyst of and longtime participant in this debate (having been for many years a prominent Duma member), Arbatov conveys the perceptions of a strong advocate of reform. Arbatov believes that thoroughgoing reform is necessary if Russia is to obtain the military that it requires. He urges that Russia rethink its defense requirements, reduce the number of forces to affordable levels, reconsider the balance among the services, reconfigure the way that it acquires military manpower, recalculate its weapons acquisition needs, and so on. As he put it in an essay written in 1997, military reform “includes comprehensive reorganization of troops and formations, defense industries and war mobilization assets, the recruitment system and social security for the military, the division of power and authority among the branches of government on military matters, the financial system for funding defense and security, the organization of the executive branch and MOD itself for implementing defense policy, military buildup (or build-down) and force employment.” As noted above, however, though the need for reform was urgent, the obstacles to reform were considerable. Indeed, Arbatov concluded in 1997 that the Russian military establishment had “remained static in a society that has otherwise changed profoundly.”56 In chapter 4, Arbatov returns to the questions of Russia’s military reform, identifying problems in the Russian debate, suggesting reasons for the failure of reform, considering economic constraints on reform, and pressing for reforms that he still feels are urgently needed.
56
Alexei G. Arbatov, “Military Reform in Russia: Dilemmas, Obstacles, and Prospects,” CSIA Discussion Paper no. 97-01 (Cambridge, MA: Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, September 1997), pp. 4, 1. A later, somewhat revised version of this paper appeared as Alexei G. Arbatov, “Military Reform in Russia: Dilemmas, Obstacles, and Prospects,” International Security, vol. 22, no. 4 (spring 1998), pp. 83–134.
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Russia, Regional Conflict, and the Use of Military Power Beyond the periphery of Russia’s borders, and on the periphery of Russia itself (in Chechnya), various conflicts burn and various perceived challenges to Russia’s security arise. This reality raises a series of immediate policy challenges. How does Moscow view these conflicts? What interests does the Russian government believe are at stake in those situations? What are the implications of these conflicts for Russia’s security policy? What capability does Russia have to intervene militarily and what doctrine of intervention does it employ? And, far from least, what is the record of Russian intervention in these conflicts and what are the consequences and implications of those interventions? In chapter 4, Roy Allison examines Russia, regional conflict, and the use of military power. He notes in particular that the Russian military is poorly suited for the missions that are now regularly asked of it, and he highlights the failure of the Russian military to adapt effectively to the new challenges that it faces. He identifies another paradoxical gap between the obvious need for reform and the failure to undertake reform. The Economics of Defense in Russia The Soviet Union famously possessed the world’s largest and most productive (though not the most technologically advanced) defense industrial complex. It was sometimes said that producing large quantities of military equipment was the only thing that the Soviet system did well. Russia inherited the largest share of that defense industrial base. Hence, it came into possession of an enormous state-owned, state-run, statefunded defense industry that routinely produced vast numbers of tanks, aircraft, guns, and other military equipment that Russia did not need and could not afford. Its defense complex included thousands of workers who were housed, fed, schooled, and otherwise cared for by the enterprises. In the Soviet period, these enterprises were favored institutions blessed with a customer—the Soviet government—that had an insatiable appetite for its products. When the USSR collapsed, the market for defense industrial products collapsed as well. How has the Russian government and defense sector adapted to the new realities of the post-Soviet period? In chapter 5, Vitaly Shlykov examines the defense industrial sector in Russia. He suggests that the extent to which the Soviet Union’s economy was devoted to and deformed by the military sector has not been sufficiently appreciated. He characterizes that situation as the “structural militarization” of the Soviet economy, and explains why the Russian defense
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industrial inheritance has posed and still poses such acute problems. The Russian defense industrial complex has staggered through the past decade by exploiting stockpiles of materials accumulated during the Soviet period and by pursuing arms exports as much as possible. But neither of these approaches is sufficient for the long run, and neither represents an adequate adaption of the defenses industrial complex to new conditions. But here too, Shlykov details the poverty of reform ideas for the defense sector and bemoans the lack of political leadership in moving the defense sector in the direction of needed reforms. At stake is Russia’s ability to arm and modernize its future forces. Nuclear Weapons in Current Russian Policy It was the enormous Soviet nuclear threat that, above all else, haunted Western fears and gripped Western attention. Once the dust had settled after the implosion of the USSR, the world’s largest nuclear arsenal was in Russia’s hands. It represents Moscow’s primary claim to great power status. Furthermore, the economically induced erosion of Russia’s conventional capabilities was so severe that nuclear weapons figure prominently in Russian thinking about providing security for itself. In chapter 6, Rose Gottemoeller discusses the absolute centrality of nuclear weapons in Russia’s military reform debate and shows how nuclear weapons moved to the center of Russian thinking about security even as nuclear issues faded from public view. On the other hand, the great nuclear rivalry with the United States dissipated, and Washington, for its part, grew more concerned about the weaknesses in Russia’s nuclear complex—especially fears of nuclear leakage to terrorists and rogue states—than about the threat posed by the Russian nuclear inventory. This gave rise to unprecedented new forms of nuclear cooperation between the United States and Russia, as the two powers found ways of working together to enhance the safety and security of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union. Meanwhile, in an era when a new political relationship between East and West seemed to promise great new opportunities for nuclear arms control and restraint, the more traditional arms control process played an important role at times but often sputtered and produced surprisingly modest results, while the nuclear postures of the two powers proved surprisingly resistant to major changes. How have nuclear weapons figured in Moscow’s security thinking? What role do they play in Russia’s plans to defend itself? What have been
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the results of U.S.-Russian nuclear cooperation and what possibilities exist for the future? And what role does nuclear arms control play in Moscow’s concept for managing the nuclear balance in the 21st century? These questions are addressed by Rose Gottemoeller in her chapter on nuclear weapons and arms control in Russian security policy. CONCLUSION
It appears that Russia is still in the early stages of a long journey from the military it inherited to a military suitable to Russia’s internal and external realities. The present volume represents a stocktaking of the journey so far—a journey that has been difficult, contentious, politically demanding, and more fruitless than not. We have sought to address important aspects of this experience, looking at the military establishment as it now exists and the reforms that are thought necessary if that establishment is to become an instrument more appropriate to Russia’s needs, more relevant to Russia’s strategic environment, and more compatible with Russia’s constraints. Pavel Baev shows vividly how Russia’s military policy has failed to adapt adequately to Russian’s new realities. Aleksandr Golts portrays a demoralized and dissolute Russian military struggling to create an effective military organization with discontented officers and unhappy, unmotivated recruits. Alexei Arbatov depicts a flawed and unsuccessful reform debate and outlines the reforms that still ought to be pursued if Russia’s military is to move in the right direction. Roy Allison describes the unsuitability of Russia’s existing military forces for effectively addressing Russia’s existing security challenges and puzzles over the failure of the Russian military to adapt despite disappointment and defeat. Vitaly Shlykov conveys how the Soviet Union’s massive defense industrial sector deformed the entire national economy and sketches Russia’s so far inadequate efforts to cope with the ponderous legacy of that sector. And Rose Gottemoeller highlights the centrality of nuclear weapons in Russian security policy and in Russia’s military reform debate, suggesting that Moscow’s nuclear crutch has enabled it to ignore or deny both the extensive deficiencies of and the substantial reforms needed in the Russian military. Thus, though some changes have been made and some progress has been achieved, the conclusion that military reform is imperative seems as inescapable today as it did when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. And yet the paradox associated with military reform in Russia also continues: it is imperative but impossible, inevitable but avoidable, urgent but
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deferrable. While Russia’s military reformers argue passionately that the crisis in Russia’s military is more acute than ever, President Vladimir Putin proclaimed in the fall of 2003 that for the Russian military, “The period of radical reform is over.”57 As indicated repeatedly in the pages that follow, it is precisely this collision between the substantive analysis of military requirements and the politics of security policy in Russia that accounts for much of the dynamic witnessed since the Soviet Union’s demise in 1991—and that ensures that military reform will remain on the agenda in Russia for years to come.
57
Quoted in Zoltan Barany, “Defense Reform, Russian Style: Obstacles, Options, and Opposition,” University of Texas, Austin, February 2004, p. 1.
CHAPTER 1
The Trajectory of the Russian Military: Downsizing, Degeneration, and Defeat PAVEL K. B AEV
S
ince the end of the Cold War, the Russian military has deteriorated so badly that instead of providing security it has become a major source of insecurity for the state it is supposed to protect. The demilitarization of the Russian state during the 1990s was as drastic as it was debilitating: the massive military machine inherited from the Soviet Union was reduced by a factor of three in terms of the numerical strength of the army and by at least a factor of ten in terms of share of gross domestic product (GDP) allocated to defense.1 This radical demilitarization went forward without any clear plan or understanding of Russia’s optimal military capabilities and without sufficient government control or supervision.2 Rather, the political leadership frequently used (and abused) the military for its own purposes. As a result, Russia’s armed forces have suffered huge losses of prestige and self-esteem. With the assumption of Vladimir Putin to the presidency on December 31, 1999, the military’s situation started to change, although not The author is grateful to Barry Posen, as well as to Robert Legvold, Michael Orr, and Brian Taylor for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 1
Figures on the strength of the Soviet army and share of GDP allocated to defense are rough estimates. Vitaly Shlykov provides a useful estimate of the militarization of the Soviet economy in his chapter in this volume. 2 For a balanced analysis of Russia’s military posture in the mid-1990s, see Roy Allison, “The Russian Armed Forces: Structures, Roles, and Policies,” in Vladimir Baranovsky, ed., Russia and Europe: The Emerging Security Agenda (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Stockholm International Peace and Research Institute, 1997), pp. 164–195. T H E R U S S I A N M I L I TA RY
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with the speed and determination that will ultimately be required.3 From the beginning, the new president was aware of the need to rebuild the armed forces into a reliable instrument of power. In this regard, the second war in Chechnya helped not only to secure his election but also to boost morale in, and societal support for, the military. Shortly after taking office, Putin increased military funding. The Kursk submarine disaster in August 2000, however, was a stark reminder that the military’s structural problems cannot be resolved merely by pumping more money into the defense bureaucracy. Putin’s first term began with the adoption of a new national security concept and a new military doctrine, both of which were meant to provide guidelines for developing Russia’s military structures.4 Not content with the minimalist goal of arresting the degeneration of the armed forces, Putin declared his intention to restore the country’s combat capability and to push for military modernization by reengaging the domestic industrial base. In so doing, the president hoped to reestablish the military’s reputation. To assist him in this ambitious endeavor, he appointed his most trusted adviser, Sergei Ivanov, as minister of defense and called for the full cooperation of the battle-hardened “Chechen generals” in the General Staff. At the end of Putin’s first term, the lack of results was, to say the least, disheartening. Conditions within the armed forces continued to deteriorate, and the lack of security remained a huge concern. Indeed, military reform and revitalization are probably the two areas where Putin has had the least success while encountering the greatest challenges to his 3
For a thorough analysis of Russia’s military posture at the start of the Putin era, see Stephen J. Cimbala, ed., The Russian Military into the Twenty-first Century (London: Frank Cass, 2002). On Putin’s immediate tasks and the possibilities for reforming Russia’s military structures, see Pavel Baev, “Russian Military: The Best Case,” and “The Worst Case,” both in Marc Galeotti and Ian Synge, eds., Putin’s Russia: Scenarios for 2005 (London: Jane’s Special Report, February 2001), pp. 35–45 and 99–108. 4 The military doctrine and the national security concept, approved in early 2000, saw extensive debate in the pages of Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie. See, for instance, Sergei Sokut, “Doctrine for a Transitional Period,” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, October 22, 1999. For an overview, see Alexei Arbatov, “The Transformation of Russian Military Doctrine: Lessons Learned from Kosovo and Chechnya,” Marshall Center Papers no. 2, July 2000; see also Charles Dick, “Russia’s New Doctrine Takes Dark World View,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, January 2000, pp. 14–19.
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leadership. More significant than the time already lost is the realization that the Russian armed forces are not just resistant to reform but are fundamentally incapable of achieving it.5 This chapter examines the decision making involved in the effort to rebuild the Russian armed forces. It argues that the shallowness of military thinking and the inflexibility of Russia’s military structures, particularly at the top, are responsible for the lack of success thus far. But these are not the only factors. Other factors include the civilian leadership’s lack of interest in military affairs and their willingness to leave the armed forces to the generals. The chapter weighs the relative importance of these inputs for the absence of military innovation in Russia first under Boris Yeltsin and then under Vladimir Putin. The chapter divides the turbulent post-Soviet era into four periods, each of which began with a watershed event, and then assesses the state of political-military relations during that period as well as the military’s performance (see table 2.1). The chapter also seeks to explain why the Russian armed forces have failed to adapt to their new reality, despite the continuing deterioration of Soviet-style military structures and the emergence of new challenges—including the pressing need to modernize. It concludes with a brief discussion of possibilities for upgrading and “Europeanizing” the Russian armed forces at the start of Putin’s second term. EARLY CHAOS AND MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
It is impossible to know whether the Soviet Union could have found a way to avoid collapse. What is clear is that the fatal blow was struck with the failed coup of August 19–21, 1991, for which many would hold the military responsible.6 The military’s lingering guilt about its involvement 5
See Vadim Solovev, “It’s Easier to Build a New Army Than to Reform the Existing One,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, September 12, 2002. The obvious analogy is with military reform under Peter the Great, who abandoned the streltsi (traditional forces) and created the potyeshny (token) regiments. Although this analogy may seem interesting, it is misleading because the former was a professional Praetorian-type organization that was disbanded in favor of a “European” army raised through the brutally enforced drafting of peasant slaves. 6 According to one reexamination, the role of Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov in this regard was crucial: “If we had to name the single person whose actions did most to doom the coup to failure, it would be, ironically, Yazov.” See Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski, The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2001), p. 211.
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TABLE 2.1
Four Periods in the Transformation of the Russian Military Tasks for the Military
Time Frame
Watershed
Political Context
Major Crisis
August 1991– December 1993
Military coup
Consolidation of Yeltsin’s regime
Confrontation in Moscow
Withdrawals, downsizing, peacemaking
January 1994– September 1996
Parliamentary elections
Yeltsin’s re-election
War in Chechnya
Fighting, peacekeeping
October 1996– September 1999
Peace in Chechnya
Struggle for succession
Financial meltdown
Restructuring, peacekeeping
October 1999– present
Invasion of Chechnya
Consolidation of Putin’s regime
War in Chechnya
Fighting, projecting power
in the coup attempt would influence its responses to Russia’s rapidly changing political environment for years to come. President Yeltsin, who with firm determination sought to bury many of the remnants of the USSR, dismissed its discredited Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, while carefully conveying to the military leadership his intention to preserve the armed forces’ integrated structures.7 Upon assuming office on January 1, 1992, Yeltsin had only limited time to decide what to do with the massive Soviet military machine he had inherited. The new president clearly recognized the need to exercise control over this colossus if he were to win the battles for power ahead.8 Weeks grew into months until, in early May 1992, Yeltsin announced his decision to embrace two of the former Soviet Union’s most powerful institu7
For a penetrating analysis of this final spasm where the military may have been able to prevent the dissolution of the Soviet Union, see William Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). 8 On the dual character of Yeltsin’s personality and the political regime, see Lilia Shevtsova, Yeltsin’s Russia: Myths and Reality (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999).
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tions—the ministry of defense and the General Staff—rather than create a new, civilian-controlled system of military command.9 Yeltsin’s decision, however, did not prevent him from reshuffling the top brass. His newly appointed defense minister, Pavel Grachev, a former paratrooper with little respect for bureaucratic order, completely altered the composition of the leadership. This action, however, had only a marginal impact on the military’s core interests. As commander in chief, Yeltsin ordered massive cuts in the size of the armed forces, but was careful not to downsize the central military apparatus, which would ultimately evolve into an unwieldy superstructure with huge redundancies. Yeltsin thus missed the best opportunity his government would have to redesign and streamline the post-Soviet military. Instead, he would continue to focus on securing the loyalty of the military elite. Although reassured that its core institutional interests were safe, the high command still had to implement two nonnegotiable presidential orders: (1) to make deep cuts in the force size of every branch of the armed forces, and (2) to accelerate troop withdrawals from East Germany, as well as from several newly created post-Soviet states. Violating every basic postulate of Soviet military doctrine, these orders necessitated the reassessment of Russia’s security threats. In this regard, the military leadership was forced to conceal its obsession with confrontation with the West and to admit that Russia’s main sources of threat were either internal or within the former Soviet space. As a result of this strategic reassessment, the Russian military undertook a sort of “homecoming” that was both a success and a disaster.10 Indeed, there is hardly another peacetime event in the annals of military history that can compare both in scale and in level of self-destructiveness with the massive withdrawal of the Soviet military machine from its western bulwarks and its redeployment deep within Russian territory. At the start of this process in the late 1980s, there was some semblance of a master plan. Russia’s embrace of its Soviet heritage, however, combined with the military’s accelerated withdrawals from Germany—not to mention from the Baltic States and Azerbaijan—would produce a process
9
On details of this missed opportunity, see Pavel Baev, The Russian Army in a Time of Troubles (London: Sage, 1996), particularly chap. 3. 10 See Benjamin S. Lambeth, “Russia’s Wounded Military,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 74, no. 2 (March–April 1995), pp. 86–98.
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verging on chaos. Tank divisions of the first line were hastily squeezed into hundreds of trains, often to be unloaded in the middle of nowhere to wait in vain for logistical support in the building of new bases.11 At the same time, demands were increasing for the removal of Soviet/ Russian strategic nuclear assets from Ukraine and Kazakhstan, not to mention tactical nuclear weapons.12 Amid the chaos, the military leadership showed scant interest in addressing the spectrum of new security threats confronting Russia. As a result, the government’s new military doctrine was little more than a cliché-ridden document with scattered references to emerging challenges.13 Yeltsin’s approval of this doctrine in mid-October 1993 was presented as a reward to the armed forces’ top echelon for passing the crucial test of political loyalty. Earlier that month, the military leadership, perhaps against its better judgment, had ordered tanks onto the streets of Moscow—this time in support of the president.14 From the military’s perspective, the decision to back Yelstin rather than the parliament in the failed putsch represented the lesser of two evils. Despite serious difficulties in identifying with the notion of a “new Russia,” military leaders chose to embrace the presidency as a legitimate institution because Yeltsin at least gave them a sense of mission. They may have also been motivated by a desire to erase memories of the failure of the 1991 coup. In sum, President Yeltsin emerged as the clear winner from Russia’s early, post-Soviet power struggles. Crucially, however, his “smart” poli11
On the plight of the 10th Guard Tank Division, for example, which was redeployed from Magdeburg to the barren steppes of Voronezh Region, see Andrei Kolesnikov, “Tankodrom,” Moskovskie Novosti, September 11–18, 1994. 12 Nikolai Sokov notes that in early April 1992 the Russian government “was in a state of panic,” upon recognizing that “the nuclear arsenal was slipping away from its hands.” See Sokov, Russian Strategic Modernization (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), p. 101. 13 For a thorough analysis of this text, see Charles Dick, “The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, special report, January 1994. See also Vladislav Chernov, “Significance of the Russian Military Doctrine,” Comparative Strategy, vol. 13, no. 2 (1994), pp. 161–166. 14 For a remarkably accurate assessment of the role of the military in the putsch, see Brian Taylor, “Russian Civil-Military Relations after the October Uprising,” Survival, vol. 36, no. 1 (Spring 1994), pp. 3–29; for broader political context, see Michael McFaul, Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), particularly chap. 5.
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tics of keeping the military on his side established a pattern of nonleadership that has only exacerbated the decline of Russia’s military structures. SLIDING INTO THE FIRST CHECHEN WAR
The military leadership’s decision to support Yeltsin in October 1993 led many analysts to conclude that the armed forces would play a central role in the political arena.15 The president, though, did not share this assessment, for two reasons: (1) the doubts shown by the military brass when coming to his rescue during the putsch, and (2) the weak performance of pro-government and pro-reform parties in the December 1993 parliamentary elections. In the political battles to come, Yeltsin believed that he would need more reliable instruments of power than just the Russian military. This thinking became evident in early 1994 with the president’s decision to significantly reduce all military expenditures in the state budget and increase funding for agencies that controlled various paramilitary forces, including the Federal Counterintelligence Service, the ministry of emergencies, and the Federal Communication Agency (FAPSI).16 The idea of strengthening these “armed bureaucracies” had its origins in 1992, but was only institutionalized after Yeltsin conferred with Aleksandr Korzhakov, head of the presidential security service, on a wide range of new responsibilities.17 Meanwhile, the high command complained in vain as it tried to advance proposals on who should take over the border service and assume control over some elements of the interior troops. Although the General Staff’s concerns about the growth of about a dozen “other armies” were sound,18 it would nonetheless have to com15
See, for instance, Stephen Foe, “Civilian and Military Leaders in Russia’s New Political Arena,” RFE/RL Research Report, April 15, 1994, pp. 1–6. 16 For an overview of these so-called power structures, see Marc Galeotti, “Policing Russia,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, special report no. 15 (September 1997); and Marc Galeotti, “Heirs of the KGB: Russia’s Intelligence and Security Services,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, special report no. 19 (July 1998). 17 On Korzhakov’s evolution from Yeltsin’s bodyguard to “gray cardinal,” see Sergei Parkhomenko, “Merlin’s Tower,” Moscow News, April 28–May 4, 1995. 18 Chief of the General Staff Mikhail Kolesnikov first advanced the proposal to take overall control of all Russian armed formations at a meeting of the Duma Defense Committee in mid-1994. See Alexander Rahr, “Russia’s Five Armies,” RFE/RL News Brief, no. 22, May 25, 1994; the proposal would be reiterated
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pete with them for resources and influence, largely because of the military’s inability to provide security for the regime. Besides being outmaneuvered in such bureaucratic intrigues, the military brass seemed unable or unwilling to tackle Russia’s broad spectrum of internal security threats. To increase its influence, the military leadership sought to expand the definition of “internal threats” to include conflicts in the former Soviet space. As a result, the first half of 1994 saw a sharp rise in “diplomatic” activity by Defense Minister Grachev, who one week would be negotiating a cease-fire in Nagorno Karabakh (insisting, with little success, on a Russian-led peacekeeping operation) and another week was pressuring Latvia to extend Russian troop withdrawal deadlines. Grachev’s enthusiastic, if somewhat amateurish, attempts at “power projection” built on the reasonably positive results of several ad hoc “peace operations” launched by Russia in mid-1992 from Transdniestria to Tajikistan.19 Supporting Grachev’s “shuttle diplomacy” were two mechanized infantry divisions that had been designated as peacekeeping units. Meanwhile, blueprints for the creation of mobile forces were hastily drawn up.20 These activities reflected more than the personal ambitions of Defense Minister Grachev, whose job qualifications had always been questionable. They also indirectly reflected significant shifts in the military’s perception of its core mission. Although in many ways resembling a “bureaucratic preserve” of the USSR, the ministry of defense and the General Staff were not completely insensitive to the potential danger of proliferating “small wars,” and thus made some changes to reflect this growing awareness. The resulting new culture was a peculiar mix of old bureaucratic ways and new war-fighting skills, of deadly corridor intrigues and battlefield maneuvering, of a high respect for paperwork and low respect for human life.21 on numerous occasions. For a discussion at the start of Putin’s presidency, see Mikhail Khodarenok, “Time to Collect Stones,” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, January 31, 2001. 19 For an analysis of these initiatives and operations, see Pavel Baev, “Russia’s Experiments and Experience in Conflict Management and Peacekeeping,” International Peacekeeping, vol. 1, no. 3 (autumn 1994), pp. 245–260. 20 For more on the creation of mobile forces, see Robert Hall, “Russia’s Mobile Forces—Rationale and Structure,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, April 1993, pp. 154–155; for more recent analysis, see Roy Allison’s chapter in this volume. 21 For a more detailed examination, see Pavel Baev, “The Plight of the Russian Military: Shallow Identity and Self-defeating Culture,” Armed Forces & Society, vol. 29, no. 1 (fall 2002), pp. 129–146.
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An event that powerfully reinforced this culture was the first Chechen war, launched in December 1994. The failure of the Russian military to defeat the Chechen separatists only strengthened its self-protection impulses. The lack of support among the Russian people for the Chechen mission left the military feeling betrayed and ostracized. The high command, which had initially been less than enthusiastic about sending troops to Chechnya, assumed that the deployment would be just another “peace operation.” It was therefore caught completely unprepared for the fierce resistance that Russian troops encountered in Grozny, the Chechen capital. One of the few sound ideas that Defense Minister Grachev had tried to advance prior to the war was the need to transform the North Caucasus into a frontline military district that could shield Russia against rising instability in the region. However, most of the units redeployed there (e.g., the 7th Airborne Division transferred from Kaunas, Lithuania, to Novorossiisk, Russia) had already lost much of their combat capability. Hence, the start of the first Chechen war witnessed the Russian military’s desperate efforts to cobble together battalions that ultimately proved incapable of putting down the insurgency.22 The beginning of the first Chechen war brought to an immediate end all experiments with restructuring the armed forces (and buried the idea of creating mobile forces) because Russia needed to mobilize all of its strategic reserves to sustain the fighting in Chechnya. Yet as debilitating as the conflict was in the midterm, it had the short-term effect of forcing the Russian army to close ranks.23 At the same time, in an effort to shore up his re-election chances, President Yeltsin promised an end to universal conscription by the year 2000. Surprisingly, neither the Chechen war nor the urgent need for military reform was a major issue in the 1996 presidential election. The specter of a communist revanche overshadowed the campaign. Yeltsin proclaimed “victory” in Chechnya while securing a real ballot-box win in the general election. The notion of military reform, initially postponed to ensure the 22
See Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), chap. 3; see also Baev, The Russian Army in a Time of Troubles, chap. 6. 23 I identified this effect in Pavel Baev, “Military Aspects of Regionalism,” in Graeme P. Herd and Anne Aldis, eds., Russian Regions and Regionalism: Strength through Weakness (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp. 120–137, particularly p. 124.
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top brass’s loyalty and then further postponed by the Chechen war, lost credibility. Meanwhile, the military’s troubles continued to escalate. HALF-HEARTED REFORMS AMID BYZANTINE INTRIGUE AND MELTDOWN
Russia’s peace agreement with Chechnya, signed in September 1996, was devastating confirmation of the total defeat of the Russian military. The Kremlin replaced the leadership of the “power structures” (including Korzhakov and Grachev) and gave its new charismatic and decisive “security czar,” Aleksandr Lebed, a free hand to tackle the most urgent problems. Lebed’s moment of glory, however, proved remarkably brief. After his abrupt departure in mid-October 1997, the military, under a new defense minister, Gen. Igor Rodionov, began a reassessment of its institutional interests.24 The military’s defeat in Chechnya should have provided a powerful catalyst for self-evaluation and improvement. It is therefore incredible how little intellectual energy and organizational effort the high command channeled into drawing lessons from this experience. Perhaps it feared exposure of its own incompetence: indeed, it was much more convenient simply to play up the notion of “political betrayal” than to acknowledge defeat.25 It is also possible that General Rodionov, believing that he had only outdated Soviet models to draw on, chose to recycle old arguments about confrontation with the West rather than develop any truly innovative ideas of his own. Rodionov would not have dared take this direction in the absence of a permissive political environment, which the first round of NATO enlargement conveniently supplied. For Yeltsin’s followers, it is possible to argue that the ailing president, while still a “committed integrationist,” was “forced to retreat rhetorically” to accommodate a shift in public opinion.26 The military brass, however, sought to exploit the 24
See Benjamin S. Lambeth, The Warrior Who Would Rule Russia: A Profile of Aleksandr Lebed (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1997). 25 For an investigation of this psychological phenomenon on the eve of the second war, see “Chechnya and the Posture of the Russian Army,” Voenny Vestnik, no. 6 (Moscow: MFIT, October 1999), http://www.mfit.ru/defensive/ vestnik/vestnik6_1.html. 26 See Coit D. Blacker, “Russia and the West,” in Michael Mandelbaum, ed.,
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opportunity presented by this rhetorical retreat. Rodionov was not an ideological hawk: his main objective was to promote a program for rebuilding Russia’s conventional forces, citing the threat of NATO expansion to buttress his position. This approach allowed him to sidestep turf wars with other “armed bureaucracies” where, with few allies in the Kremlin, he had little chance of success. Rodionov’s program targeted many of the army’s problems, but it had one serious shortcoming: it required massive funding, which was simply unrealistic given the state’s depleted coffers. After being skillfully undermined, Rodionov was replaced by the considerably savvier Air Marshal Igor Sergeev.27 Sergeev’s priorities had largely been defined by his remarkably successful career in the strategic missile forces. Biding his time, Russia’s new defense minister watched as Andrei Kokoshin, an academic by training who had written extensively on U.S. national security strategy, advanced his own military reform plan. Earlier, as a deputy to Defense Minister Grachev, Kokoshin had implemented a moderately useful agenda. He was given a real chance to push for the radical modernization of the high command with his surprise appointment as secretary of the powerful Defense Council. Kokoshin made a good start when Yeltsin approved a reform package in mid-1997 that included cuts in force size (particularly in the number of “hollow-shell” divisions [i.e., divisions with only 20–25 percent of the personnel of a regular division]) and some long-discussed restructuring (such as the merger of Russia’s air defense and air force).28 Further progress was stymied, however, by Russia’s financial meltdown in August 1998. The economic downturn that followed created a deep polit-
The New Russian Foreign Policy (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1998), pp. 167–193, at p. 169. 27 Secretary of the Defense Council Yuri Baturin, who played the key role in undermining the ministry of defense, vanished into obscurity after Rodionov’s departure. For an explanation, see Epokha Eltsina [Yeltsin’s epoch] (Moscow: Vagirus, 2001), chap. 10; for Rodionov’s bitter reflections on his abbreviated tenure, see Igor Korotchenko, “Perestroika of the Army Should Be Started with Sergeants,” interview with Igor Rodionov, Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, January 17, 2003. 28 Although I was quoted as characterizing this as a “monumental decision” (see Michael Specter, “Russia’s Military: Hungry, Angry, and Broke,” International Herald Tribune, July 29, 1997), it was the far-reaching plans for optimizing the military machine that I really had in mind.
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ical crisis in which Kokoshin made some unfortunate tactical choices.29 Kokoshin’s subsequent departure paved the way for Sergeev to promote his vision for reshaping the ministry of defense. Sergeev’s priority was to build up Russia’s strategic deterrent capability and consolidate the strategic nuclear forces under one command. The plan had many shortcomings but was nevertheless deemed feasible, provided that the country’s scare resources (which were effectively halved by the collapse of the ruble in August 1998) were tightly concentrated. To make his case, Sergeev turned again to NATO-centered threat assessments. The start of NATO’s bombing campaign against Serbia in March 1999, which unleashed a storm of anti-Western rhetoric in Moscow (including a presidential reference to a “third world war”), provided Sergeev with a perfect opportunity to promote his plan.30 NATO’s actions, however, also revealed the shocking inadequacy of Russia’s overall military posture— and that inevitably meant the scrapping of Sergeev’s ambitious agenda. Sergeev’s plan had two basic problems. First, strategic “muscle” was of no use in a world of growing unconventional security challenges. Second, and more serious, Sergeev did not have enough time or perhaps courage to advance the crucial second part of his plan: downsizing and modernizing Russia’s conventional forces, which would have necessarily involved a head-on confrontation with the General Staff.31 Given their many overlapping functions, the two behemoths of the high command— the ministry of defense and the General Staff—were often at loggerheads. This time, however, there was a new factor: a clash of cultures. Sergeev’s defense ministry, richly populated with “missile men,” had little interest in small wars or peace operations, and above all embraced the military’s bureaucratic values.32 The General Staff, headed by a seasoned veteran of the Chechen war, Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, attracted “warriors” deter29
On Kokoshin’s influence on Russian military thinking, see Jacob W. Kipp, Forecasting Future War: Andrei Kokoshin: Scholar and Bureaucrat (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office, 1998), http://call.army.mil/fmso/fmsopubs/issues/kokoshin.htm. 30 At a special meeting on April 29, 1998, the Security Council approved three secret decrees on increasing Russia’s nuclear buildup; one of those allegedly prescribed development of new tactical nuclear weapons. See Sergei Sokut, “Russia’s Priority State Interest,” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, May 7, 1999. 31 For a sympathetic view on Sergeev’s uphill battles, see Aleksandr Golts, “The Last Chance of a Technocrat,” Itogi, July 28, 2000. 32 Much of the experience gained in conducting “peace operations” in various
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mined to rebuild Russia’s conventional forces and was seemingly uninterested in modernizing the armed forces.33 Another challenge in the second half of the 1990s was the phenomenon of creeping regionalism, which, spurred by Russia’s defeat in Chechnya, eliminated the centralizing impulse the war had created. Fueled by both a lack of funds and a lack of attention from the ministry of defense, the trend toward regionalism involved the growing dependence of military units on supplies provided by regional political authorities.34 Although still limited, the trend symbolized the “uncontrolled and seemingly uncontrollable unraveling of central power,” which in August 1998 appeared to be leading the country toward collapse.35 Yet the crisis also generated new reintegrative impulses, particularly among political elites who recognized the clear and present danger of yet another state meltdown. Overall, the “peaceful pause” in Yeltsin’s second term represented a lost opportunity for deep, structural military reform. The Russian military failed to innovate not merely because of the lack of a coherent doctrine or clear objective, or only because of bureaucratic inertia. The lack of government funding should have pushed the military toward becoming more innovative, but it did not. As the political leadership became increasingly preoccupied with concerns of succession, the military high command vowed to preserve the country’s traditional focus on the West as the principal enemy. At this point, deeply held beliefs and vested interests developed their own synergy. The military leadership showed only a limited ability to learn from both its humiliating defeats and its propensity for internal quarreling during a period when political leadership was nowhere to be found. At the same time, however, Russian society seemed to display a new readiness to invest in the reinvigoration of the armed forces. formats from 1992 to 1994 was lost when Deputy Defense Minister Georgiy Kondratyev resigned in early 1995 to protest the invasion of Chechnya. For more on this, see Roy Allison’s chapter in this volume. 33 For a positive angle on Kvashnin’s job performance, see Mikhail Khodarenok, “By No Means a Saboteur,” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, March 22, 2002. 34 As Martin Nicholson pointed out: “The penury of the armed forces has made local commanders increasingly dependent on regional elites for pay, food and housing.” See Nicholson, Towards a Russia of Regions, Adelphi Paper no. 330 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1999), p. 67. 35 See Gail Lapidus, “State Building and State Breakdown in Russia,” in Archie Brown, ed., Contemporary Russian Politics: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 348–354, at p. 350.
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THE MARCH AWAY FROM REFORM
Vladimir Putin’s meteoric rise to power is often explained away as a public relations exercise in manipulating a confused citizenry. In reality, however, his ascendancy had everything to do with the well-timed, skillful use of military force. Still, the high expectations of the armed forces and pronounced fears within Russia’s fast-shrinking liberal circles about the remilitarization of the state and society appeared largely unfounded at the end of Putin’s first term. Indeed, surprisingly little was accomplished in revitalizing Russia’s military structures during this period, while the supposed victory in Chechnya evolved into a bloody quagmire. This section begins with an evaluation of Russian threat perceptions. It then examines Putin’s relationship with the military leadership, followed by a review of some new features in Russian force deployments and power projection capabilities. Doctrinal Dead Ends and False Threat Assessments Putin’s first years in the Kremlin witnessed a serious reevaluation of security threats to the Russian Federation and a proliferation of goal-setting documents—with remarkably little relationship between the two. In laying out his objectives, Putin carefully built on existing doctrinal statements, including the National Security Concept of 1997.36 However, neither the military doctrine, nor the national security concept, nor any of the follow-up position papers (including the Naval Doctrine of May 2001) offered a constructive analysis of the revolutionary shifts in Russia’s security environment. As such, they could not provide useful guidelines for retooling the country’s military organization. Indeed, the disconnect between the perceived (and elaborately described) role of the military and Russia’s real defense posture was nothing short of surreal. The military’s upper echelon apparently preferred to live in its own fantasy world rather than engage in difficult debates about the future of the armed forces. This escapist tendency might have been relegated to the annals of political psychoanalysis if the damage to the integrity of Russia’s military structures had not been so great. 36
For an insightful examination of the 1997 National Security Concept, see Raymond Aron, “The Foreign Policy Doctrine of Postcommunist Russia and Its Domestic Context,” in Mandelbaum, The New Russian Foreign Policy, pp. 23–63.
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The failings of these doctrinal statements are particularly glaring with regard to the prioritization of security threats and challenges that, in principle, should have provided the foundation for formulating requirements for the military’s mission. Many analysts have observed that it was in this respect that the Soviet character of the new doctrinal statements was especially apparent, not because of textual similarities (the USSR never had a formal military doctrine until 1987, when Gorbachev decided that one was needed) but because of their references to a “besieged fortress” that had to rely on the military for survival.37 There is more to the longevity of this perverse worldview than the inherent conservatism of military thinking or the tendency to focus on worst-case scenarios; the bottom line is that this was a political decision. Riding high on a wave of “patriotic mobilization,” President Putin initially saw no need to prioritize some branches of the armed forces at the expense of others: to do so would have inevitably alienated particular interests in the military bureaucracy. Responding to a broad range of dangers, risks, and threats, Putin ordered an increase in the military’s budget that reflected awareness of these concerns. If he had any illusions about the military leadership’s ability to distribute the monies fairly, however, the public quarrel between Defense Minister Sergeev and Chief of the General Staff Kvashnin in July and August 2000 quickly dispelled them.38 In an act of insubordination, Kvashnin initiated the clash, arguing that he lacked the resources to sustain the war in Chechnya. The force of this argument was enough to prevent Putin from undertaking any immediate effort to reorganize the military.39 There was thus no way that Putin could avoid setting priorities. As a self-styled pragmatist, the new president drew two conclusions from two indisputable facts: (1) the protracted nature of the war in Chechnya, and 37
Thus, Dick points out: “In Soviet times, a world war was defined as an attempt by international capitalism to extirpate the forces of socialism. Perhaps the new military doctrine contains an equally paranoid echo of this thinking, with a world war being seen in the context of an effort to crush or dismember Russia.” See Dick, “Russia’s New Doctrine Takes Dark World View,” p. 18. 38 On the resonance of this scandal, see Aleksandr Golts and Dmitri Pinsker, “Babylonian Vertical,” Itogi, August 15, 2000. 39 Formally, the chief of the General Staff is subordinate to the minister of defense, and Kvashnin’s open mutiny went far beyond traditional grumbling or disloyalty. See Aleksei Petrov, “No Worse Disaster than Two Heads for an Army,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, July 27, 2000.
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(2) the overwhelming military superiority of the West. Putin’s first conclusion was that Russia’s capabilities for fighting small wars ought to be increased. Second, the possibility of confrontation with the United States and NATO had to be reduced, if not eliminated. For a variety of reasons, Putin found it difficult to act swiftly on the first priority, but he took immediate steps to begin reshaping Russia’s relations with the West.40 He started by canceling all plans for the buildup and integration of the strategic forces, thus sending Sergeev into retirement. In addition, he downplayed alarmist assessments of the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty and declared that the 2002 Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions (nonbinding as it is) would remove strategic deterrence from the international agenda.41 Moscow had apparently interpreted the ratification of this treaty by the U.S. Senate in March 2003 as further evidence of the diminishing importance of strategic arms control in the global arena.42 The terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001, are often portrayed as a turning point in Russia’s relations with the West.43 In fact, they simply opened the way for Putin to declare that confrontation with the United States and NATO no longer made sense and that the time had come to develop a mature partnership. This dramatic shift, in turn, pushed the military into rethinking its mis-
40
For more on these reasons, see Pavel Baev, “The Challenge of ‘Small Wars’ for the Russian Military,” in Roger McDermott and Anne C. Aldis, eds., Russian Military Reform, 1992–2002 (London: Frank Cass, 2003). See also Roy Allison’s chapter in this volume. 41 Alexei Arbatov argued that the cancelation of Sergeev’s plans weakened Russia’s hand in negotiations with the United States. See “Russia-U.S. Summit Would Solve Nothing,” interview with Alexei Arbatov, Nezavisimaya gazeta, February 7, 2002. For a critical evaluation of the U.S. approach, see Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, “One Day Wonder,” American Prospect, August 26, 2002. 42 See Viktor Sokolov, “U.S. Bribes Russia with the Ratification,” Strana.Ru, March 7, 2003, http://www.strana.ru/print/173187.html. Rose Goettmoeller’s chapter in this volume provides an elaborate perspective on this problem. 43 Thus, Dale R. Herspring asserted, “No event has had a greater impact on Putin’s relations with the military than September 11.” See Herspring, “Putin and Military Reform: Some First Hesitant Steps,” Russia and Eurasia Review, September 10, 2002, http://161.58.193.170/pubs/view/rer_001_007_ 001.htm.
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sion and the composition of its future forces.44 The top brass barely had time to absorb the consequences of this new challenge when in October 2002 Chechen terrorists took several hundred hostages captive in a Moscow theater. The crisis ended with the deaths of a large number of the hostages and established beyond doubt that the war in Chechnya would continue to define the key requirements of the Russian armed forces in the years to come. Demanding more than the superficial reformulation of Russia’s national security concept, Putin ordered the sustained concentration of military efforts on countering the threat of terrorism—an order that pushed military thought toward a conceptual dead end.45 As in the early 1990s, the armed forces were once again confronted with a range of tasks for which they had neither the capabilities nor the training—and for which they would always be at a disadvantage compared with Russia’s other “armed bureaucracies.” The only solution from the military’s perspective was to substitute the threat of terrorism with an array of other security threats emanating from the historically unstable South—from Afghanistan to Georgia. A direct corollary would be the military’s shift in strategic focus from lending support to the Federal Security Service (FSB) in its efforts to dismantle terrorist networks to claiming a lead role in projecting military power across the wider Caspian area. This change in focus is not unlike the U.S. strategic reorientation away from destroying al-Qaeda and toward invading and occupying Iraq,46 a strategy frequently associated with U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.47 One major difference, however, is that the U.S. military is 44
Gen. Andrei Nikolaev, head of the Duma Defense Committee until 2004, complained bitterly that the political paradigm “‘Russia has no enemies’ demanded the elimination of the very term ‘war’ from all major documents prepared in the General Staff.” See “Duma’s Plan of the Military Reform,” interview with Andrei Nikoleav, Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, February 8, 2002. 45 Initial efforts to frame the idea of a “counterterrorist war” using existing templates were not very convincing. See, for instance, Leonid Ivashov, “Sliding into a ‘Rebellion-War,’” Nezavisimaya gazeta, November 13, 2002; and Andrei Nikolaev, “We Are in a Terrorist War,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, November 15, 2002. 46 For further elaboration, see Fiona Hill, “Putin and Bush in Common Cause?” Brookings Review, Summer 2002, pp. 33–35. 47 As one commentator pointed out: “Fairly or not, Paul Wolfowitz has become a lightning rod for much of this criticism, and “cry Wolfowitz” has already
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going after an enemy it can deal with. The Russian military leadership, on the other hand, is confronted with a yawning gap between conceptualizing threats from the South and organizing forces to counter them. The Taming of an Entrenched Defense Establishment Demonstrating firm leadership in revising Russia’s threat assessments, President Putin remains much more cautious about pushing the high command to follow his lead. This reticence can probably be explained by his own long career in another vast bureaucracy, the KGB.48 Putin has difficulty understanding that a major part of the problem with transforming the Russian military is the government’s own bloated bureaucracy. At the same time, he has shown awareness of the potential political challenge from the military’s “Chechen quarters.” Campaigning in 1999 largely on a “war ticket,” Putin, though not inviting “warriors” into his inner circle, elevated the role of the General Staff. Given his doubts about the loyalty of the “Chechen generals,” it is not surprising that their relations have been far from cordial.49 Through careful reshuffling, Putin has sought to promote generals who were not involved in Chechnya (such as Commander of the Land Forces Gen. Nikolai Kormiltsev),50 and reassign those who were to positions of lesser political importance.51 Although it is nearly impossible to check the spread of the “warrior culture” within the ranks, Putin has successfully restrained the political ambitions of its key figures to ensure that a charisbecome a catchphrase for the pressing questions about U.S. credibility.” Michael Hirsh, “Neocons on the Line,” Newsweek, June 23, 2003, p. 20. 48 On the impact of the government’s bureaucratic culture on Putin’s leadership style, see Dale R. Herspring, “Who Is Vladimir Putin?” Russia and Eurasia Review, November 5, 2002, http://161.58.193.170/pubs/view/rer_001_ 011_001.htm. 49 For more on these mutual suspicions, see Pavel Baev, “Putin’s Court: How the Military Fit In,” PONARS Policy Memo no. 153 (Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, December 2000). 50 Kormiltsev was awarded the rank of army general in June 2003; characteristically, very few of the 97 officers who were promoted to general at this annual event had served in Chechnya. See “Russia Has More Generals,” Grani.Ru, June 12, 2003, http://www.grani.ru/War/p.35237.html. 51 The public scandal around the removal of Gen. Gennady Troshev in late 2002 showed the limited usefulness of this cadre policy. See Vladimir Temny, “Terrarium of Comrades in Arms,” Grani.Ru, December 19, 2002, http://www.grani.ru/War/m.17475.html.
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matic leader does not emerge as a possible challenger. His actions, however, have further eroded the loyalty of the military leadership and contributed to the visible estrangement of the top brass from their commander in chief. Recognizing this problem, Putin has sought to neutralize at least some of its more corrosive effects—for example by installing Sergei Ivanov, his most trusted adviser, as minister of defense in March 2001 (even at the expense of weakening the coordinating role of the Security Council). The president, however, has not given Ivanov a mandate to radically reshape the structure of the military leadership; thus, the defense minister’s duties have primarily involved overseeing the implementation of the military’s budget as well as maintaining extensive foreign engagements. Ivanov has achieved significant improvements in streamlining the flow of money within the military machine, but to the disappointment of career military bureaucrats, he has been unable to exploit his ties to Putin to secure increases in military funding.52 Ivanov has found himself increasingly isolated within his own bureaucracy, outmaneuvered on every important issue by the maverick Chief of the General Staff Kvashnin.53 Behind these petty cabinet intrigues is the larger question of who controls power in Putin’s regime. The president’s reluctance to antagonize the military establishment does not explain the lack of serious effort at downsizing and rationalizing the redundant superstructures of the high command. The deadlock in Chechnya should have increased the urgency of such efforts, but it may also contain a clue as to why this has not happened. Although Putin relies on the “power structures” as the conduit of his policies and as the main source of his power, he has reasons to fear their becoming too strong and possibly making him hostage to their parochial interests. The president may have more confidence in the FSB, placing other “armed bureaucracies” under its supervision; he clearly does not want to deal with a well-organized military united by a proactive “warrior culture.”54 Evaluated from this perspective, Chechnya becomes less of a 52
Indeed, in the major battles around the 2003 budget, the argument for increasing the military’s share was hardly heard. For incisive commentary, see Yuliya Latynina, “Black Hole in the Third Reading,” Novaya gazeta, November 25, 2002. 53 On Ivanov’s limited clout, see Mikhail Khodarenok, “Grachev’s Effect,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, August 22, 2001. 54 Putin’s sudden reshuffling of the “power structures” in March 2003 has
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political liability and more of a useful instrument in Putin’s efforts to increase his control over, and reduce his dependence on, the “power structures.”55 It allows Putin to decide whom to finger as a scapegoat following an ambush or terrorist attack and whether to punish or spare officials in the military-bureaucratic pyramid, so long as the responsibility for the Chechen debacle remains squarely on the shoulders of the military, the ministry of interior, and indeed the FSB. In sum, Putin’s record of reshuffling rather than restructuring the military’s top echelon during his first term suggests a preference for neutralizing potential political challenges rather than preparing to defend Russia’s interests against emerging security challenges. Regionalization and Reorientation toward the South As a believer in centralized control, President Putin worried from the start about the weakening effects of unchecked regionalism on the Russian state. Responding to this concern, he launched an ambitious program of recentralization based on the strengthening of bureaucratic controls. The consolidation of Russia’s military structures was an important element of this program. In addition, while Putin understood that he could initially count on the mobilizing effect of the second Chechen war, he also knew that this alone would not be enough. He therefore undertook a series of coordinated organizational measures to reinforce his advantage. In May 2000, Putin announced the creation of a new “layer” of power between the federal center and the 89 “subjects” of the federation consisting of seven administrative “super-regions.”56 The centerpiece of mainly strengthened the FSB “empire” (which once again includes the border service and the FAPSI); it has not helped the military leadership in strengthening its influence. See Ilya Bulavinov, “Power Play,” Kommersant, March 12, 2003. On the bureaucratic logic of these changes and the risks involved, see Mark Kramer, “Oversight of Russia’s Intelligence and Security Agencies: The Need for and Prospects of Democratic Control,” PONARS Policy Memo no. 281 (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, December 2002). 55 I initially made this argument in Pavel Baev, “A Useful War?” Russia and Eurasia Review, December 17, 2002, http://161.58.193.170/pubs/ view/rer_001_014_001.htm; and elaborated it further in Pavel Baev, “Examining the ‘Terrorism-War’ Dichotomy in the ‘Russia-Chechnya’ Case,” Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 24, no. 2 (August 2003), pp. 29–46. 56 For a penetrating analysis, see Nikolai Petrov, “Seven Faces of Putin’s Russia,” Security Dialogue, vol. 33, no. 1 (March 2002), pp. 73–91.
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the initiative was the integration of the activities of all of the “power structures”—from law enforcement to the military—under the supervision of seven plenipotentiary presidential envoys.57 The seven districts of the interior troops were chosen as the basis for constructing the superregions. All other “armed bureaucracies” (with the significant exception of the FSB) were to reconfigure their organizational structures accordingly. Of particular importance for the armed forces was a proposal to integrate their rear services with those of the interior troops. This would offer starving military units an opportunity to improve their access to supplies, thus loosening their dependence on local authorities.58 Advertised by Putin as “consolidating and cementing the Russian state,” the plan nevertheless quickly ran into a number of organizational roadblocks.59 The offices of the presidential envoys were successfully established and staffed, but the difficulties of integrating the work of the entrenched bureaucracies were much greater than the designers had envisaged. The plan’s fundamental weakness, however, was the envoys’ inability to control the distribution of resources, so that their only true source of power was access to the president—uncertain as that could be. The ministry of interior successfully sabotaged the proposal for integrating the rear services, while the “harmonization” of various administrative processes faced its own hurdles.60 The military leadership, seeing few benefits in subordinating its activities to the presidential envoys, followed through with their plan in September 2001 to merge the Volga and Urals Military Districts, an obvious challenge to the seven-units design. Overall, by the end of Putin’s first term, the new structure had begun to show signs of bureaucratic redundancy. Meanwhile, concerns about the center’s ability to control regional developments acquired new urgency.61 57
For an early assessment, see Andrei Korbut, “The Kremlin Unites Powermen in the Regions,” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, May 19, 2000; and Aleksandr Golts, “Seven Jokers in One Pack,” Itogi, May 26, 2000. 58 See “Troops Are Strong through Their Magazines,” interview with Gen. Vladimir Isakov, chief of the rear of the armed forces, Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, March 2, 2001. 59 As quoted in Marina Volkova, “The Kremlin Wants to Transform the State,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, May 19, 2000. 60 For an informed overview, see Nikolai Petrov, “The MVD & FSB Vertical: Cadre Decide Everything,” Politcom.Ru, October 2, 2002, http://www. politcom.ru/2002/aaa_p_vz413.php. 61 Analyzing persistent attempts by the Kremlin to create the impression of strict
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Today, questions regarding the rationale of Russia’s military deployments are increasingly being raised. Whatever the muddle of doctrinal guidelines, the small group of security experts who advise Putin have, from the start, believed that Russia would confront a range of security threats from the South—from Chechnya to the broader Caspian area— with its explosive combination of state rivalries, oil riches, and terrorism.62 To address these threats, the military would have to position troops closer to potential theaters of operation, while other forces (serving as a strategic reserve) would need to be made more mobile. Neither of these requirements, however, has been met. The merger of the Volga and Urals Military Districts made some sense in orienting the new headquarters toward Central Asia, but it did nothing to strengthen the military’s assets. Thus, the 201st Division on permanent deployment in Tajikistan increasingly looks more like a “lost legion,” while Moscow’s attempts to buttress Russia’s military presence in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan since late 2001 (in the context of the U.S. military operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan) have been neither impressive nor logistically sustainable.63 And despite their denotation, airborne divisions and brigades concentrated around Moscow (Tula, Ryazan, and Pskov) would require weeks to be transported by rail to the Caspian region.64 In the summer of 2002, on Putin’s direct orders Russia conducted military exercises in the Caspian Sea. The show of force, however, hardly impressed Russia’s southern neighbors, which had already had direct exposure to U.S. military deployments in the region.65 A crucial test control, Stephen Holmes advanced the proposition that Putin “is aiming to conjure real power in the future by fabricating the illusion of power now.” See Holmes, “Simulations of Power in Putin’s Russia,” in Andrew C. Kuchins, ed., Russia after the Fall (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002), pp. 79–89, at p. 84. 62 For an examination of that set of perceptions, see Pavel Baev, “Russia’s Policies in the Southern Caucasus and the Caspian Area,” European Security, vol. 10, no. 2 (summer 2001), pp. 95–110. 63 In the end, only one composite squadron of tactical aviation has been deployed to Kant, nearby Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. See Sergei Sokut, “We Will Deter Terrorists from Bishkek,” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, December 6, 2002. 64 On the degradation of the airborne troops, see Mikhail Timofeev, “VDV—No Change Yet,” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, April 5, 2002. 65 For an account of the maneuvers, see Sergei Sokut, “The Military Returns to the Caspian,” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, August 18, 2002; on the reaction in the region, see Roger McDermott with Alex Vatanka and Pavel Baev,
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occurred in September 2002, when a sharp escalation in tensions between Russia and Georgia provoked Moscow to threaten to launch a swift military operation in the Pankisi Gorge. The Russian high command had to admit, however, that aside from punishing air strikes, it had few forces available for such a campaign.66 The irreducible strategic fact is that the war in Chechnya, while underscoring Russia’s need to strategically position forces toward the Caucasus and Central Asia, drastically reduces its ability to do so. In conclusion, Putin’s first term saw a steady rise in instability south of Russia’s borders, culminating in the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The strategic deployment of the Russian armed forces, however, did not reflect this new reality. Although the risks of military regionalism have been checked, its root causes have not.67 At the same time, interservice rivalries and the General Staff’s barely concealed hostility toward any suggestions at restructuring the military have taken a heavy toll on combat readiness. Meanwhile, Russia’s military infrastructure has become so badly compromised that basic principles such as flexibility and interoperability have become essentially meaningless. DIALECTICS OF SELF-PRESERVATION AND INNOVATION
The primary reason for the degeneration of the Russian armed forces since the early the 1990s has been the absence of innovative drive within the military itself. Although universally accepted that the military is among any state’s most conservative social systems, it is not devoid of a “Central Asian States: Split Loyalties,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, October 16, 2002, pp. 82–90. 66 Moscow then had to cut short its well-orchestrated propaganda campaign and accept a face-saving compromise. See Mikhail Khodarenok, “Threaten and Forget,” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, October 4, 2002; and Grigory Yavlinsky, “This Could Prove a Costly Escapade,” Moscow Times, September 23, 2002. 67 My research into the risks of disintegration (see, for instance, Pavel Baev, Russia in 2015: Could the Former Super-Power Turn into a Battle-Ground? IFS Info 3/02 [Oslo: Institutt for forsvarsstudier, March 2002]) has generated a peculiar resonance in the far-right segment of the Russian media. One commentator found in it “undisguised preparation for aggression” (see Vyacheslav Tetekin, “With a Hidden Stone,” Sovetskaya Rossiya, September 3, 2002), while an analytical group asserted that “such information attacks on such a level never happen by chance” (see NAMAKON, “On the Offensive Positions,” Zavtra, March 2, 2003).
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desire for self-preservation. It should therefore be capable of upgrading its key structures when its existence is at stake. Why then has the Russian military failed so consistently to generate ideas about ways to reinvent itself to fit a vastly changed environment? The simplest answer, according to many in the armed forces, is Russia’s lack of resources. Convincing as this answer may initially seem, it does not explain the military’s inability to optimize the use of available assets. Indeed, successive finance ministers have cut short the military brass’s desperate pleas for more funding with one simple question: Where will the money go? Thus far military leaders have failed to provide an adequate response. Not surprisingly, then, in the fierce battles around the 2003 budget, the military was again put last among the government’s “power structures.”68 The Russian military is not the only such organization slow to adapt to post–Cold War realities. The German Bundeswehr, for example, despite significant downsizing and profound soul-searching on whether to integrate parts of the former East German Volksarmee, has essentially remained a heavy, low-mobility force best suited to countering the tank corps of the long-vanished Group of Soviet Forces in Germany.69 Even the U.S. military, despite its determination to remain on the technological cutting edge, has experienced serious difficulties in reshaping itself to meet new challenges.70 The difference is that key Western powers throughout 68
Thus, in June 2003 the FSB received the largest increase—up to 6 billion additional rubles—for expanding its fight against terrorism, despite the plan to transfer responsibility for Chechnya to the interior ministry; the ministry of defense request was turned down. See “Duma Approves Additional Funds,” Strana.Ru, June 18, 2003, http://www.strana.ru/stories/02/05/29/3045/ 184135.html. 69 Although Germany has made several significant contributions to international peace operations, far-reaching plans for restructuring its military have appeared only in the context of urgent pressure for modernizing NATO and providing substance to the European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy at the start of this decade. See Antonio Missiroli, ed., Enlargement and European Defence after 11 September, Challiot Paper no. 53 (Paris: EU ISS, June 2002). 70 Although it is currently the radical ideas of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that capture the most attention (see, for instance, Evan Thomas and Martha Brant, “The Education of Tommy Franks,” Newsweek, May 19, 2003, pp. 14–19), serious debates about the trajectory of the U.S. military can be found in Ashton B. Carter and John P. White, eds., Keeping the Edge: Managing Defense for the Future (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).
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the 1990s could afford to be slow in investing in armies of the future; in some cases, and Germany may again be an example, there was even some reluctance within these societies to develop interventionist forces. From the Russian perspective, that slowness was often interpreted as confirmation of the West’s belief that Russia had merely replaced the Soviet Union as the likely target of a future confrontation. This helps to explain why throughout the 1990s Russia’s top military leaders stubbornly clung to their position that NATO was the greatest threat to the homeland. Russia’s experience in a variety of local conflicts since the 1990s, however (in addition to the Soviet Union’s vast and painful experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s), should have disabused them of this notion. The point of departure for any large-scale, innovative effort in a complex military organization is an internal crisis with macropolitical ramifications. Russia is in the midst of such a crisis. In responding to a new threat to the integrity of the state, the political leadership would normally push for the reorganization of the military to ensure its usefulness and dependability. Responding both to this pressure and to the effects of the crisis within its own domain, the military leadership would in turn create a reform team to generate an “innovation impulse.” The team’s work within the high command would then receive support from a wider cohort within the officer corps. Successful innovation requires the convergence of these political “outside-in” and military “inside-out” reform drives. Preventing such convergence in the Russian case has been the divorce between the particular interests of the leadership and the systemic interests of the broader political and military domains. The political leadership, which was primarily concerned with consolidating its own power, considered a reinvigorated, internally coherent military a potential challenge. Meanwhile, the military leadership was primarily concerned with trying to preserve the bloated superstructures of the high command, and thus viewed every reform initiative and effort to channel resources into force modernization as challenges to its privileged position.71 As discussed earlier, this obsession with self-preservation at the expense of force improvements can be traced to Yeltsin’s decision to keep 71
General Kvashnin told the Committee on Defense of the Duma with characteristic bluntness, “It would be unethical to call the on-going transformations in the Armed Forces a military reform.” See “Anatoly Kvashnin on Ethics,” Grani.Ru, February 10, 2003, http://www.grani.ru/War/m.22429.html.
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the Soviet ministry of defense and General Staff intact. The problem today is that only Russia’s “Chechen generals” have the power and position to assist Putin in his efforts to reform the military. Whatever ambitions the president may have about restoring Russia’s grandeur, however, he values loyalty as a sine qua non of support, and these maverick “warriors” would never pass this crucial test. The innovative drive during Putin’s first term was therefore purely symbolic. A BREAKTHROUGH IN THE SECOND TERM?
As Putin and his team settle into a second term, they may feel more confident in their ability to counter any hypothetical challenge from military “opponents,” which in turn could provide an opportunity for launching wide-scale military reform. Given how much time has already been lost to procrastination, however, reform will be meaningful only if it is truly radical. Several initiatives—for example, the conversion of the 76th Pskov Airborne Division into an all-professional unit—that today can only be described as small steps to nowhere might then become useful building blocks in the effort to reform the Russian armed forces. Besides the necessary political conditions, which are too many and too complex to discuss here,72 three key scenarios could determine the level of success or failure of military reform in Russia: (1) the thorough reorganization of the high command; (2) the termination of the war in Chechnya, and (3) the building of a mature partnership with the United States and NATO. Although in many ways different, all three are nevertheless tightly interconnected. The first and perhaps most difficult challenge is the transformation of the Russian high command, which structurally and culturally presents the greatest resistance to military reform. At the end of Putin’s first term, the General Staff may have felt confident in its ability to counter any attempt by the Kremlin to enforce meaningful reform. Its conservatism, however, has long since become a self-destructive force that must be overcome. The General Staff’s inflexibility requires that military reform begin with the radical reorganization of this institution, which is essentially a wellpreserved superstructure from World War II. The most important ele72
For a balanced preview of Putin’s second term, see the final two chapters in Lilia Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003).
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ment in this reorganization would involve the streamlining of the supreme body of the military command to preclude overlap among the high commands of the armed forces, and with the ministry of defense.73 The reorganization of the defense ministry must proceed in parallel; this cumbersome bureaucracy should be converted into a civilian institution with two principal functions: (1) providing guidance to the political leadership on military matters, and (2) developing detailed military budgets. The problems with the war in Chechnya are all too clear: it consumes huge amounts of energy and money and keeps the armed forces under tremendous pressure. Breaking the deadlock would require a bold political initiative, and neither the notion of “Chechenization” currently being explored by the Kremlin nor a return to the lawless status quo ante represents a promising solution.74 Only by ending this self-defeating war is Russia likely to become a full partner in the global antiterrorist coalition. This multidimensional partnership ought to include a broad range of objectives, from countering weapons of mass destruction threats to intercepting the financial flows of terrorists. The key target for the Russian military, however, would probably be Central Asia. As of this writing, Russian officials are pressing the point that the U.S. military presence in the region is “temporary.”75 It would therefore require a serious psychological reorientation for Moscow to recognize U.S. troops as “friendly forces” and work toward increasing their “staying power.”76 Nevertheless, only significant (even if poorly maintained) Russian military assets in the region combined with U.S. capabilities for strategic deployment can prevent broad regional destabilization in the event of a crisis (e.g., the
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For an expert analysis of this problem, see Vitaly Shlykov, “Does Russia Need the General Staff?” Voenny Vestnik, no. 7 (October 2000). 74 For a thoughtful analysis, see Dmitri Trenin and Alexei Malashenko, Russia's Restless Frontier: The Chechnya Factor in Post-Soviet Russia (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004). 75 This point was reiterated at the meeting of the Committee of Secretaries of Security Councils of the Member States of the Collective Security Treaty in Moscow in late March 2003. See Aleksandr Orlov, “SNG and the Iraq Crisis,” GazetaSNG.Ru, March 20, 2003, http://gazetasng.ru/article.php?id=41737. 76 Given that it was Russia that threatened to launch air strikes against the Taliban in autumn 2000, it may appear paradoxical that in early 2003 it was Norwegian, not Russian, troops who performed combat missions against surviving groups of Taliban fighters. See Gunnar Johnsen, “To Historiske Norske Bomber” [Two historic Norwegian bombs], Aftenposten, January 30, 2003.
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spontaneous collapse of the rigid authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan).77 It might be tempting to dismiss the third scenario—the building of a mature partnership with the West—as mere wishful thinking, especially given that the negative fallout from the ongoing Iraq war could be deep and lasting.78 If there are grounds for making this case in practical terms, they have not yet been laid.79 Such a partnership would require a new level of unity within the expanded Western camp: specifically, within a reinvigorated NATO alliance. The bitter split between the United States and “old Europe” (led by France and Germany) that preceded the start of the Iraq war, while bringing much joy to many in Moscow’s “enlightened” political elite,80 did not help to promote Russian partnership with the transatlantic community. However, if NATO remains committed to engagement with Russia, the key to success will be Moscow’s ability to move beyond cultivating links with the alliance to designing joint projects that can make the Russian military a compatible partner. So far, few such projects have been taken up at the Russia-NATO Council, despite the proven usefulness of this format in other areas. The real value of cooperation, however, is in joint operations across the Eurasian “war zone” stretching from Afghanistan to Albania, where violent conflicts aggravated by terrorism will continue to generate challenges to international security. Examples of such operations include Russian participation in UNPROFOR in the Balkans; IFOR/SFOR in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and later KFOR in Kosovo (despite Moscow’s deep reservations about NATO’s role in this endeavor).81 Against the backdrop of 77
For a penetrating analysis, see Martha Brill Olcott, “The War on Terrorism in Central Asia and the Cause of Democratic Reform,” Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, vol. 11, no. 1 (winter 2003), pp. 86–94. A case for Russian-U.S. security cooperation in Central Asia is made in Dmitri Trenin, “Southern Watch,” Journal of International Affairs, vol. 56, no. 2 (spring 2003), pp. 119–131. 78 For a convincing argument for moving beyond damage limitation, see Robert Legvold, “All the Way: Crafting a U.S.-Russian Alliance,” National Interest, winter 2002/03, pp. 21–31. 79 The rationale for this maneuvering is examined in Alexei Arbatov, “The Iraq Crisis: Moment of Truth,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, February 28, 2003; on Russia’s European aspirations, see Dmitri Trenin, “Russia in a ‘Wider Europe,’” Briefing, no. 10 (Moscow: Carnegie Moscow Center, October 2002). 80 See Vitaly Tretyakov, “It Is America’s Funeral,” Rossiiskaya gazeta, March 21, 2003. 81 Detailed analysis of Russia’s military contribution to peacemaking in the
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the Iraqi crisis in early 2003, Moscow decided to discontinue its military involvement in these operations. The official explanation for this decision is rather muddled, but some have pointed to several corruption scandals involving the headquarters responsible for these operations.82 The prospects for joint operations in Eurasian trouble spots increasingly depend on the ability of the Russian military to perform in high-risk situations differently from the pattern established in Chechnya. To participate in emergency deployments on a reasonably equal footing with, for instance, the European Union’s future rapid reaction force, Russia will have to prioritize the buildup of special units with access to compatible equipment and training. While the counterterrorist units of the ministry of interior and the FSB currently enjoy most of the attention, serious and sustained efforts have also been focused on upgrading Russia’s airborne troops. From this perspective, the “professionalization” of the 76th Airborne Division opens some possibilities for engaging NATO in reforming the Russian military.83 While the General Staff has been jealously secretive about this “experiment,” perhaps expecting it to deliver more negative results than positive lessons,84 President Putin obviously anticipates that it will be a success and a first step toward abandoning universal conscription, which has long since lost public support. The Northern Fleet could also benefit greatly from practical cooperation with the United States and NATO. It was the Kursk catastrophe in Balkans can be found in a report entitled Lessons and Conclusions on the Execution of the IFOR Operation, by the members of a joint U.S.-Russian research project of the same name (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office, 1998), http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/fmsopubs/ issues/ifor/toc.htm. 82 See Vadim Solovyev, “Russian Soldiers Are Leaving the Balkans Because Their Commanders Stole from Them,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, January 23, 2003. 83 My understanding of NATO’s readiness to contribute to reforming the Russian military has expanded from discussing an unpublished paper by Christopher Donnelly in which the author argues, “It is in our interests that Russia should have strong and effective armed forces.” Donnelly, NATO special adviser for Central and Eastern European affairs, “Reshaping Russian Armed Forces—Security Requirements and Institutional Responses,” November 28, 2002. 84 Several visits to the Pskov base by parliamentary delegations resulted in accusations that the military leadership had deliberately sabotaged the “experiment.” See Vladimir Temny, “Come Here, Not There,” Grani.Ru, March 11, 2003, http://www.grani.ru/War/m.25514.html.
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August 2000 that, despite all efforts to blame the West, opened President Putin’s eyes to the extraordinary decline of the Russian navy and the massive effort that would be needed to reverse it.85 Putin, however, has done little to check the navy’s continued degeneration, relying instead on superficial demonstrations of military muscle flexing and, in one particularly pathetic display, the raising of the St. Andrew flag on a Russian ship sailing in the Arabian Sea during the first year of the Iraq war.86 The Kola Peninsula, which contains the highest concentration of nuclear weapons, reactors, and fuel in the world, is another area where joint cooperation with the West has been useful—in this case, to help reduce a huge environmental threat. Some steps have already been taken, including the signing of an agreement with NATO on joint search-andrescue submarine operations in spring 2003; however, a greater openness and demonstrated readiness to accept international environmental organizations as partners are required for making serious progress in this area.87 In sum, the prospects for improving military cooperation focused on the radical modernization of the Russian armed forces may appear to fall outside the realm of what is politically desirable and practically feasible in the foreseeable future. However, with so much time lost to expediency, so many resources lost to theft and corruption, and so many lives lost to war, the pattern of cautious advances through incremental steps is producing rapidly diminishing returns. Military reform has been proclaimed over, in favor of self-serving conservatism, yet the problem remains. Russia’s leaders need to find a way to muster the energy to reform the country’s armed forces, starting at the top. Their predecessors’ inability to do so should serve as warning of the price of failure.
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See Pavel Baev, “The Russian Navy after the Kursk: Still Proud but with Poor Navigation,” PONARS Memo no. 215 (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 2002). 86 On the hectic efforts to prepare a naval squadron for deployment in the Indian Ocean, see Vladimir Mukhin, “Russian Marines Are Ready to Land in Iraq,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, March 21, 2003; on the continuing decline of the Northern Fleet, see Svetlana Meteleva, “Following Kursk,” Moskovsky Komsomolets, January 22, 2003. 87 Current news and in-depth analysis of nuclear risks on the Kola Peninsula can be found on the Bellona Foundation website, http://www.bellona.no/en/ international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/index.html.
CHAPTER 2
The Social and Political Condition of the Russian Military ALEKSANDR GOLTS
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onditions within the Russian armed forces have long since ceased to be only a defense and security matter. Increasingly, they are also becoming a pressing social concern. Unlike Russia’s economic and political sectors, the military has not undergone radical reform. And though considerably smaller, it in many ways still resembles its Soviet counterpart, with one very notable exception: it has ceased to be effective. The Russian military could operate like its Soviet predecessor only if it hewed to two basic Soviet principles: (1) maintaining a military budget equal to the rest of the federal budget, and (2) retaining universal military service. Creating a total mobilization army along the lines of the Soviet model, however, has no chance of succeeding in Russia’s evolving market economy and changing social landscape. During the Soviet era, the military model functioned on the premise that the USSR was, in effect, a military camp in which everything was subjugated to the interests of the defense sector. In the view of the majority of Russian commanders, the Soviet military system had been the best in the country’s military history, and thus “reform” has meant finding ways to preserve the basic elements of this system under increasingly adverse conditions. The result has been the ongoing deterioration of the Russian military. This chapter examines the structural crisis that has enveloped Russia’s armed forces. It addresses two major questions. First, why has the Russian ruling elite demonstrated a lack of will in trying to improve the counT H E R U S S I A N M I L I TA RY
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try’s military situation? Second, why has the armed forces’ continuing deterioration not produced the catastrophic results that many analysts have predicted?1 The key to answering both questions centers on the issue of conscription and officer recruitment. The military elite’s desire for a mass army stands as Russia’s largest internal impediment to reform. THE BREAKDOWN OF THE CONSCRIPTION SYSTEM
In Russia, the Soviet principle of military service as the constitutional duty of every citizen has all but disappeared. Today, young men look on the draft as a form of state slavery, and with society’s support, seek ways to avoid it. For a few weeks every spring and fall, police in Moscow and other large Russian cities stop young males on the street to check their documents. The real reason, however, is simple: conscription time has arrived, and the hunt is on for new recruits. With the assistance of law enforcement, local draft offices round up prospective conscripts, sparing no effort to meet their quotas. Such methods are considered acceptable because the military has made refusal to serve in the armed forces illegal. At one time, the constitution gave Russian men the option of choosing a form of civil service other than military duty. Unhappy with this provision, the high command worked for eight years to ensure that it never became law. Ultimately, the defense ministry succeeded in pushing through an altered version that requires Russians who opt for “alternative” service to serve twice as long as those who enter the military. Moreover, they can be sent anywhere in the country, with no guarantee that they will not end up doing menial work in army units, where they are likely to confront further humiliation. In discussing these individuals, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov insists that the constitution gives the military the right to place these young men “in organizations and institutions” of the ministry of defense.2 Thus, for these Russians, alternative civil service may seem more like a form of punishment for choosing not to join the military. The law, which 1
See, for example, Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, “A Present Position of the Russian Army as Approaching Catastrophe,” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, no. 6 (1997). 2 Interview with Sergei Ivanov, Politika, no. 61 (2003), pp. 2–4.
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has not actually been tested, ostensibly reflects the government’s commitment to universal military service, though it has not made it easier for the military to meet its conscription goals. Indeed, in the last decade approximately 40,000 Russian men annually ignored their call-up notices.3 Another way to avoid the draft is to obtain a deferral from one of Russia’s institutions of higher learning. Because the quality of teaching in many of these institutions is extremely poor, some have resorted to offering draft deferrals as a way to attract students. As Minister of Education Vladimir Filippov remarked, “The prospect of military service has forced young men to seek refuge in college.”4 In 2003, Russian military officials repeatedly complained of being unable to draft more than 10 percent of eligible men.5 Of these, most failed to meet the minimum physical and educational requirements. Among conscripts from the Moscow Military District in 2002, 39.2 percent either did not have jobs or were not in school when they were drafted, 44 percent had not completed their secondary education, and 32 percent had friends or relatives with criminal records.6 During parliamentary hearings in 2002, an official stated that 20 percent of conscripts took drugs.7 To meet its quotas, the military has had to draft men with criminal records: the elite Taman Guards Division, for example, once included 340 privates with criminal convictions.8 Putting guns in the hands of these individuals makes as much sense as arming inmates in a prison. Such recruitment practices have contributed both to a lack of discipline and to low morale among Russian conscripts. Conditions in some units resemble those in Russian prisons. Crime is rampant in the barracks, and military commanders seem powerless to stop the practice of dedovschina: the violent hazing of first-year conscripts by second-year soldiers. Defense Minister Ivanov reported that, from January to October 2002, 531 servicemen were killed as a result of various “crimes and inci-
3
Mikhail Demidenko, “Slabie, bolnie, glupie I legkie,” Kommersant, April 18, 2003. 4 Quoted in Irina Melnikova, “Pokolenye bezrabotnikh,” Itogi, no. 47 (2002). 5 Their calculations are highly dubious (they take as 100 percent all Russian males between 18 and 27 years of age). Ibid. 6 Viktor Baranetz, “S’ezd dedov: Muzhskoyi razgovor,” Komsomolskaya Pravda, March 13, 2003. 7 Nikolei Poroskov, “Armiya sela na iglu,” Vremya novostei, October 15, 2002. 8 Yuri Garvilov, “Pyataya sherenga,” Moskovskyi komsomolets, February 21, 2002.
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dents”; another 20,000 were badly injured.9 According to the military’s chief prosecutor, Lt. Gen. Aleksandr Savenkov, 800 servicemen from the “power ministries” were slain by other soldiers in 200210; 1,200 others (including officers) were killed in spontaneous acts of violence.11 In a report on law enforcement and criminal activity in the Russian Federation in 2002, the prosecutor general’s office found that servicemen had committed a total of 20,400 crimes: one out of four involved violence in the barracks. In the same year, 4,200 servicemen deserted.12 According to the ministry of defense, 2,265 deserters were still at large at the end of 2002 (unofficially, the number is believed to be much higher).13 Desertion rates have soared in recent years, as entire platoons and companies continue to walk away from their posts. In September 2002, dozens of soldiers from the elite 20th Division stationed in the Volgograd Region simply left their base and did not return. The soldiers had been repeatedly beaten with shovels by their commanding officers during an investigation following another soldier’s theft of an armored personnel carrier after a late-night drinking session in the barracks. In December 2002, 16 soldiers from the Taman Division deserted when they could no longer tolerate their company commander’s regular beatings; 7 soldiers abandoned their air defense unit in the Moscow area; and 13 privates slipped away from their detachment in Sverdlovsk Region in the Urals. In January 2003, 24 soldiers quit their railroad unit in the Leningrad Military District.14 With weapons in hand, some of these deserters have themselves
9
Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 26, 2002. Russian military and security organizations include not only defense ministry troops but also interior ministry troops; railroad troops; civil defense troops (ministry of emergency situations); “technical/engineering troops” (including state construction committee troops, road troops, and troops of numerous special construction governmental agencies); troops of the Foreign Intelligence Service; and troops from the Federal Security Service (FSB), which includes border guard troops, the federal bodyguard service, and the federal body providing mobilization readiness (all other troops are listed in the ministry of defense statute). 11 Alek Ahundov, “V rossiiskoi armii prestupnost pod kontrolem,” Kommersant, January 11, 2003. 12 Grani.ru, Nepobedimaya I kriminalnaya, March 25, 2003. 13 Vladimir Voronov, “Dezertiada,” Konsevator, no. 1 (2003). 14 Ibid. 10
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turned to violence. In 2001, in Chita in the Russian Far East, soldiers killed a general who had tried to stop them from deserting. In June 2002, 2 paratroopers from Ulyanovsk Airborne Brigade on the Volga deserted and killed 10 men. The same month, 2 deserters from Maikop Brigade in the North Caucasus killed 3 policemen. Indeed, at least two dozen incidents involving armed deserters were reported in 2002.15 Fortunately, in the above-mentioned cases of mass desertion, the soldiers fled without their weapons. Given the military’s desperate conditions, however, the possibility of mutiny cannot be excluded. Some observers have even raised the specter of a Potemkin-like revolt.16 As increasing numbers of deserters turn to crime, the threat they pose to the security of the Russian people is certain to rise. The plight of Russia’s conscripts is made worse by the massive burden shouldered by Russian officers, who are both overworked and underpaid. MILITARY OFFICERS—SERFS OR SOLDIERS?
Conscripts are not the only ones no longer wanting to serve in the Russian military. Growing numbers of officers have also begun to look for a way out. In 2002, 29,000 officers took early retirement.17 According to Gen. Nikolai Pankov, deputy defense minister for personnel, 37 percent of officers who chose early retirement were between 30 and 40 years old (the backbone of the officer corps). Younger officers are also searching for ways to cut short their military careers. Eighty percent of officers in the Moscow Military District who resigned their commissions were under 30. Recently, 20 percent of cadets left their academies before commencement, which explains why one platoon in ten has no commanding officer. At the same time, 40 percent of all platoon leaders are so-called dvukhgodichniki: reserve officers with little if any military training.18 The dvukhgodichniki’s attitude toward military service is closer to that of conscripts than it is to that of officers. One even told the defense minister 15
Ibid. In 1905, during Russia’s first revolution, sailors on the Potemkin mutinied and took command. They were driven to act by the appalling conditions on board the ship. 17 Vladimir Urban, “Kogo mi nazivaem vragami vnutrennimi,” Novye izvestia, February 15, 2003. 18 “Mi obyazani sberech ofitserskii korpus,” Krasnaya zvezda, January 9, 2003. 16
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that, during his first six months of service, he had to be trained by his own privates.19 Perhaps more important, the number of dvukhgodichniki serving in the military is higher than official figures suggest. Maj. Gen. Evgeniy Veselov, deputy commander of the Moscow Military District, recently stated that in some regiments 80 percent of the officers are dvukhgodichniki.20 The reason for this gross imbalance is that officers with the most initiative are leaving the armed forces, while those who stay are deeply indifferent to the military’s plight as well as to their own service. Some top-ranking military officials, including General Pankov, insist that the situation has improved since 1998, when 69,000 officers resigned their commissions before reaching retirement age.21 Others, however, claim that the situation has only worsened. In May 2002, for example, Chief of the General Staff Anatoly Kvashnin asserted that conditions in the military had moved “beyond the critical stage,” another way of saying that Russia’s decline in combat readiness could become “irreversible.” According to Kvashnin, the main problem rests in the state’s inability to guarantee the officer corps an acceptable standard of living. In 2002, he remarked, “Unless we can at least double their pay, we shall simply lose more officers.”22 Reflecting this concern, the government in January 2003 gave a pay raise to battalion commanders with the rank of lieutenant colonel. These officers now receive 8,520 rubles ($285) a month, which, although still below any reasonable standard, is $100 more than the official average. At the same time, however, servicemen have lost two important benefits. First, they are no longer exempt from paying income taxes. Second, they must now pay their own rent (including utilities). Even if soldiers receive pay raises to offset the flat 13 percent income tax, they still have to cover their rent and utilities—both of which continue to climb because of soaring energy prices. During discussions of the government’s military housing and communal services reform package, which the leadership claimed was a priority in 2003, officials predicted that soldiers’ expenses 19
Ivan Egorov, “Soldati uchat ofitserov,” Gazeta, June 15, 2002. Baranetz, “S’ezd dedov.” 21 “Mi obyazani sberech ofitserskii korpus.” 22 Quoted in Sergei Turchenko, “Armiya v zakritichnom sostoyanii,” Trud, June 1, 2002. 20
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would rise at least several times. Even defense ministry officials say that real military pay will not increase more than 15–20 percent, an estimate that does not take inflation into account.23 Thus, an army colonel serving in Kaliningrad Region spends more than 40 percent of his salary on housing and utilities. In 2002, the figure was 10 percent.24 Still, these officers are better off than the more than 95,000 commissioned and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) who have no governmentsponsored housing and are forced to rent apartments or live in barracks.25 In 2004, the ministry of defense launched a program to address this problem. Every officer will receive an allowance beginning with his first year of service that will be deposited in a special fund. After 15 years of service, he should have saved enough to buy an apartment. Few in uniform, however, expect this initiative to succeed. Many remember, for example, Boris Yeltsin’s promise in an all army officers’ meeting in 1992 to give every soldier $5,000 (a huge sum at the time) toward the purchase of an apartment. They also remember Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov’s 1998 pledge to solve the housing problem using state-issued vouchers. Neither promise was fulfilled. Moreover, there is no guarantee that state officials in control of the housing fund will not use the money for some other purpose. Nor can anyone predict the impact of inflation 25 years from now. Despite these hardships, conditions have begun to improve in some areas. Vladimir Putin, for example, has fulfilled all of his promises to the officer corps. Thus, for the first time since 1991, officers’ pay is equal to or higher than that of civilians in the public sector and almost twice that of so-called budget workers, or budgetniki (e.g., teachers, medical doctors, nurses, social workers, etc.), who are paid out of the state budget. Dissatisfaction within the officer corps, however, continues to run high. If military service for conscripts seems like a form of legalized slavery, then for officers it is more like serfdom. Without the support of a higher-ranking official, an officer must place his fate in the hands of his immediate superior and his personnel department representative. Both have complete control over the officer’s professional future, and they 23
“Skolko s 1 yanvarya budet stoit armeiskaya sluzhba,” Komsomolskaya Pravda, December 26, 2002. 24 Vladimir Mukhin, “Deputatam ne do armii,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, March 26, 2003. 25 Interview with Sergei Ivanov, Krasnaya zvezda, March 28, 2003.
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need not explain their decisions. They can promote him—or not. They can offer him a plum assignment in Moscow—or send him to some godforsaken place along the Russian-Chinese border. Recently, General Pankov acknowledged that the defense ministry had failed to introduce a fair and open system of military promotion.26 Many military commanders and personnel officials fear such transparency, however, because it would not only diminish their power but also dry up a major source of revenue in the form of bribes. Such widespread problems have taken a heavy toll on Russia’s officer corps. According to the military’s chief prosecutor, many officers have vented their anger and frustration by beating soldiers under their command.27 Because of the lack of a well-trained noncommissioned officer corps, junior officers are responsible for discipline at both the platoon and company levels, yet they have neither the authority nor the legal instruments to punish bad behavior. In 2002, the military’s disciplinary regulations were amended to prohibit the sending of privates to the stockade. Believing they will be punished themselves, platoon and company commanders do not to report soldiers who violate the military’s code of conduct.28 In addition, according to General Pankov, in some units more than 60 percent of platoon and company commanders have been subject to administrative punishment.29 To some, the case of Col. Yuri Budanov, who raped and killed an innocent Chechen girl, reflects the abysmal level of morale in the officer corps. Indeed, it is more than a little worrisome that many senior military officials, including the defense minister, see Budanov as a “victim of circumstances.”30 The armed forces’ leadership, including the chief of the General Staff, freely admits that the officer corps is mired in theft and corruption. In April 2002, Defense Minister Ivanov, who had once expressed pride in the corps, declared during an inspection tour of Voronezh, 300 miles south of Moscow, that the 20th Army stationed there “had simply bogged down in [charges of] embezzlement.”31 This reveals another 26
“Mi obyazani sberech ofitserskii korpus.” Ahundov, “V rossiiskoi armii prestupnost pod kontrolem.” 28 “Teper na gubu ne posadish,” Krasnaya zvezda, April 19, 2003. 29 “Mi obyazani sberech ofitserskii korpus.” 30 “Vstrecha s glavnimi redaktorami,” Trud, May 15, 2001. 31 See http://news.aif.ru/news.php?id=7267. 27
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major problem: to climb the career ladder, officers must obey their superiors’ every order regardless of its legality. In addition, they know not to bother them with complaints about the constant lack of money to feed soldiers, to buy fuel supplies, and so on, because the Russian army still abides by the principle of “stealing to survive.” Sooner or later, regimental commanders conclude that the only way to get the money they need for their troops is to sell their soldiers’ labor. Eventually, they start “renting” their men out to, for example, local grain-processing plants or farms. These commanders know of course that they are breaking the law and, if caught, will never be able to prove that they did not spend the money on themselves. Some commanders even rationalize their bad behavior: if they have to steal, they may as well siphon off something for themselves. Such examples of pervasive corruption over the past decade have helped to line the pockets of many military commanders, but at the price of all professionalism. Responding to these growing problems, President Putin in 2002 ordered his generals to develop “measures to strengthen military discipline and improve relations among [armed forces’] personnel.”32 To carry out this order, the ministry of defense would have had to launch a wide-scale reform effort that included the creation of military academies to train a noncommissioned officer corps. A professional NCO corps would have helped to improve troop discipline and morale as well as redefine the role of commissioned officers, who have had to assume many of the responsibilities of NCOs, including the drilling of conscripts. The ministry of defense, however, has thus far failed to respond constructively to Putin’s demand. Rather, it has reverted to doing things “the Soviet way.” For example, commanders at all levels have not been given the well-educated, well-trained NCOs envisioned by Putin; instead, they have had to settle for deputies tasked with the political education of their troops and who, in many ways, resemble Soviet-era political officers. In a lame effort to underscore the importance of military relations, Chief of the General Staff Kvashnin sent a directive to all units instructing them to display signs that read: “The commander loves the fatherland and his soldiers most of all.” In addition, the directive orders unit commanders to hold classes on the care of subordinates. Such changes around the margins will not prevent the further erosion of the Russian armed forces 32
See http://president.kremlin.ru/text/appears/2002/11/29585.shtml.
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or stanch growing worries of the military becoming a pressing social concern.33 Indeed, even though the ministry of defense has formally made the development of an NCO corps a goal of military reform, nothing has been done, for example, to establish similar training programs for sergeants. Instead, the military elite prefers to spend their energy clouding the differences between a professional NCO corps and conscripts who receive less than six months drilling. Major manpower management problems in the Russian armed forces are being felt well beyond the confines of military bases. Indeed, they are having an increasing effect on the country’s political situation. POLITICAL INFLUENCE—FACT OR FICTION?
The structural crisis battering the Russian military has clearly influenced the country’s political situation. One might imagine that opposition groups would try to use this fact for their own purposes. One might also imagine that the political influence of the military leadership would be in decline. In fact, the opposite is true. The military’s problems do not top the list of election campaign issues, and the political influence of the military elite has soared since Putin became president. Throughout Yeltsin’s presidency, the Communist opposition regarded the military as an ally in its struggle for power. Every February 23, on Soviet Army and Navy Day, huge crowds gathered at public rallies and demonstrations organized by the Communists. In 1997–98, some on the left even believed that the armed forces could overthrow the Yeltsin regime. In 1997, Gen. Lev Rokhlin, chairman of the Duma Defense Committee and founder of the Movement in Support of the Army, the Defense Industry, and Military Science (DPA), sent letters to his commander in chief (President Yeltsin) as well as to all Russian military units. In them, Rokhlin blamed Yeltsin for the military’s plight and called on officers to rally “to defend the army.” He urged them to hold assemblies and petition the president, the parliament, and the high courts. Rokhlin’s public criticism of Yeltsin was an act of open disobedience, as was his demand that the president “leave and make room for someone else.”34 33 34
Interfax, March 20, 2003, 11:48:01. Aleksandr Golts, “Revolutsiya v voennom dele nachalas,” Itogi, no. 28 (1997), p. 15; and Aleksandr Golts, “Nuzhdatyetsya li armiya v zaschite,” Itogi, no. 38 (1997), p. 20.
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In 1998, Rokhlin was killed, supposedly the result of a family quarrel, but the facts remain murky. His successor, Viktor Ilyukhin, a radical Communist and chairman of the Duma Security Committee, subsequently called on the military “not to execute their commanders’ orders until retired officers were given housing and compensatory payments.” In another show of defiance, Ilyukhin declared in an interview that “the legal means used to decide the question of power in Russia had been exhausted.”35 The military, however, has ignored all such appeals to challenge the government. Indeed, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has not been a single case of military officers collectively protesting the actions of the civilian leadership. In a bizarre incident in 1997, however, an army major near Nizhni Novgorod did drive an unarmed tank into the streets of a small military settlement to demand immediate payment of his wages (at the time, soldiers routinely were not paid for as long as six months).36 The military’s decision not to openly protest the government’s civilian leadership was not a result of their abiding commitment to Yeltsin. In fact, military leaders occasionally found ways to let him know the limits of their loyalty. During the August–September 1998 political crisis, for example, when Yeltsin planned to dissolve the Duma, Security Council Secretary Andrei Kokoshin sent the president a memo stating that the ministry of defense and internal ministry troops would not obey an order to use force against Yeltsin’s political opponents. The president was forced to abandon his plan.37 Although the army played a major role on the Russian political scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it did so reluctantly. The military’s unwillingness to use force against Moscow residents, for example, resulted in the failure of the 1991 coup. Two years later, Yeltsin had to personally persuade his generals to deploy troops against supporters of the Supreme Soviet, who had nearly captured the capital. Before acting, the generals demanded that Yeltsin provide them with a written order. The generals’ unwillingness/hesitation to act reflected their deep distrust of the political leadership, who they believed had betrayed the interests of the armed forces. A variety of actions by the Kremlin—including the use of the army to suppress national movements in Armenia, Azerbaijan, 35
Aleksandr Golts, “Iulskiye tesisi tovarischa ilukhina,” Itogi, no. 29 (1998), p. 25. 36 See http://www.nns.ru/analytdoc/ims/1998/sv0108_7.html. 37 “Aleksandr Golts, “Promah Andreiya Kokoshina,” Itogi, no. 36 (1998), p. 19.
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Georgia, and the Baltic States in 1989–91; the deployment of troops during the 1993 attempted putsch (including the shelling of the parliament building); and the use of troops in the continuing war in Chechnya— have convinced Russian officers that, to gain political advantage, rival politicians will not hesitate to make them the scapegoat. On the other hand, the level of military criticism of President Putin is significantly lower than that levied against his predecessor. No one has called on the armed forces to overthrow the president. Speeches made at the DPA’s 19th Congress, held in February 2003, were much milder in tone than those given in 1998 and 1999, for example. Indeed, none of the speakers criticized President Putin specifically.38 In March 2003, when a few Duma deputies tried to launch a parliamentary inquiry into charges of violence in the barracks, they were rebuffed by left-wing and right-wing parliamentarians alike. Viktor Alksnis, a retired Soviet colonel and one of Yeltsin’s most virulent detractors, now prefers to condemn unnamed actors who “are trying to focus on negative events in the armed forces.”39 These changes are a direct result of Putin’s so-called policy of managed democracy, as well as the president’s popularity with most Russians. For his part, Putin has taken a number of steps to placate military conservatives. Retired Army Gen. Valentin Varennikov, for example, a hard-liner and key figure in the 1991 coup attempt, is now a leader of the Army Veterans Committee. Today, Varennikov professes “full support” for Putin’s domestic and foreign policy. Meanwhile, the president has made an effort to reward such displays of loyalty by, for example, fulfilling his promise to return the Red Star—the hallmark of the Soviet state—to Russia’s military colors.40 Thus, neither the left nor the right any longer seems able to use the military as a wedge issue in their political battles. Both right and center-right parties, however, have tried to move military reform to the forefront of their election campaigns. The Union of Right Forces (SPS) and Yabloko, for example, declared military reform a top priority. And they were doing more than just talking: each drew up a reform proposal that, unlike previous attempts, could not be dismissed as the creation of incompetents. In developing its plan, SPS collaborated
38
See http://www.leviy.ru/news/2002/19_10_2002_cp1.htm. Mikhail Vinogradov, “Dembel vse spishet,” Izvestiya, March 6, 2003. 40 Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 26, 2002. 39
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with experts from the Academy of Military Sciences, led by its president, Army Gen. Makhmut Gareyev, a former deputy chief of the Soviet General Staff. Together, they studied the experiences of the world’s leading military powers and concluded that the creation of a professional army within a short period of time was possible. SPS leader Boris Nemtsov, who insists that phasing out conscription would take only a year, showed great determination in working to ensure that his party’s military reform plan went right to the top. The plan offered details on how to rapidly transform the Russian army into a professional force: among its proposals were calls for a reduction in the total number of privates and sergeants to 400,000 and a 30 billion ruble (about $1 billion) increase in the defense budget. Another 200,000 Russians would have been called up for a period of six to eight months and would have undergone training at defense ministry centers; they would not, however, have been deployed to hot spots such as Chechnya. The SPS plan was both controversial and not entirely realistic. Nevertheless, when presented to Putin in the fall of 2001, it helped to move the issue of military reform to the front burner. Gen. Vladislav Putilin, then chief of the General Staff’s organization and mobilization directorate, was forced to admit that SPS’s plan represented a serious attempt to motivate a military establishment that was in no hurry to contemplate drastic change.41 It took the high command six months to persuade Putin that the plan would not work. Nemtsov, however, refused to give up. In the fall of 2002, he tried to convince Putin that military authorities were seeking to undermine SPS’s effort by redirecting funds earmarked for reform to housing construction.42 Acknowledging the influence of the SPS, Defense Minister Ivanov frequently brings it up in interviews. In one recent exchange, he was quoted as saying, “Some SPS members claim that the military does not want to reform. They suggest a simple and attractive—to the layperson—idea of a six-month-long period of conscription service. This reminds me of postrevolution anarchists who said, ‘No peace, no war, no army.’”43 In March 2002, SPS convened in Moscow to demand immediate military reform. It had already held similar meetings in 50 other Russian
41
See http://www.ej.ru/00./life/02/. Aleksandr Golts, “Sledite za rukami,” Yezhenedelnyi zhurnal, no. 46 (2002). 43 Interview with Sergei Ivanov, Komsomolskaya Pravda, April 1–2, 2003. 42
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cities.44 SPS’s focus was the huge segment of the Russian electorate made up of middle-aged women—in particular, mothers seeking reassurance that their sons would not die or sustain injury while serving in the military. As part of its efforts, SPS launched an initiative to collect signatures demanding the immediate resignation of Defense Minister Ivanov. Ivanov’s anxiety over SPS’s actions surfaced when he spoke at a ministry of defense meeting in March 2003: “It is impossible to underestimate the negative influence of certain political forces trying to undermine the prestige of military service.…The struggle for influence over the army will only intensify as we approach the upcoming Duma elections.”45 After the election, however, Ivanov could breathe a sigh of relief: for the first time, neither SPS nor Yabloko received 5 percent of the vote, the percentage needed to maintain their seats in the parliament. Russian politicians have long been acutely aware of the sheer numerical strength of the military electorate. According to defense ministry sources, there are 5.5 million military-oriented voters in Russia, among them defense industry workers as well as servicemen and members of their families. In theory, military personnel would seem to be less susceptible to political propaganda than other voters; indeed, the law forbids the spread of propaganda among active-duty soldiers and officers. Yet experience shows that it is easy to manipulate voters in the barracks. For example, senior officers decide the television news programs (most of which are, in fact, pure propaganda) their subordinates can watch. In these circumstances, an officer’s praise of a particular candidate is often sufficient for his troops to select that individual from among the dozens of others listed on the ballot. It is therefore not surprising that politicians and their strategists pay a great deal of attention to this important segment of the electorate. In the past, the army has demonstrated a degree of unpredictability in its voting preferences. For instance, when the Kremlin, with the assistance of Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, tried to pressure the armed forces into voting for Russia’s Choice Party in the 1993 elections, it failed. In another case, officers who resented the involvement of the army in the 1993 putsch attempt showed their displeasure by voting (and per-
44 45
Aleksandr Golts, “A Time for Military Policy, Russia Journal, April 12, 2002. Quoted in Aleksandr Bogatirov, “Professia rodine sluzhit,” Krasnaya zvezda, April 2, 2003.
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suading their subordinates to vote) for either Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia or Gennady Zyuganov’s Communist Party. In 1995, Defense Minister Grachev fielded more than 100 servicemen as Duma candidates. Amid the indifference of Russian civilian and military voters, the vast majority of “Grachev’s 100” failed to win. Amazingly, the few who were elected soon began to criticize both the government and the defense minister. A decade later, this naïve attempt to manipulate voters and government deputies seems like ancient history. Today the focus is on President Putin’s success in bringing stability to the country, which has revived some of the more traditional modes of Russian behavior. PUTIN’S “MANAGED DEMOCRACY” AND THE MILITARY
In recent years, men with military backgrounds have risen within the “party of power,” the United Russia Party. Top-ranking officers from the special services, police, and armed forces have become a major personnel reserve in Putin’s managed democracy system. When someone was needed to strengthen the federal government’s position in Ingushetia, Putin chose FSB Gen. Murat Zyazikov and gave him the administrative support he needed to carry out his duties as the president of this tiny republic. Similarly, Adm. Vladimir Yegorov, commander of the Baltic Fleet, was advised to run for governor of the Kaliningrad Region, Russia’s only exclave and another problem region. Maj. Gen. Vladimir Shamanov, a Chechen war veteran, was supported in his bid to become governor of Ulyanovsk Region. Another example is the election of Col. Gen. Georgii Shpak, former commander of the airborne troops, as Ryazan Region governor. To be sure, all these men were elected by popular vote, but the Kremlin’s support was crucial in every case. Currently, military officers have seats in the upper and lower houses of parliament. Five out of seven presidential envoys in the federal districts are former generals. Forty percent of federal inspectors in the Russian regions are on secondment from the ministry of defense and other power ministries.46 These men are vastly different from the military officers who gained prominence in the early 1990s—among them, Aleksandr Rutskoi, Ruslan Aushev, Lev Rokhlin, and Aleksandr Lebed. All four had been combat officers with successful military careers who entered politics after losing 46
See http://www.csis.org/ruseura/ponars/policymemos/pm 0284.pdf.
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faith in Russia’s political leaders. All were particularly angry that, in their view, the Kremlin was trying to turn the military into a scapegoat for its own failures. Colonel Rutskoi emerged as a political figure when in early 1991 he walked to the rostrum of the People’s Deputies Congress to criticize the authorities who had sent troops to Latvia and Estonia. Aushev, an Ingush, ran for president of Ingushetia after Russia had appeared to side with the Ossetians during the 1992 Ossetian-Ingush conflict. Rokhlin, who in 1993 became a member of parliament by order of the defense minister, declared his political independence after concluding that Yeltsin and his followers had betrayed the nation and the army. Lebed was angered by what he considered to be the irresponsible behavior of many of Russia’s politicians.47 As a commanding general in Transdniestria, Lebed publicly criticized the president and the defense minister for involving the country in the war in Chechnya. Not surprisingly, he was forced into early retirement. It is worth noting that during this period many Russians feared a military takeover not unlike that carried out by Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile in the 1970s. Today, there are many more generals in Russian politics than there were in the Yeltsin era, yet fears of a Pinochet-style coup have all but disappeared. A paradox in contemporary Russia is that generals in the armed forces have been much more politically influential than their retired colleagues. In fact, the military’s upper echelon is the only segment of the federal government that can afford to ignore or even undermine presidential orders. Putin and Russia’s top generals established their special relationship at the outset of the second Chechen campaign. Military commanders in 1999, unlike those in the first campaign, were given the freedom to use all means necessary to achieve their objective. In a highly unusual step, Yeltsin put his newly appointed premier, Vladimir Putin, in charge of the operation. Military commanders, who this time received their orders directly from Putin, appreciated his decisiveness. While Putin rose to fame and glory, the generals, enjoying newfound influence, did not hesitate to apply pressure on the political leadership when it was in their interests to do so. Thus, when the Kremlin was undecided about whether to move the army across the Terek River or limit the operation by creating a buffer zone in northern Chechnya, Major General Shamanov in effect black47
“Neizvestniy General Lebed,” Novye izvestia, October 5, 2001.
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mailed his nominal “political masters” by threatening to “tear off his stripes” if ordered to halt the military’s operations.48 This episode highlighted the military’s newfound sense of power. As a result, civilian leaders were overruled, and the decision was made to occupy all of Chechnya. Later, in December 2002, when generals of the frontline North Caucasus Military District sought to challenge the political leadership in Moscow, Putin replaced the commander of the military district, Gen. Gennadi Troshev. Believing that he had a special responsibility to the army and the inhabitants of Chechnya, Troshev had publicly refused a new assignment “proposed” by the defense minister.49 Troshev and other battle-hardened generals see themselves as a quasiindependent political force in Russia. In his book My War, published in 2001, Troshev revealed the thinking of these men: Fear of a group of hero-generals, who are very popular in the army and among the people, appeared. They became a political force. If united by a mutual goal, they could become a modern version of the Decembrist ‘Southern society,’ a danger to the authorities.50 This fear is still alive following speeches by General Rokhlin, who despised the Kremlin and called on the Volgograd army corps ‘to march on Moscow.’ But Rokhlin was alone. The troops did not answer his call. But now there are a number of such men (Kazantsev, Troshev, Shamanov, Bulgakov, and others). They are victors, they are resolute, they are brave.…Not only the army, but all people will follow them. If they do not like the federal or regional authorities, they will unite. The Decembrist Revolt of 1825 will be nothing compared to what can happen.51 Although quick to add that such scenarios had little to do with Russia’s prevailing situation, Troshev does identify himself and other “hero-generals” as an influential political force. 48
Olga Alentova, “Valery Shamanov: Ya daleko ne yastreb,” Kommersant, November 20, 1999. A day later, however, Shamanov had to say that the army would carry out its orders. 49 See http://www.newsru.com/Russia/18dec2002/troshev.html. 50 Troshev was referring to the 1825 failed military conspiracy to overthrow the czar. 51 Gennadi Troshev, “Mat ego ne glusili daje dubovie dveri,” Kommersant Vlast, July 25, 2001.
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In recent years, President Putin has relied on some rather unusual methods to “punish” his wayward generals. Shamanov, for example, was unofficially urged to retire, but then given Kremlin support in his successful electoral bid to become governor of the Ulyanovsk Region. Troshev was appointed as the president’s adviser on Cossack affairs. Another example involves the Kursk submarine disaster of August 2000. The lies served up by military officials and their lame excuses for rejecting foreign assistance following the incident revealed the lengths to which Russian naval commanders would go to protect their interests. The navy brass had evidently concluded that refusing assistance from NATO countries, which they still viewed as potential adversaries, was less likely to earn them Putin’s wrath than allowing the crew to die (assuming that any of the crew members survived the internal torpedo explosion that had apparently disabled the submarine). The naval command vigorously asserted that the Kursk sank because it had collided with a NATO submarine. The commander in chief of the navy, Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov, even went so far as to suggest that he would identify the submarine responsible for the supposed collision, which he said had returned to the scene to eliminate traces of the incident. Kuroyedov’s statements amounted to a clear call on Putin to support “his” naval commanders against NATO. Putin, however, refused to heed the call.52 At the same time, Putin refrained from reining in military officials whose anti-Western propaganda campaign could have been damaging to his foreign policy. He waited an entire year, for example, before punishing the admirals responsible for the Kursk disaster. Although Kuroyedov was allowed to continue as the navy’s commander in chief, Adm. Vyacheslav Popov was dismissed as commander of the Northern Fleet, though he was immediately appointed to the Federation Council. Mikhail Motsak, Popov’s chief of naval operations, became a deputy presidential representative in Russia’s Northwestern Region. High-ranking military officials have also effectively defended their bureaucratic interests. In September 2000, for example, when Russia’s 14 power ministries and agencies categorically disagreed with Putin’s initial attempts to reduce their force size, it took a special commission 17 sessions to reach a consensus among the interior ministry, emergency situations ministry, and the border guards service on the extent of the cut52
Aleksandr Golts, “Pravda nuzhna zhivim,” Itogi, no. 44 (2000), p. 12.
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backs.53 The Kremlin thus behaves with its own generals as it does with its partners in international negotiations. Areas of agreement are first set forth; then, point by point, the parties hammer out their differences. In another case, Putin waited for a few months before intervening in a highly unusual and increasingly public quarrel between Chief of the General Staff Kvashin and Defense Minister Sergeev. The country was at war, and the Russian high command was divided into two opposing camps, resulting in the paralysis of the General Staff and the ministry of defense. General Kvashin, who serves ex officio as first deputy minister of defense, went over the head of Sergeev and submitted his own draft reform plan to Putin. He then proceeded to discuss the plan at a defense ministry meeting. Surprisingly, Putin and those close to him who have tried to introduce a sense of military order into the civilian administration seem resigned to such gross breaches of conduct. Instead of sacking those guilty of insubordination, they chose to view the affair as an intellectual exercise among military specialists. As a result, however, the very principles of military discipline and command were jeopardized. When Putin appointed his closest associate, Sergei Ivanov, as defense minister, he believed that he would have at least one man in the ministry of defense whom he could trust. But the influence of the military brass on Ivanov has shown itself to be much stronger than the president’s. In every critical situation, Ivanov has taken the generals’ side. Consequently, his statements on many international security issues have conflicted with Putin’s. In September 2001, for example, Ivanov stated that he did not envisage—“not even hypothetically”—the deployment of NATO forces in Central Asia.54 Later, the president said that he saw no problem with the establishment of U.S. military bases in the region. On the issue of U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, Ivanov talked about the need for “adequate measures to protect [Russia’s] national security” in the event that the United States decides to deploy national missile defenses.55 In contrast, Putin, while saying the U.S. withdrawal would be “a mistake,” also said that Russia would not engage in “anti-American hysteria” if the United States decided to pull 53
Vadim Solovev, “Rossiya ne mozhet vesti bolshuyu voinu,” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, November 17, 2000. 54 “Svoyi ustav,” Ekspert, no. 37 (2001), p. 23. 55 “Sergei Ivanov: Plodi voyennoi reformi poyavyatsya ne ranshe 2004 goda,” Izvestiya, June 24, 2001.
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out of the treaty, which it eventually did.56 On the issue of NATO expansion, Ivanov feared that it would have “a disastrous effect on the framework of treaties in general.”57 Meanwhile, Putin declared, “Preventing Estonia’s membership in NATO would be incorrect tactically and strategically. [But] if Estonia wants that, let it join NATO.”58 After the October 2002 hostage crisis, in which Chechen terrorists held more than 700 hostages captive in a Moscow theater until Russian forces stormed the building, Putin ordered the reorientation of the armed forces toward the fight against terrorism. Ivanov, however, responded skeptically: no “radical revision of the fundamental principles governing the operation of the armed forces” was required.59 Top Russian military officials have chosen to ignore their commander in chief’s position on the necessity of strategic partnership with the United States. To preserve their budgets, their many privileges, and a certain level of prestige, the military leadership still needs to consider the United States as a potential adversary. At the annual meeting of the Academy of Military Sciences in January 2003, senior military commanders and leading theorists tried to show, in the presence of the defense minister and chief of the General Staff, that the supposed desire of the United States to control the world’s oil resources would be a major source of conflict in the future. Thus, in their view, the possibility of confrontation could not be excluded. Adm. Viktor Kravchenko, chief of naval operations, argued that the U.S. Navy represents the main threat to Russia today and in the future. This does not mean, however, that Russian commanders fear that the United States wants to invade their homeland. Rather, they see the strategy of positioning the United States as a possible adversary as the only way to preserve the current military system.60 The ministry of defense’s success in scuttling efforts to radically reform the military testifies to the extraordinary political influence of the top brass. Moreover, Putin’s desire to maintain good relations with the military limits his ability to push through needed reforms. The military 56
See http://www.strana.ru/stories/01/12/13/2204/94382.html. Aleksandr Golts, “Otstavshaya ten,” Yezhenedelnyi zhurnal, no. 25 (2002), p. 36. 58 See http://www.pkc.ru.cgi-bin/main.pl?fn=../htdocs/text/25060201.txt. 59 Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov quoted in Vitali Djibuti, “Ravneniye na pravo,” Rossiiskaya gazeta, January 14, 2003. 60 Viktor Kravchenko, “Ugrozi s morskikh I okeanskikh napravlenii rastut,” 57
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leadership’s political influence is evident in parliament’s handling of a number of defense- and security-related issues that recently received favorable treatment, including the Duma’s decision not to alter the budgets of the defense and other power ministries by more than 0.5–1 percent. In the words of Alexei Arbatov, uniformed officials, unlike civilian bureaucrats, are somehow perceived “as priests, who know the sacrament of truth that remains inaccessible to laypeople.”61 In the autumn of 1996, immediately after a heart operation, Yeltsin ordered Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to return the so-called nuclear suitcase. Yeltsin made this demand not because he was worried Chernomyrdin would start a nuclear war, but because the suitcase symbolizes the supreme authority of the president, just as the scepter and orb once did for the czars. Two years later, during the political and economic crisis of August 1998, top officials in Yeltsin’s administration held consultations with Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and former Premier Chernomyrdin. In their run for the prime ministership, both Luzhkov and Chernomyrdin put control of the power ministries at the center of their platforms. But in fall of 1998, such control could have only been symbolic: neither candidate stood a chance of using the armed forces to further his own interests. CONCLUSION
President Putin’s actions in 2000–04 to reform Russia’s state structure betrayed his deep-seated conviction that the most effective way to govern a country such as Russia is to impose a strictly hierarchical military-style command system. The political elite and the Russian people generally share this traditional belief. In a June 2002 VTsIOM (All-Russia Center for Public Opinion Research) poll, the army placed third among Russia’s most trusted institutions, behind the president and the Orthodox Church, but ahead of the security services. At the same time, however, 45 percent of Russians considered military service a burden. Only 22 percent wanted their “son, brother, husband, or other close relative to serve in the army.”62
61
Alexei Arbatov, in Petr Romashin, “Budjet Kak zerkalo voyennoyi reformi,” Nezavisimoe voyennoe obozrenie, January 17, 2003. 62 Alexei Levinson, “Neizbivni atribut,” Yezhenedelnyi zhurnal, no. 36 (2002).
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In the minds of most Russians (certainly those who passed through the Soviet education system), there exists the belief that the army is the true foundation of states such as theirs. Where does this belief come from? The answer lies in the state model constructed in Russia over the past 300 years. Peter the Great’s reforms had as an overall objective the creation and maintenance of a huge army. During the centuries that followed, Russians knew of no other way to concentrate their country’s national resources other than for military mobilization. (The only exception was the use of prison labor camps under Joseph Stalin.) Conscription has existed in Russia as long as the regular army. For the majority of the population, military service has been a huge burden, and as such, has had a deep psychological impact on the nation. On the one hand, no one challenges the right of the state to call up civilians for military service. On the other hand, Russian society does not condemn those who seek to avoid the draft. Unlike all other modern armed forces, the foundation of the Russian army is not the officer corps, but a mass of poorly trained conscripts whose major advantage has been the ability to constantly reconstitute itself. The duty of Russian officers has been to train this primitive military, then to deploy it on the battlefield. Russian generals continue to think within the context of World War II (or World War III). They will do whatever they can to preserve the draft and Russia’s mobilization reserve. Now they are trying to convince the president to delay the bulk of draft deferrals. The concept of a mass army is vital to their survival, but lethal to the armed forces as a whole. These features of military culture have penetrated all aspects of Russian society and have largely determined the character of the country’s civil-military relations. That neither the Russian military nor the Russian people have ever known an alternative system of military service makes them highly resistant to even basic reforms while more accepting of leaders with militarist leanings. Given the absence of a large-scale security threat to Russia, the deterioration of its armed forces is likely to continue. At the same time, conscripts will probably continue to be beaten or killed; others will desert; and the inefficiency of Russia’s conventional forces will be magnified. Indeed, the regular army could find it difficult, if not impossible, to manage even local threats or conflicts. It is therefore not inconceivable that the leadership might decide that it has no other option but to use nuclear weapons. Such could be the price of failure to reform the Russian military.
CHAPTER 3
Military Reform: From Crisis to Stagnation ALEXEI G. ARB ATOV
M
ost Russian state officials, politicians, experts, and journalists agree in general terms on the kind of army their nation needs. At minimum, Russia requires much better trained and technically equipped armed forces that can perform clearly defined missions both in the immediate context and in the longer term. At the same time, the government must guarantee Russian servicemen decent wages and reasonable living conditions. The new security threats and challenges confronting Russia, emerging a decade and a half after the end of the Cold War, imply an urgent need for a markedly different military organization than the one the country currently possesses. In the wake of the October 2002 hostage drama in the Theater Center in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin proclaimed the need for profound changes in Russia’s traditional military doctrine and its armed forces. He concluded that Russia’s military must adjust to the task of fighting international terrorism and the threats posed by it. Not everyone in the military and within Russia’s political and academic communities agrees with Putin’s assessment. Still, the need for comprehensive change in Russia’s defense establishment (both in the armed forces and the military industries) is commonly accepted. The devil is in the details: deep controversies continue over the objectives and the instruments of such change, with bitter disagreement over the priorities, rate, and directions of military reform.
Portions of this chapter are drawn from Alexei Arbatov, “What Kind of Army Does Russia Need?” Russian Global Affairs, no. 2 (February 2003). T H E R U S S I A N M I L I TA RY
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M I L I TA RY R E F O R M : F RO M C R I S I S T O STAG N AT I O N
The military establishment of any society is closely intertwined with the foreign policy of the state; with domestic economic, social, and political conditions and constraints; and with the nation’s historic and cultural traditions. Hence, it is only natural that debates on military reform in Russia reflect deep political and ideological differences within a society that has been engaged in a profound and painful transition for almost two decades. It is in this regard that Russian defense debates and innovations differ so significantly from those in the United States or any other country in the world today. Another principal difference is that unlike any other contemporary state, Russia has to simultaneously fulfill four hugely expensive tasks: implementing the military reform; maintaining a safe, secure, and stable nuclear-space complex; sustaining Russia’s commitments under international arms control and disarmament regimes; and modernizing its conventional forces to cope with new types of threat. Last but certainly not least, all arguments on this subject remain purely theoretical so long as they ignore the realistic requirements of national defense, on the one hand, and the available resources (above all, finances and manpower), on the other. Viewed as a whole, military doctrine, strategy, a plan for the development of the armed forces, and a state arms program are nothing more than a compromise between aims and resources or, to put it differently, between what is desirable and what is affordable. In the discussion that follows, I first sketch out several key factors that continue to influence the Russian military reform debate. Two of these have to do with serious constraints: the lack of information and the lack of resources. A third factor is the plethora of armed organizations (e.g., border guards and internal security forces) that are not part of Russia’s traditional armed forces but that military reform, properly conceived, must also address. The inclusion of these other organizations makes reform a much more difficult political, bureaucratic, and conceptual task. In the second half of the chapter, I turn to the content of the military reform program, in particular to two major issues that lie at the core of the reform debate: first, the need for a new strategic concept, and second, the need to abandon the conscription manpower system and move to a professional military. The issue of manpower recruitment is at the heart of the reform struggle in Russia, and success in this sphere is vital to achieving a modern and effective military. Finally, I close by describing an attractive—perhaps ideal—scenario for Russian military reform over the next few years. Alas, it is far from what the Russian government is planning to do.
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THE CONTEXT OF MILITARY REFORM: IMPORTANT FACTORS
Inadequate Information Any consideration of military reform must begin with an assessment of current realities and existing constraints. In the case of Russia, this may be particularly difficult because the assessment will need to be persuasive and credible across a wide portion of the Russian spectrum if it is to be politically potent and to serve as a guide to action. There does exist, of course, a general impression of deepening crisis in the Russian military. But it is necessary to go beyond this vague sense of trouble if an appropriate reform plan is to be fashioned and implemented. One basic problem is the continuing lack of transparency in military affairs that exists even in the new Russia. A shroud of secrecy severely limits access to information regarding the state of affairs in and plans for the armed forces and defense industry. This in turns makes it difficult to assess the real situation and prospects for reform. Indeed, basic facts and essential information are simply missing from Russia’s public debate on defense. From the limited information that is made available, it is impossible to make even a broad determination about the structure of the armed forces and their deployment; the number of main units and amount of weapons and other combat-related equipment; and principal research and development (R&D) and procurement programs—that is, the basic facts and figures necessary to have at least a general idea about Russian military policy and development. Presumably the Russian army should be prepared to fight and to achieve some clearly stated objectives. But what kind of wars with which weapons, against what kind of probable opponents, in which military theaters, and how soon? Because it does not provide much public information, the Russian defense establishment is not forced to lay bare the fundamental premises of its policies. Further, it is impossible to know how much ongoing military operations, including the war in Chechnya, will ultimately cost. Hence, there is no basis on which to have an informed discussion of the plans for reforming the armed forces and defense industry or the relevance of various arms control and disarmament proposals, peacekeeping missions, or combat operations—except in purely theoretical terms. Obviously, such uninformed discussions may not have any tangible impact on the policymaking of the state authorities, including budget decisions by the Duma. As absurd as it seems, even the data provided to the United Nations and foreign states in accordance with Russia’s inter-
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national commitments are unavailable to the mass media, the academic community, and the public. Moreover, in recent years the number of criminal verdicts handed down against journalists and researchers for systematically summarizing, analyzing, and publishing information on Russian defense issues has had a significant chilling effect on efforts to increase the level of transparency on military matters. Only the president, the minister of defense, and high-level members of the parliament can raise questions and request secret information on defense issues and the defense budget. Because, this more practical and detailed discussion is conducted within such a narrow circle and under the veil of secrecy, civilian state servants in the executive and legislative branches have no way to learn of the critical analysis of the plans and proposals of the General Staff and the armed services. Nor can they consider any reasonable alternatives or discard unrealistic scenarios and missions, redundant tasks and programs, or claims motivated by bureaucratic ambitions and intraservice rivalries. Two factors help to explain the lack of transparency in the Russian debate over security policy and military reform. First, neither the executive branch (except the ministry of defense), nor parliament, nor society at large has an informed understanding of potential threats to the state that would require greater efforts in the defense area. Thus, there is no sense of urgency to press for more useful information. Second, although the need to rescue the armed forces and defense industry from further degradation through military reform is commonly accepted, whether the current military high command is capable of developing and implementing a financially sound military reform program and military policy more generally remains an open question. In the meantime, a tacit agreement has developed between the civilian authorities, who provide what most Russian experts agree is inadequate spending for defense, and the military, which is allowed to spend the appropriated money as it wants. Meanwhile, the military enjoys a monopoly on information and immunity from criticism for using the funds as they desire. Stringent limits on public information relating to defense have been the main condition of this informal agreement. Yet even the unprecedented lifting of these limits under pressure from democratic factions in the Duma during the 2003 budget negotiations did not help to significantly enhance the public debate on defense issues (similar to that in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s). Among the 62 pieces of data made public within the “National Defense” section of the budget were
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details on the amount of money spent on kindergartens and schools for the children of military personnel, transportation costs for military members on vacation, funding for electricity and communal housing services, the cost of storing special fuels and lubricants, and so on. Still lacking was any meaningful information about such vital issues as force posture, modernization, and operations. In the absence of information on these and other substantive issues, the Russian military operates with little scrutiny of its affairs and minimal civilian intervention. The impact of the government’s civilian authorities is felt mostly in across-the-board budget cuts by the ministry of finance (so that the defense budget stays within its macroeconomic parameters) or amendments passed by the Duma (which often reflect the lobbying efforts of the military structures or defense corporations). Presidential decisions come down mainly to legalizing lower-level bureaucratic compromises. In rare cases when disagreements are impossible to reconcile, a decision from the top reflects the balance of political and bureaucratic powers and personal relationships. The financial cuts in the cabinet of ministers during the late 1990s were as large as 30–50 percent from initial military requests; currently they are about 10 percent. Also in the late 1990s, the impact of the Duma in amending the defense budget was around 3–5 percent; today it is no more than 1–2 percent. For Russia’s military reform debate, in short, inadequate information is a serious problem. Inadequate and Misguided Funding When information is revealed, it highlights the problems and constraints that confront the military reform effort in Russia. In late 2003, as noted, the government was pressured to release additional information about defense expenditures and Russia’s defense posture. Thus, it is possible to offer some practical comments on the basis of public data drawn from the 2003 federal budget, approximately half of which was opened to public scrutiny for the first time.1 The data reveal that Russia spends too little on the force it currently possesses. In addition, the money available for defense is not being spent in the most rational and efficient manner to address Russia’s present and future defense needs.
1
For the defense-related budget calculations in this and the following three paragraphs, the author is grateful to Col. Pyotr B. Romashkin (ret.).
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TABLE 3.1
Russian Defense Expenditures as a Percentage of GNP, 1994–2003 1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
5.60
3.76
3.59
3.82
2.97
2.34
2.63
2.66
2.60
2.65
(est.)
% of GNP % of Federal Budget
20.89 20.85 18.92 19.76 17.30 16.20 16.40
17.2 14.60 14.70
In the 2003 federal budget, appropriations for national defense amounted to 344 billion rubles, which is 2.65 percent of gross national product (GNP) and 14.74 percent of the expenditures of the entire Russian state budget. In the 2002 budget, these appropriations were 2.6 percent of GNP and 14.6 percent of federal expenditures. The net increase in current prices is 21.6 percent (the same as of the budget as a whole); however, in constant prices adjusted for the expected rate of inflation, the increase is only 10 percent. If inflation is higher, which is quite probable, the net gain would be smaller and could even be negative (among other things, this will be affected by world oil prices in the aftermath of the war in Iraq and Russian earnings from oil exports). Table 3.1 shows the changing share of expenditures on national defense in Russia’s federal budgets from 1994 to 2002 (and as predicted for 2003) as a percentage of GNP. As the table illustrates, since 1997 the funding for national defense has never exceeded 3 percent of GNP—despite the signing of decrees by both President Boris Yeltsin (in 1998) and President Putin (in 2000) to raise these expenditures to at least 3.5 percent of GNP. Indeed, details from a secret session of the Russian Security Council in the summer of 2000 that were leaked to the press show that the 3.5 percent figure was quietly lowered to below 3 percent of GNP. There is a wide belief in Russia that spending 3 percent of GNP on defense is insufficient. For one thing, most contemporary advanced military powers spend more than 3 percent—even though their direct security in all respects is much better assured than is Russia’s security. Further, in absolute terms their defense appropriations are much higher (in the case of the United States, an order of magnitude higher) regardless of how the figures are calculated. Because of such considerations, the vast majority of official and independent experts in Russia believe that the government must devote, at minimum, 3.5 percent of GNP if Russia is
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to meet its defense and security objectives. This assumes, of course, that the funds are properly spent, which is itself a subject of deep controversy. From the perspective of many military reformers, however, Russia is not only spending too little on defense, but it is also spending the money incorrectly. From the available data, some conclusions are possible, but these are not very encouraging from the point of view of rational defense policy and consistent military reform. For example, there has been great concern about the trade-off between expenditure merely to sustain current (mostly low-capability) forces and investment in future modernization and upgrades. In spite of the officially stated goal to change the ratio of maintenance to investment (i.e., R&D, procurement, and construction) from 70:30 percent to 60:40 percent, the 2003 budget still implies that the ratio will be 63:37 percent. This means that the military is wasting resources to sustain its current configuration and not investing in its future capabilities. Meanwhile, the military’s technical level and infrastructure continue to degrade, implying further disintegration of the defense industries and science and engineering communities. The main reasons for this situation are twofold. First, the military command is resisting reductions in the quantitative levels of personnel, administrative structures, units, and equipment. As a result, the transfer of funds to investment-related areas is not occurring. Second, the parliament and the public have only a vague idea about the abysmally low technical level of the armed forces and the inadequacy of the state armaments program (which is top secret) either for the army at its present size or for the defense industry. Fulfilling state defense contracts requires only 25 percent of Russia’s production capacity. Still, the contracts for equipment acquisition do not provide what an advanced army really needs. If the information on Russia’s armaments program were made public, at least to the same extent that similar information in the United States and West European countries is made available, then the mass media, public opinion, and the legislative branch of government would surely provide pressure to substantially increase funding for upgrading Russia’s military capabilities. At the same time, however, the General Staff and the armed services command, as well as the head of the ministry of defense, would most probably have to agree to more radical reductions of the size of the army and would have to address some delicate issues and answer some tough questions. This they will not be eager to do.
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Because of the lack of information and the ineffective defense budget process, painful decisions and hard trade-offs are rarely identified, much less confronted and dealt with effectively. Moreover, because the complexities of defense decision making are poorly understood, it is difficult to understand the contents of a coherent military policy. For instance, military reformers strongly favor qualitative improvement in Russia’s forces, but this does not always translate directly into support for the new acquisition of major weapons platforms. Why is the Russian navy, for example, proceeding with construction of a few expensive new surface ships and submarines, while funding for the maintenance, overhaul, and modernization of the existing vessels is catastrophically low? This implies the retirement of these vessels many years in advance of their service lifetime and a steep decline in force levels during the next 10–15 years, which cannot be prevented by the commissioning of a few new ships and submarines. And why was the air force able to obtain a huge sum in hard currency to purchase Tu-160 heavy bombers from Ukraine (where they were left after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991), while Russian frontal and air defense aviation receive less than 10 fighter aircraft a year, if any, and suffer from lack of fuel (pilots average only 40–50 hours of flight time per year instead of the recommended minimum of 150–180 hours), shortage of spare parts, and low quality of airfield infrastructure? Finally, why are the ground forces acquiring more and more heavy artillery and armored personnel carriers, while they continue to lack helicopters; gasoline, oil, and lubricants; ammunition; modern communication; and night-vision and navigation systems? Another misguided example is the ground forces’ transfer of its helicopters to the air force in 2002 following several catastrophes in Chechnya. This “shrewd” act, however, only ensures their further degradation. In short, Russia allocates too little on defense and what it does allocate is not well spent. This is a basic starting point for the military reform debate. Russia’s Multiple Armed Forces Another complication of the Russian reform debate not well understood beyond Russia’s borders (and perhaps not sufficiently understood within Russia itself) is that Moscow controls not only the armed forces as traditionally understood but also a number of other armed organizations (including internal security forces, border patrol troops, etc.) that were
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left over from the Soviet period and constitute further costs and assets that must be taken into account in refashioning Russia’s security policy. Military reform is understood in Russia as applying not only to the armed forces but also to other troops and military services, as well as to defense industries, mobilization capability, and the administrative apparatus of managing defense in peacetime and commanding it in war. A full discussion of these issues is beyond the realm of this chapter, but some additional considerations and comments are worthwhile on other troops and services. Those are funded mostly through the section of the Russian state budget entitled “Law Enforcement and State Security,” which deals predominantly with domestic affairs. Conspicuously, the budget for the forces associated with the ministry of internal affairs and other armed organizations outside the purview of the ministry of defense grew steadily during the 1990s and even faster since 2001. In the 2003 budget, this budget was 245 billion rubles, or 1.9 percent of GNP (in recent years it had been 1.5–1.6 percent). This allocation of scarce budget revenue could be regarded as a reflection of the Russian national security concept that, although vague, is officially responsible for prioritizing domestic security issues. Or it could be viewed as a manifestation of the post–Cold War relaxation of tensions, the end of the Soviet empire, and partnership with the former enemies in the West and in the East. Such assessments, however, would represent a serious misreading of Russia’s situation and of the condition of its armed forces. Moreover, such a benign explanation is not supported either by the structure, deployment, and training of the armed forces (about which more below) or by the ratio of resource allocation within this section of the federal budget. The ministry of internal affairs and the federal security service received the largest increases (55 percent and 51 percent respectively). After the Moscow theater hostage tragedy in October 2002, the Duma added 3 billion rubles to the budget of the federal security service. At the same time, funding for the internal troops and federal border service (primarily border guard troops) experienced a relatively small boost (36 percent and 37 percent respectively). This would seem a very odd choice of spending priorities. The internal troops bear the main burden for domestic operations (such as those in Chechnya and Northern Ossetia), they provide law enforcement in case of large-scale social and ethnic clashes, and they guard vulnerable or high-value sites against acts of terrorism.
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A reduction from their present strength of 200,000 in the course of military reform may be reasonable, but only simultaneous with their restructuring; with improvements in their equipment, mobility, and tactics; and with a shift to contract recruitment. No such steps, however, are currently envisioned. As for the border guards, in view of Russia’s new borders and perimeter insecurity after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the reduction from their present size of 180,000 armed troops and a current shortage of funding is impossible to explain from the point of view of the interests of the nation. More than 13,000 kilometers of new, porous, and almost totally transparent Russian borders—predominantly along the arc of conflicts and instability in the Caucasus and Central Asia—require the greatest possible protection. Along the stretches of the outer border of Chechnya with Georgia and Tajikistan with Afghanistan, border guards are actually engaged in permanent combat actions. Indeed, Russia’s southern borders are plagued by problems such as drug trafficking, arms smuggling and terrorist activity, organized crime, illegal immigration, and poaching. Without proper protection of this border, many other domestic security activities will be much less efficient, if not total failures: other areas likely to suffer include the antiterrorist struggle; the fight against ethnic separatism, crime, drugs, and the black market; as well as efforts to protect Russia’s natural resources and to increase state revenues. Border safety is crucial for the efficiency of the police, the special services, and the armed forces. Although in some cases the border guards may need the support of the army or internal troops, the latter can never make up for the failures of the border guards (as Chechnya and Tajikistan demonstrated). The safety of the southern and eastern borders is all the more important in view of Russia’s high-priority goal of opening its western borders—with Central and Western Europe, including among other things the planned introduction of visa-free transit by 2007. I estimate that at least 70 billion rubles are needed for the protection of Russia’s endangered new border (in addition to the costs of increasing the numbers of border guards). In 2003, however, actual expenditures were only 1 percent of that amount. In fact, only 800 million rubles were allocated for this task. The usual argument of the government about the shortage of available financial resources does not withstand scrutiny. The cumulative defense and security budget in 2003 was about 600 billion rubles. Clearly, if appropriate priorities had been established, it would
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be possible to spend much more on protecting Russia’s borders—allocating 15–20 billion rubles to new border protection would comprise less than 5 percent of overall security expenditures, but would greatly enhance the efficiency of both the defense and security services. Not doing this is another typical example of bureaucratic policymaking: inadequate funding and inefficient use of resources resulting from an inability to formulate clear and sensible national security priorities. In sum, the allocation of resources as laid out in the “Law Enforcement and State Security” section of the 2003 federal budget is indicative of the government’s strong desire to enhance the power of the police (including riot police) and the secret services over social and political dissent and opposition—commensurate with the concepts of “managed democracy” and “executive vertical power.” At the same time, efforts to fight terrorism, protect sensitive nuclear sites and materials, and secure the border for the benefit of Russia as a whole have been downgraded. The ultimate proof of this shift in focus is provided in President Putin’s decree of March 2003 to subordinate the federal border service to the federal security service. This action further enhances the political role and bureaucratic domain, budgets, and staff of the latter, while further undermining the capabilities of the former. THE CONTENT OF MILITARY REFORM: MAJOR CONSIDERATIONS
Adapting to New Strategic Realities Military reform in Russia should reflect the new strategic context within which the country now operates. Russia’s strategy and defense posture ought to be shaped by broad judgments about Russia’s place in the world, its relations with other key players, the potential threats to its interests, and the likely adversaries and contingencies that will test and challenge Moscow’s defense posture. Another major impediment to a serious reform debate and to significant military reform is the failure of Russia’s political and military elite to appropriately adjust military strategy and policy to new realities. At the heart of this failure is the persistence in military planning for the contingency of major war with the West. This does not in any way correspond to Russia’s foreign policy. Indeed, following the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, Moscow began an intensive political and economic rapprochement with Washington and
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its allies in Europe and the Far East. Not long afterward, following the tense hostage crisis in Moscow, the Russian army and its affiliated agencies were instructed to reorient to address challenges of a new breed. Russia’s revised foreign policy and doctrines, however, are not echoed in its established military policy and organization. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Russia’s armed forces—with a troop strength projected to be more than 1 million by 2004—are 70–80 percent oriented toward a war with the West (as well as Turkey and Japan). At least 90 percent of Russia’s strategic and tactical nuclear forces and its command and control and early warning complex, three largest military districts out of six, and three of the four fleets are aimed at war against the West. Aspects of Western policy unfortunately reinforce the anti-Western impulse of Russian military planners. U.S. and NATO approaches to arms control and disarmament issues and use-of-force policies, for example, do not encourage or facilitate change in Russia’s present military policy. The recent example of the U.S.-led 2003 operation in Iraq, undertaken on dubious legal grounds and without proper authorization of the UN Security Council (among its many other negative effects), was extremely counterproductive in terms of bolstering traditional threat perceptions in Russia. This is not the place for a detailed analysis of Western (especially U.S.) policy and its impact within Russia. Suffice it to say that Russia has an acute need to reform its military, it must overcome obsolete threat perceptions and outmoded planning guidelines if it is to build a modern and strong army, and Western policy has recurrently been unhelpful by offering justification for the old ways of thinking. The traditional orientation of the armed forces predominantly toward the Western strategic theater and a large-scale war deeply affects the overall size, mobilization doctrine, enlistment principle, deployment, structure, training, and armaments program of the Russian army. This is the biggest obstacle to radical military reform as far as Russian strategic and operational planning are concerned. On the other hand, preparing for war in the West is an essential component of the mentality of the Russian military. It dates from the times of Peter the Great and has survived all the revolutions and calamities of the centuries elapsed since then. This mentality does not necessarily imply a hostile attitude toward the West in political or ideological terms, nor does it reflect a real expectation of inevitable conflict. For many generations of Russian military thinkers and commanders, however, the Western threat
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has provided the framework for strategic assessments and forecasts; bearings for operational planning and innovations in tactics; and standards for the army organization and training, weapons design, and their use. Depriving the Russian military of the Western theater is akin to denying Kepler’s laws of astrodynamics to space scientists and engineers. Nonetheless, the Gordian knot of problems afflicting Russian military policy and military reform cannot be cut unless political leaders make a historic decision and translate this into action. Specifically, they must instruct the military to exclude from its present military doctrine, strategy and basic operational plans, the armed forces’ deployment, combat training, and procurement programs all scenarios for a large-scale conventional war with NATO in Europe, as well as with the United States and Japan in the Far East. European-based military districts and fleets, which rely on a well-developed rear infrastructure, must be viewed mainly as a base for troops and forces intended for operation in other theaters, for peacekeeping operations in the Commonwealth of Independent States and other regions of the world, and for counterterrorist operations wherever needed. The probability of Russia becoming involved in a war with NATO in the foreseeable future is almost nonexistent, given the objective interests of both Russia and the NATO member states, not to mention the catastrophic consequences such a conflict would entail. However, Russia can cope with the minimal probability of such a conflict through an optimal nuclear deterrence capability at the strategic and theater/tactical levels. Whatever residual threat from the West remains does not need to dominate Russian military planning at the conventional level. Although the war in Iraq has created great doubts within Russia’s strategic community, the majority of its members still believe that the main direct threat to the country’s security now derives from the South along an extended “arc of instability.” This area stretches from the Dniestr Region in Moldova, to the Crimea, to the mountain ranges of the Pamirs and Tian Shan in Central Asia. However, this threat does not take the traditional form of aggression by organized armed forces. It derives from extreme nationalist and religious organizations that use guerrilla tactics to wage transborder warfare (in which internal and external conflicts merge) against Russia in the Caucasus and its allies throughout Central Asia. Russia is also facing other threats of a new type that may cause conflicts, including: terrorism, arms and drug trafficking, illegal migration and organized transnational crime, poaching, and smuggling.
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To counter these threats, the armed forces must perform unusual missions and operate jointly with the interior ministry, the border guard troops, law enforcement services, and intelligence agencies. Operations of this kind demand a much smaller, yet highly mobile, well-trained, and well-equipped professional army. The most successful recent regional operation—the American-led Shock and Awe operation in Iraq in 2003—involved some 250,000 U.S. and allied troops, 1,000 combat aircraft, 2,000 armored vehicles, and 1,000 artillery pieces. A Russian force of the same size and quality would be enough to defend Russia’s interests against the largest possible threat in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Russia could easily deploy such a force from its 550,000-memberstrong army, provided that reservists from among former contract soldiers and from other forces are mobilized. What is important to understand about the new type of warfare demonstrated in Iraq, but not yet understood by the majority of the Russian military, is that numbers of airplanes and tanks are not the most important component of victory. Instead, the number of sophisticated precision-guided strike systems and their command and control and information support, as well as the tight coordination of actions by ground, air, and naval units, were the key to the amazing success of the Shock and Awe operation. Thus, selected units from such an army would be capable of operating effectively in low-intensity local conflicts, supporting the interior ministry and border guard troops, as well as participating in peacekeeping and counterterrorist operations, either on their own or jointly with other troops and law enforcement contingents. Manpower and Military Reform: Seeking a Small Professional Force Russia’s strategic concept bears directly on one of the central and most contentious aspects of the military reform debate: the question of military manpower. At issue are two inextricably linked sets of questions. First, how large do Russian armed forces need to be? Is it necessary to preserve the enormous inherited force posture and associated mobilization potential or not? Second, how should Russia’s military manpower be recruited? Is it desirable to retain the traditional conscript system, or should Russia move in the direction of an all-volunteer professional force (known in the Russian context as the contract manpower system)? For Russia’s military reformers, the answer to these questions is not only clear but vitally important: Russia should aim for a much smaller military
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force, and it should change its principle of recruitment by shifting from the draft to voluntary contract. Only in this way can Russia create a modernized, effective, affordable military suitable to its needs. But the abandonment of the conscript system has been deeply unpopular with— indeed, basically unacceptable to—Russia’s defense establishment. Hence, this issue, which has long been at the center of public debates, has gained both political prominence and symbolic importance. New Strategic Concept, Smaller Army. Russia’s armed forces strongly prefer to preserve a large conscript army and to maintain an enormous mobilization capacity. The inability to maintain a numerically large and combat-ready reserve for general mobilization is presently the main argument against a professional army. This concept, in line with the traditions of the Soviet and czarist Russian armies, is deeply rooted in the mentality of the officer corps and a large part of the political and strategic community, as well as the general public. However, this mentality is strongly linked to visions of large wars that Russia is unlikely ever to fight and in concepts of warfare that are out of step with the modern era of military power. Elementary strategic analysis shows that these stereotypes are both outdated and unrealistic. Presumably, in some imaginable scenario of another “big” war— such as World War II or the potential conflict envisioned during the Cold War—hypothetical Russian opponents could only be NATO or China. In either case, hostilities would soon escalate into a major conflict involving the use of weapons of mass destruction, which is openly implied by Russia’s military doctrine. The doctrine unequivocally prescribes first use of nuclear weapons “in response to large-scale aggression involving the use of conventional weapons in situations critical to the Russian Federation’s national security.” Understandably, mobilization in this case would be both impossible and pointless. Even supposing there was a delay in employing nuclear weapons in such a hypothetical war, this would still leave little opportunity for general mobilization. Recent conflicts have demonstrated that in any engagement with NATO forces there could not be an invulnerable rear, as was the case in both world wars. Today, conventional long-range, highprecision missiles and guided bombs are capable of quickly destroying defense industry facilities, the infrastructure of storage facilities, and transportation and logistical support systems throughout a given territory.
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All of this could be accomplished before the target country has had time to mobilize, arm, train, and dispatch millions of its reservists to the front. Russia does not even have, and is unlikely to have in the foreseeable future, enough weapons and equipment in satisfactory condition for these reservists, except for light armaments, which would not matter much in a “big” war. A hypothetical large-scale war with China would have a different character. In the foreseeable future, the People’s Republic will hardly be able to raise conventional forces comparable to those of NATO, especially in terms of its long-range, high-precision weapons. But any competition with China in mobilizing reservists in a prewar or wartime situation would be absolutely hopeless considering China’s unlimited manpower resources, as well as its geostrategic advantages in the likely zone of some hypothetical conflict (the Transbaikal Region and the Far East). Thus, whether the hypothetical opponent is NATO or China, a large mobilization potential does Russia little good even if one takes the threat scenario seriously. But it is also important to point out that it makes little sense for Russia to plan its military requirements around a large-scale war with NATO when Russia has good relations with almost all NATO members. This is simply not a realistic threat assessment, and it should not stand in the way of much-needed reform of Russia’s military manpower system. Other possible flash points that must be given consideration, such as regional or local conflicts, peacekeeping missions, and antiterrorist operations, would not require a general mobilization, at least not the kind of general mobilization that was carried out during World War II and is still being planned by the Russian defense ministry (requiring several million people). There is still some truth in the argument that reserves may be necessary in some circumstances. But there is no reason to assume that a professional army is incompatible with the maintenance of effective reserves. It should be noted, for example, that during some of the more recent overseas conflicts, the United States and its allies activated their reservists (National Guard) in unison with their professional troops. This demonstrates that a limited reserve is quite compatible with a professional army. Russia, too, may require an additional contingent to reinforce its regular troops or replace them when they are deployed to remote regions. Such a reserve contingent (an additional 50–70 percent of the regular
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army’s strength) has not been ruled out; indeed, military reformers propose and expect a reserve force to be retained when the conscripted armed forces finally become a professional army. This category of servicemen may include those who have already served as volunteers, and their contract should bind them to duty in a combat-ready reserve until they reach a certain age. Also, the personnel of other Russian forces (such as internal troops or border guards), whose strength is now comparable to that of the traditional armed forces, must be duly trained to reinforce the regular army. Naturally, these servicemen will be more professional than the present-day conscript-reservists. Besides, in five years, there will still be some 4 million first-category reservists who will have served out their conscription terms before 2003, and 2 million in ten years—which is enough to solve all of the reserve problems associated with an allvolunteer army. In short, the arguments for keeping Russia’s large conscript-based army and related mobilization base of reserve manpower simply do not withstand close scrutiny. Russia does not need this force, and it is not relevant to a realistic assessment of Russia’s likely adversaries and threats. Thus one of the major arguments against moving to a professional army is not at all persuasive. Of course, giving up the traditional idea of a massive military reserve is very difficult and painful for any military organization that is largely built upon this principle, as is the Russian variety. That is why ongoing pleas for the rationalization of the military may not be enough to persuade the defense ministry of the need for change; this will probably require a resolute and unequivocal decision made at the highest levels of government. Can Russia Afford a Professional Military? Another prominent argument against moving to an all-volunteer force claims that this reform is simply too expensive, that Russia cannot afford a sufficient force if it must pay officers and soldiers living wages that make military service competitive with career alternatives in the civilian economy. Particularly in view of Russia’s ongoing budget difficulties and the insufficient funds available for defense, the manpower costs associated with professionalization are said to be simply prohibitive. It is appropriate to raise such practical considerations. And it is true that budgetary constraints put stringent limitations on what is possible, in contrast to what may be desirable. It is simply not true, however, that
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Russia cannot afford an adequate professional force. With a realistic strategic concept and sensible military planning, Russia can muster a professional force that is not merely sufficient but that will provide it with more usable military capability than the current large, poorly trained, and poorly armed force. An analysis of this issue must begin with the financial resources that are actually available to the Russian defense establishment. As mentioned above, within Russian strategic think tanks (including specialists both in and beyond the military service), a consensus has been reached that the acceptable level of defense spending—according to Russian and international standards of defense sufficiency—must be approximately 3.5 percent of GNP. Russia’s federal budget for 2003 allocated approximately 345 billion rubles, or 2.7 percent of GNP, for national defense. To all appearances, the maximum level of defense spending that can be achieved during peacetime is no more than 3 percent of GNP. If the 2003 budget allocated 3 percent of GNP for defense, that would mean an additional 40-odd billion rubles, bringing the total defense spending figure to 390 billion rubles. Such an increase would probably be possible if the budget was fully open and sensibly presented to the political and strategic community as well as the general public. In this way, interested parties would be given the opportunity to understand and support the kind of military policy funded by the taxpayers’ money. This decisive factor is the starting point for subsequent analysis. A second indisputable fact is that the servicemen of the Russian army must enjoy a respectable standard of living, at least by Russian standards. Given current prices, the monthly salary of a junior officer, for example, should be at least 10,000 rubles. (Presently, the monthly salary of a junior officer is about 6,000 rubles, or about $200.) How many professional soldiers could Russia afford given these assumptions? This depends, of course, on the model of professionalization chosen and on allocation decisions within the defense budget. One approach, for example, would be to raise the salaries of the officer corps while continuing to draft ordinary soldiers. Available modeling methodology indicates that if salaries are proportionally adjusted for all officers, and all other expenditures for the armed forces remain within the aforementioned budget restraints (3 percent of GNP), Russia could afford to maintain an 800,000-strong army, with a 1:3 ratio of officers to privates. In this scenario, the armed forces would continue to spend a mere 30
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percent of its budget on investment (R&D, procurement of arms and military equipment, capital construction, and armament repair), as it did from the late 1990s to the beginning of the present decade. But if the funding of technological investments is to be raised to at least 40 percent of the defense budget, as officially proclaimed, the strength of the Russian army could be maintained at no more than 700,000 men. A more comprehensive approach to professionalization would extend the contract manpower system to troops as well as to officers. In a hightechnology world, this more comprehensive approach to professionalization is clearly desirable. To master the new military technologies and innovative tactics of modern warfare, as well as eradicate barracks violence (“hazing”) and other corruptive trends now present in the army, the armed forces will need higher-quality recruits. In the opinion of this author and many other like-minded individuals, this can be achieved only if Russia starts enlisting privates and sergeants for its armed forces on a contractual basis. If Russia goes down this path, what kind of military could it afford? Under these conditions, the above calculations imply that Russia could support a volunteer army of 550,000 men (provided the contract privates are paid at least 5,000 rubles a month). A contract army has huge advantages over a conscription-based army. Importantly, it is more suitable to warfare in the modern age. In recent wars involving advanced professional armies, the record suggests that well-trained all-volunteer forces suffer fewer fatalities and inflict limited collateral damage. U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf in 1991 and 2003 and in Afghanistan in 2001–02 clearly demonstrate the advantages of a professional all-volunteer army. Similarly, the experience of the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and Russia’s two Chechen campaigns in the last decade have proven the disadvantages of a conscript army. Considering the financial constraints discussed above, the strength of the Russian army can vary between 550,000 and 700,000 servicemen, depending on whether professionalization is comprehensive or limited to the officer corps. The more limited approach results in a larger force, but a gain of 150,000 soldiers in strength provided through conscription does not compensate for the loss of personnel quality compared to a professional army. In any case, this difference in manpower is not critical in comparison with other factors that affect Russian security (e.g., the level of border protection, the acuteness of ethnic conflicts inside the country
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and on its periphery, relations with neighboring countries, the state of affairs with respect to disarmament and nonproliferation of weapons in the world, etc.). The above calculations were based on the following assumptions: first, the defense budget was raised to at least 3 percent of Russia’s GNP, and second, the budget and underlying military policy were opened to serious public and parliamentary scrutiny and clearly geared to radical reform. If the budget stays at its present level (2.7 percent of GNP), the numbers of military personnel under the same assumptions would be considerably lower. Another way of looking at the problem is to consider the cost of professionalizing the current force of nearly 1.2 million men. If the present army was shifted to an all-volunteer force and military pay was doubled (to attract more capable individuals to contract service and to adjust officers’ pay appropriately), this would add 100 billion rubles (or 25 percent) to the defense budget. If the armed forces were cut to 800,000 men, the additional costs would be much smaller—an additional 32 billion rubles, plus 27 billion in expenditures to cover the costs of the reduction: altogether 59 billion rubles more (15 percent). After the cuts were made, additional costs of an all-volunteer army would be only about 30 billion rubles (plus 10 percent). In view of the magnitude of the reform effort, this proposal would be much less expensive to carry out than the current ministry of defense and government projections claim. If the reform is implemented in a rational and consistent way, it is affordable. Thus, contrary to charges from the critics of manpower reform, Russia can in fact afford a professional army that can meet its needs. However, the Russian defense bureaucracy will never voluntarily accept such a program and will remain either explicitly or tacitly interested in the failure of the whole concept. Feeble Efforts to Reform Russia’s Military Manpower System. Military reformers believe that the main arguments against moving to a contract manpower professional army are unconvincing and can be refuted. They further believe that reforming the military manpower system is crucial to the entire military reform project. Only by moving to a smaller, well-trained, highly professional force will Russia be able to improve the quality of its military capability and eventually pursue a muchneeded program of modernization. Efforts to introduce manpower reform
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can be found in the program and budget of the Russian government. However, the available facts demonstrate not major progress or a serious commitment to reform, but feeble, halfhearted efforts that bear the mark of a defense bureaucracy unenthusiastic about manpower reform. This concern is clearly evident in the 2003 federal budget. Its “Military Reform” section (which is separate from the “National Defense” section) deals only with the reduction of military personnel, including the provision of retirement bonuses, housing, and transportation for retired servicemen. For the first time in recent years, this budget has declined even in current prices: from 16.5 billion rubles in 2002 to 14.6 billion rubles in 2003. This proves that the reduction in the Russian armed forces is slowing down. Indeed, the number of newly retired personnel will be three times smaller than in 2002 (about 30,000 men). This is highly significant for one fundamental reason. The current force consumes so much just to sustain itself that few resources are left for military reform efforts that could ultimately strengthen the force. Curtailing the process of personnel reduction is a typically bureaucratic method of subverting the reform effort. Among other things, this would impede the shift from draft to contract manpower. Meanwhile, the 2003 federal budget includes 1.2 billion rubles in direct expenditures for reforming the recruitment process. Allegedly this could provide for the transfer to contract status of 30,000 men, or about four ground forces divisions. However, all the money is slated to be spent on an “experiment” that involves the introduction of contract manpower in only one major unit, the 76th Pskov Paratroop Division. Most of the funding will go toward upgrading housing and rear infrastructure, instead of increasing soldiers’ pay and allowing them to take care of their own housing needs (either by living in casernes or renting apartments). Clearly, the military command is trying to improve housing and social infrastructure for the unit as a whole under cover of this “experiment.” Such an experiment, however, is not necessary because a fully contract division already exists—the 201st Division deployed in Tajikistan, which has displayed some of the considerable advantages of an all-volunteer army. The armed forces command, however, has chosen to downplay this positive experience. In fact, it appears that Russia’s high command is hoping to use this latest experiment to prove that a contract army is beyond Russia’s budget capabilities—hence the least rational way of using available financial resources.
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The recruitment plan of the ministry of defense was unveiled in November 2001 and tentatively approved by President Putin in March 2003. According to publicly available information, the plan calls for a shift to contract of about one-fourth of Russian troops (i.e., a total of 167,000 troops, 130,000 of whom are in the armed forces) by the end of 2007. The first to transform would be the units of upgraded combat readiness, which are primarily in the ground forces. Implementation of the plan, however, will be slow and costly and will ultimately be ineffective. In terms of expense, for example, the ministry of defense estimates the annual cost of its plan for moving to a contract system to be 15–20 billion rubles, of which 90 percent will go toward improvements in housing, social infrastructure, training, and repair and maintenance of weapons and equipment. (Apparently, such improvements are not considered necessary for a draft army.) Thus, over four years this part of the military reform program will cost about 80 billion rubles—for having just 15 percent of the army (25 percent of the private personnel) on contract (beside officers), serving in about 160 units (divisions, brigades, regiments, and battalions). Although very costly, the plan does not move very far in the direction of a contract military; in fact in 1997 there were more contract soldiers in the Russian army (although mostly not in combat units or posts). No doubt, this is a textbook bureaucratic reform plan that is destined (and most probably designed) simply to fade away. It will not enhance the quality of army personnel, equipment, or operations; nor will it help to solve the acute problems of the armed forces or defense industries. CONCLUSION: HOW TO REFORM THE RUSSIAN MILITARY
This discussion of Russia’s resource limitations, realistic military requirements, and manpower reform options lead to some clear conclusions about the desirable profile of military reform in the period ahead. What would be an ideal, or at least attractive, scenario for military reform in Russia? Russia needs to take three steps over the next two to three years to definitively escape the tyranny of the conscript-based, mass mobilization army that it now possesses—and that is such an unsatisfactory burden in Russia’s effort to craft a serious and effective security policy. First, the armed forces must be reduced to a level of approximately 800,000.
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Second, it must shift to an all-volunteer contract service system aiming at a compact force of highly trained professionals rather than a larger force of poorly trained and unmotivated conscripts. Third, to attract the desired numbers and quality of personnel for a contract force, there must be a doubling of the wages of contract privates, officers, and generals. This will, of course, impose additional budgetary costs, but these should be affordable—cumulatively estimated to be an additional 32 billion rubles (in 2003 prices) in the “National Defense” section, and additional 27 billion rubles in the “Military Reform” section of the Russian federal budget. For this approach to succeed, it must be implemented properly. In contrast to the current official plan, for example, during the first year the troops to be transferred to contract should not be the high-readiness units of the ground forces, but the autonomous branches of the Russian military that have a relatively high proportion of officers to privates, being by their nature high-alert forces that deal with the most complex and sophisticated weapons and equipment. These are: the strategic missile forces and other components of the strategic nuclear forces (in the navy and air force), the military space forces, the space missile defense forces, air force air-defense units, as well as airborne troops, nucleartechnical troops (12th Directorate), and special forces (of the Main Intelligence Directorate). These troops (altogether about 200,000) must be the first to become all-professional forces, and it would not cost the country much: an additional 3 percent of the 2003 defense budget. Following this, the rest of the armed forces—large contingents of the air force, navy, and finally ground forces—should shift to full contract. The current plan of shifting to contract the high-readiness units of all armed services is unreasonable, wasteful, and reflective of the outdated Cold War mentality of the military; it is not based on a rational threat assessment. Other than the high-technology and high-alert forces mentioned above, which should be the first to transfer to all-volunteer service, there is no reason to keep on high alert any units of the three big armed services. During the time required to shift the entire army to contract, one ground forces division (the 201st) and four paratroop divisions would be enough to engage in the most demanding imaginable contingencies. Moving rapidly toward a professional force would overcome public reluctance to sending drafted soldiers into combat, and the units that do the actual fighting would be much more efficient.
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In the ground forces, high-readiness units are those that are fully manned; in the air force and navy, those on high-alert status are ready to go into combat within a few hours or days. The whole concept of having partly manned units to be filled with reservists in the course of mobilization, as well as keeping some air force and navy conventional force units on high alert, is another example of the lingering Cold War mentality of those in the defense and security establishment contemplating large-scale conventional wars and surprise attacks of the West. These ideas should finally be abandoned. All units in the armed forces ought to be fully manned. Besides the above-mentioned “naturally” high-alert forces, all other troops need not be on high alert. A relatively limited contingent of reservists should be able to form fully manned units of their own either to replace regular troops that have been deployed or reinforce them in combat theaters. Unlike the present government plan, most additional funding should be directed toward increasing military pay and providing officers with housing. Meanwhile, contract soldiers should be able to decide for themselves whether to live in casernes to save money or to rent apartments (and live with their families). Additional bonuses may encourage contract enlistment: a system of subsidies for future acquisition of housing, advantages at later entering military colleges, and easy acquisition of Russian citizenship for Russian-speaking people in other post-Soviet states. Completion of all these steps would put the Russian manpower system on much more sound footing. Improving the manpower recruitment system, however, is only the beginning of the military reform effort that is needed to provide Russia with a suitable, usable, modern military force. It is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for greatly bolstering Russia’s defense and adapting it to new challenges and threats. It would simply prepare the ground for a massive rearmament of the army, improving training and combat readiness and mastering an advanced style of warfare commensurate with new contingencies. Such an effort would raise a number of other major issues—including advancing R&D, expanding procurement for qualitative rearming, raising combat readiness, and so on—that would likely require considerable additional funding (at least 50–60 billion rubles annually). All of these issues will pose significant challenges, but they will be impossible to address successfully without reforming the manpower system.
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A smaller professional force will require some organizational adjustments. In contrast to the present trend of subordinating operational control of the armed forces in peacetime and in wartime to the General Staff and armed services, such control should be delegated to regional and specified commands, similar to the policy of other advanced military powers. In normal conditions the commands should be subordinated to the minister of defense and in an emergency directly to the president and defense council. Likewise the cumbersome Cold War structures of military districts, armies, and divisions should give way to regional commands and strategic directions, brigades, and battalions that are more flexible and suitable to new contingencies. If this suite of measures were to be achieved in the next several years, the subsequent two- to three-year phase should consist of the further reduction of the army to 550,000–600,000 troops, in parallel with their retraining for new contingencies. From the viewpoint of manpower and other resources, this is the desirable size of the Russian military. A 550,000-strong professional army could ensure the highest quality for Russia’s armed forces for the next 10 to 15 years. At the same time, Russia should undertake to the extent it can the massive rearmament of the armed forces, which would include the newest and most technologically advanced weapons and other combat equipment. This is a formidable task, but it is necessary if Russia is to cope with new threats and challenges.
CHAPTER 4
Russia, Regional Conflict, and the Use of Military Power ROY ALLISON
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he new Russian armed forces have been encumbered with a Soviet heritage of military thinking and organization that is poorly suited to the reality of regional conflicts and the prospect of new conflicts on the periphery of Russia and in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The use of military power by the Soviet Union in earlier years, including the Afghanistan debacle in the 1980s, provided no helpful guidelines for the appropriate responses to new challenges in unfamiliar environments, particularly those posed by regional and local conflicts in the post-Soviet “southern tier.”1 When the diversity and unpredictability of these new conflicts are also taken into account, it is hardly surprising that Russia mostly responded in an ad hoc way in the early and mid-1990s and only subsequently found political and military justifications for them. More surprising is that since this period Russia has exerted little effort to initiate military reforms to cope with the regional conflicts in which it has intervened or in which it is likely to intervene. It is striking that RusThis chapter incorporates research on Russian policy in Central Asia conducted under the project Subregionalism and Foreign Policy Transformation: Russia and Iran in Central Asia, supported by Economic and Social Research Council award R000239137-A. 1
See Roy Allison, “The Soviet Use of Military Power,” in Carl Jacobsen, ed., Strategic Power US/USSR (London: Macmillan, 1990); for an overview of the new conflicts, see Emil Pain, “Contagious Ethnic Conflicts and Border Disputes along Russia’s Southern Flank,” in Rajan Menon, Yuri Fedorov, and Ghia Nodia, eds., Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia: The Twenty-first Century Security Environment (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999), pp. 177–202. T H E R U S S I A N M I L I TA RY
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sia’s two Chechnya campaigns (1994–96 and 1999 to the present) have failed to act as the catalyst for such a process or to generate a body of experience that is regarded as relevant for other regional conflicts. Moreover, rather than prompting a broader reform of the military, Russian military performance in the Chechnya conflicts appears to have made such reform, as a managed systematic process, unachievable. As a result Russia has been compelled to operate with the military it actually has, with all its ongoing weaknesses, in response to regional military challenges. The analysis of the Russian exercise of military power in various conflicts presented in this chapter reveals the difficulty of regulating the use of military means with a military organization that remains ill suited for the tasks that confront it. This lack of coherent principles governing the use of Russian military power in regional conflicts is evident in the conduct of both Chechen campaigns, which represent the most important and high-profile use of force by the post-Soviet Russian military. This chapter begins with an analysis of these campaigns. It shows how Russia failed to understand and adapt to the nature of low-intensity regional conflict involving substate actors and tried to sustain an alternative model of warfare in Chechnya. It is particularly striking that Russian military learning during years of combat in Chechnya has been so limited, and that Russia has failed to internalize any significant lessons from Chechnya that might be generalized to other regional conflicts. This core theme relates to the broader contention in this volume: that the Russian military in its current composition may be unreformable. The second section compares the conduct of the Russian military in the Chechnya campaigns with its participation in a variety of regional conflicts in CIS states in the first half of the 1990s: in Transdniester, Abkhazia (and briefly in Mingrelia), in South Ossetia, and in Tajikistan. With the exception of Tajikistan, Moscow was involved in combat operations only briefly in each case. Over time, the use of Russian troops became somewhat more regulated and constrained. However, the Russian military presence in these conflicts was highly politicized, especially initially, and it reflected broader if inconsistent policy goals toward CIS states and Russian conceptions of the CIS “space.” The continued deployment of Russian troops in these “frozen conflicts” has represented a form of peace enforcement more than peacekeeping. The characteristics of so-called Russian peacekeeping in the CIS region have been exhaustively studied and are not a principal concern of this chapter. However, the development of a body of Russian military
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thinking about the conduct of such peacekeeping operations suggests an attempt to systematize military conduct in them and deserves attention. A separate analysis is made of those few and fortunately atypical occasions when Russian participation in regional conflicts in CIS states has risked, or could risk, escalation and confrontation with other regional or great powers. The Russian campaigns in Chechnya represent an inner circle of conflict—in the Russian Federation. A second concentric circle is formed by its military engagement in various conflicts in CIS states. Russian national interests beyond the CIS zone are far weaker. But Moscow’s responses to major regional conflicts outside or primarily outside the CIS zone, which involve Western states as combatants rather than Russia, are revealing. The NATO campaign in Kosovo in 1999 was a case of high-intensity regional warfare, while the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan since 2001 represents a combination of high- and low-intensity operations in a regional conflict. In both cases Russia claimed to have significant interests, although it was not a direct participant. The third section of this chapter examines Russian interpretations of these campaigns (as well as the Russian response to the earlier Taliban threat) and provides some analysis of the Russian reaction to the Iraq war in 2003. A key issue is whether, in observing these conflicts, Russian leaders have been encouraged to reconsider their own use of military power, especially the relationship between military/military-technological capabilities and political objectives in regional conflicts. THE RUSSIAN MILITARY CAMPAIGNS IN CHECHNYA
The Challenge of New Forms of Warfare There is little evidence that in the early 1990s Russian military leaders understood the character or demands of low-intensity regional conflicts involving substate actors. The failure of their campaign in Afghanistan in the 1980s appears to have left surprisingly little imprint on military theory or on operations, except on the tactical level. Despite a flurry of military activity in emerging CIS conflict zones, the dead weight of former Soviet military practice and the multiple demands of transition from former Soviet force deployments prevented serious thinking about adjustments to the complexities of the new conflicts. The Russian military doctrine of 1993 recognized that local wars and armed conflicts posed the main danger to peace and security. But local
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wars were narrowly defined by military theorists as involving combat between two or several states in a limited geographic area, whereas regional warfare was perceived as conducted by several large states of a particular region or their coalitions.2 Low-intensity conflict was also understood predominantly in state-centric terms—as limited political or military action taken by a state and aimed at supporting other friendly states. Russian military thinking found it difficult to internalize forms of conflict involving irregular operations, especially those undertaken by substate military formations. It was easier to view irregular operations as an extension of state policy.3 A few Russian military analysts tentatively began to rethink the sources of possible local wars and armed conflicts. They listed interethnic differences in the North and South Caucasus and religious differences in Central Asia alongside more traditional concerns about territorial claims.4 There was a growing realization of the possibility of new religious or “national liberation” wars of low intensity, which may be linked to terrorism, in the Caucasus and Central Asia. They argued that “the bitter experience of Afghanistan [in the 1980s] shows that our military science is giving obviously insufficient attention to the study and analysis of military actions in conflicts of various intensity.”5 2
Maj. Gen. I. N. Manzhurin (ret.), “The Specifics of Conducting Military Actions in Medium- and Low-Intensity Conflicts,” Military Thought, no. 1 (January 1994), p. 15. 3 Russian combat operations in Afghanistan were extensively studied in the West. See Scott McMichael, Stumbling Bear: Soviet Military Performance in Afghanistan (London: Brassey’s, 1991); and Lester Grau, The Bear Went over the Mountain: Soviet Tactics and Tactical Lessons Learned during the War in Afghanistan (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996). But it took more than a decade after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan for the first detailed Russian military analysis to appear; see Mahkmut Gareev, Afganskay strada (Moscow: Insan, 1999). These studies show that over time the Soviet Union did develop counterinsurgency tactics and strategy in Afghanistan. 4 Col. Gen. V. M. Barynkin, “Lokal’nye voyny na sovremennom etape,” Voennaya mysl’, no. 6 (June 1994), pp. 8, 11. 5 Manzhurin, “The Specifics of Conducting Military Actions in Medium- and Low-Intensity Conflicts,” p. 21. See also Col. Gen. V. M. Barynkin, “Basic Trends and Evolution of Forms and Methods of Employment of Troops (Forces) in Local Wars,” Military Thought, nos. 9/10 (September/October, 1994), pp. 31–39; and Lt. Gen. V. N. Maganov, “Forms and Methods of
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This assessment was borne out by the conduct of operations in the 1994–96 Chechnya campaign. In principle one might expect that Russian defeats would have provided a powerful catalyst for a radical shift in Russian military thinking about the nature of regional conflicts. It certainly prompted some detailed analysis by civilian specialists of the distinctions between interstate conflicts, on the one hand, and internal conflicts and civil wars, on the other, that pitted governments against armed and organized opposition.6 One specialist argued cogently in 1996, for example, that a new category of conflicts should be formulated: “limited military conflicts that combine internal conflicts, specifically internationalized civil wars.” Russia could be involved in such a conflict in four ways. It could be (1) a direct participant, (2) an ally of one of the participants in an international limited conflict, (3) an ally of one of the participants of an internal limited military conflict, or (4) a third party carrying out stabilization measures in the conflict zone. The latter could take the form of direct unilateral intervention or a form of peacekeeping operations to maintain a cease-fire. Each option requires specific forms of political and military support of Russian operations and organizational changes, such as the creation of a centralized command for special purpose troops. For planning purposes, it was suggested, Russia should have the capabilities to engage in three such limited military conflicts simultaneously as well as the potential for crisis reinforcement if the situation deteriorated in one of the limited military conflicts.7 It is possible that such new thinking on limited conflicts was aired within the Russian General Staff during the period between the two Chechnya campaigns. But there is no evidence that corresponding plans or organizational blueprints were developed. As the 1990s progressed, it became clear that the first Chechnya campaign had not been a catalyst to Employing Troops (Forces) in Armed Conflicts and Local Wars,” Military Thought, no. 2 (March/April 1996). 6 For example, D. Malysheva, “Konflikty na yuge SNG i na Blizhnem i Srednem Vostoke,” Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, no. 10 (October 1995), pp. 32–45. 7 Dmitri Evstafiev in Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, no. 1 (January 1996), p. 2. The author, a senior research fellow at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, developed his views in “Security of Russia and a Deadly Paradigm of Limited Military Conflict,” in Former Soviet Union Fifteen Nations: Policy and Security (henceforth FSU 15 Nations), June 1996, pp. 3–7.
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overcome Russian military inertia and conservatism. Moreover, the defense funding and political will by the civilian leadership to create and maintain the forces and structures appropriate for the new limited military conflicts were absent. Overall, few relevant lessons from the 1994–96 Chechnya campaign were actually internalized in the organization or training of the Russian armed forces (see below). Paradoxically, once the new war began in Chechnya in 1999, any possibility of serious reform of the Russian military to suit the new realities of limited military conflict was subsumed to immediate combat requirements. An effective reform could not be undertaken in the middle of this war, which month by month has been eroding Russian material and human military reserves, taking a toll on the morale and psychological health of officers and soldiers, and fueling wide-scale corruption. The continuing combat in Chechnya is comparable to the “bleeding wound” that Afghanistan became for the Soviet Union, despite the official tendency in both cases to downplay the scale and nature of the operations under way. The Chechnya Campaigns—“Premodern” Warfare The Russian use of military power in Chechnya overall has resembled Soviet operations in Afghanistan also in the sense that it can be distinguished from Western constructs of “modern military operations” and deployments.8 An important feature of the “premodern” nature of Russian military conduct in Chechnya has been its lack of sensitivity to the international norms on the application of force that have been emerging among more economically, politically, and societally secure Western states. This applies particularly to the treatment of civilian populations during military operations.9 In this sense, and because they involve an “internal” conflict, Russian operations in Chechnya have been distinct from Russian peacekeeping or peace-enforcement activities in CIS states and the Balkans. Indeed, before 8
For a comparison of military culture in these conflicts, see Robert M. Cassidy, Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya: Military Strategic Culture and the Paradoxes of Asymmetric Conflict (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, February 2003). 9 The best analysis of this issue is contained in Matthew Evangelista, The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union? (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002), pp. 139–177. The insensitivity of the Russian military to the laws of war is examined in pp. 156–161.
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the start of the first Chechnya campaign in December 1994, the Russian leadership did not even seriously consider the option of peacekeeping measures in Chechnya as an alternative to the use of force. Because President Boris Yeltsin relied on an inner circle of hard-line advisers, valuable input from civilian and military departments dealing with crisis management or peacekeeping options never reached his desk.10 The military campaigns in Chechnya raise the key question of whether the Russian armed forces are capable of adopting “modern” operating principles in protecting perceived vital national interests, with respect to both the role of military forces and the means of conducting warfare.11 This depends on how far Russian experiences in Chechnya have contributed to a learning process in Moscow about appropriate responses to regional conflicts and the necessary constraints on military power. In fact, Russian military leaders have been reluctant to draw lessons from the “internal” Chechnya conflicts for their understanding of “local wars” or regional warfare in other theaters, except at the tactical level. This makes it difficult to discern any patterns from the military operations in Chechnya that apply more generally to the Russian use of military force. Russian commanders were also loath to draw implications from the serious resource and budgetary constraints that the Chechnya campaigns revealed. This was the case despite a growing body of analysis, mostly Western, on Russian organizational and operational weaknesses in Chechnya that reveals broader limitations on Russian military capabilities. The first Chechnya campaign, like the Afghanistan operation, showed that Russian/Soviet planning focused on the achievement of final objectives rather than on the practical elements of implementing military policy. An overconfident military leadership engaged in superficial planning, preparations, and intelligence. Russian conduct in Chechnya reconfirmed the historical low valuation of societal-military relations in Russia and the Soviet Union. The focus on ultimate objectives encouraged a disregard for human life, whether Russian or Chechen, and little attention to the modern conception of operational “legitimacy.” 10
See Timothy Thomas, “The Russian Armed Forces in Chechnya,” in John Mackinlay and Peter Cross, eds., Regional Peacekeepers: The Paradox of Russian Peacekeeping (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2003), pp. 111–131. 11 My analysis here follows Robert Garwood, “The Second Russo-Chechen Conflict (1999 to date): ‘A Modern Military Operation,’” Journal of Slavic Military Studies, vol. 15, no. 3 (September 2002), pp. 60–80.
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In the second Chechnya campaign, the weaker position of the militants has allowed the image of a modern clinical mission to be partially constructed, at least in Russian eyes, and Moscow seems to have assimilated some tactical lessons from the first Chechnya war. The Russian military, however, has failed overall to develop a more modern professional counterinsurgency operation and to fundamentally transform the premodern characteristics mentioned above, particularly a dependence on firepower and insensitivity to human and physical destruction.12 Russian commanders rejected the strategic lesson that the use of force, irrespective of how it is packaged, has limited utility in such an asymmetrical conflict.13 The absence of operational inhibitions associated with a modern paradigm of warfare remained, and the Russian military still essentially failed to understand the nature of the highly flexible and resilient substate opposition it confronted. This and the failure to try to create a “war termination” plan after the seizure of territory and Grozny, the Chechen capital, have left the Russian military with no clear means of defeating the insurgents.14 This has been acknowledged by more clear-sighted Russian observers, who point to continuing large-scale resistance by Chechen fighters, despite claims by Russian officials and the Russian Security Council that the combat phase of the Chechnya “counterterrorist operation” has been accomplished.15 The Chechnya Campaigns—A Failure in Military Learning The Chechen campaigns, as previously observed, have not had the effect of persuading Russia to modernize its official thinking overall on limited military conflicts except in modifying tactical training, some commandstaff exercises, and tactical-level recommendations about the role that a 12
For a detailed catalogue of continued Russian military deficiencies in the second Chechnya campaign, see Pavel Felgenhauer, “The Russian Army in Chechnya,” Central Asian Survey, vol. 21, no. 2 (June 2002), pp. 157–166. See also Anne Aldis, ed., The Second Chechen War (Camberley, UK: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, June 2000); and Alexei Malashenko and Dmitri Trenin, Vremya yuga: Rossiya v Chechne, Chechnya v Rossii (Moscow: Moscow Carnegie Center, September 2002). 13 Cassidy, Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya. 14 Ibid., pp. 74, 87. 15 See Salavat Suleimanov in Nezavisimoe voennoe obozreniye, no. 3 (February, 2002); for the Security Council claims, see Kommersant, February 28, 2002, p. 2.
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particular service might play in such conflicts. For example, changes in the use of airpower in Chechnya have been extensively studied.16 This inertia occurred even though some in the Russian defense community had argued before the second Chechen war that the Russian armed forces should be prepared for the modern equivalent of “lightning war”—limited conventional war conducted by small detachments and air mobile forces using nonlinear tactics. The most appropriate force structure would be some kind of rapid reaction force similar to much-vaunted plans earlier in the 1990s to create mobile forces.17 But this idea remained on the drawing board. The idea of creating military units of “permanent readiness” was discussed by Defense Minister Igor Sergeev but never implemented and then eclipsed by the combat demands of the second Chechnya campaign. The potential role of special purpose forces in fighting irregular armed formations was also emphasized after the first Chechnya campaign. Such forces were viewed as a possible nucleus of the Russian combat capability in small-scale conflicts against irregular formations. However, this idea appears to have stalled during the window of opportunity between the two Chechnya wars. It was inadequately studied and was hamstrung by the absence of special planning structures in the Russian General Staff or in military districts’ operational staff, and by the fact that special force units were assigned organizationally to intelligence structures.18
16
For the first Chechnya campaign, see Pavel Baev, “Russia’s Airpower in the Chechen War: Denial, Punishment, and Defeat,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies, vol. 10, no. 2 (June 1997), pp. 1–18; and Timothy Thomas, “Air Operations in Low Intensity Conflict: The Case of Chechnya,” Airpower Journal, winter 1997, pp. 51–59. For the second campaign, see Marcel de Haas, The Use of Russian Airpower in the Second Chechen War (Camberley, UK: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, January 2003). Col. Gen. Yuri Yakubov confirmed that a command staff exercise in the Far Eastern Military District was aimed to “resolve tasks linked with combat training on the basis of experience of the Chechen campaign,” that in teaching servicemen this experience was used alongside classical combat experience of World War II. Suvorovsky natisk, March 22, 2001, pp. 1–2, cited in FSU 15 Nations, no. 3 (March 2001), pp. 119–120. 17 Carl van Dyke, “Kabul to Grozny: A Critique of Soviet (Russian) Counterinsurgency Doctrine,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies, vol. 9, no. 4 (December 1996), pp. 689–703. 18 Col. V. Kadetov, in Nezavismoe voennoe obozrenie, no. 23 (December 1996),
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The second Chechnya operation did differ from the first in some respects. The political control over military actions in the theater, which military leaders claimed had limited their success, was removed. Command and control was directly under the General Staff, and coordination between units of the various ministries improved compared with its lamentable state in 1994–96, despite continued distrust between the Russian ground forces and internal troops. However, overall command of what was officially described as “the counterterrorist operation in the North Caucasus” was assigned to the Federal Security Service (FSB) in January 2001, even though it had no experience of conducting military operations. The North Caucasus Military District was completely reorganized for the second conflict. Fully manned units, so-called regimental and battalion tactical groups, were used rather than the composite units cobbled together in the previous Chechen war and therefore were more effective. Russia paid far more attention to information warfare and was much more successful than in the first campaign in managing and controlling public opinion and news presentation on the conflict. The second campaign developed and implemented an extensive plan, but it still failed to address the issue of full war termination.19 Overall, Russia has failed to develop a modern counterinsurgency doctrine with proven effectiveness in Chechnya that with modifications might be transposed to other conflicts of the future. During the second Chechen campaign, it became fashionable in Moscow to recall the experiences of the 1940s and 1950s when Soviet forces successfully quashed nationalist guerrilla movements in the Baltic republics, in Western Ukraine, and in Poland. The Russian security services, the Kremlin, and parts of the Russian military believe that the same antiguerrilla tactics will work in the latter stages of the second Chechnya conflict.20 This involves garrisoning towns, supporting a pro-Moscow Chechen police force, and so on. Anatoly Kulikov, former Russian interior minister and chairman of the Duma Subcommittee on Legislation to Combat Transnational Crime p. 2; and Jennifer G. Mathers, “The Lessons of Chechnya: Russia’s Forgotten War?” Civil Wars, vol. 2, no. 1 (spring 1999), p. 106. 19 Timothy L. Thomas, “A Tale of Two Theatres: Russian Actions in Chechnya in 1994 and 1999,” Analysis of Current Events, vol. 12, nos. 5–6 (September 2000), pp. 18–21. See also his analysis of strategy and tactics in the first Chechen campaign, The Caucasus Conflict and Russian Security (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies Office). 20 Felgenhauer, “The Russian Army in Chechnya,” pp. 163–164.
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and Terrorism, has argued further that, based on the experience of the 1940s, Chechnya should be divided into zones of responsibility each of which should have a battalion and operational group. For operations the battalions would work with special assignment teams of the Russian interior ministry and main intelligence service.21 Such coordination may or may not be realizable, but so far it is not being attempted. Russian analysts point out that while Russian federal troops are supposed to be conducting a “counterterrorism operation,” “there are no operational or legal documents on that score,” and thus “each individual commander on every level interprets the campaign as he finds most convenient.”22 It is true that Russian military writers are beginning to elaborate principles and theory on special operations for the purposes of counterterrorism, including the use of temporary operational groups of different force structures (the ministries of defense and interior, the FSB, etc.).23 But even if such principles were officially adopted, it would be most difficult to apply them in practice if the necessary funding or capabilities are lacking, for example if high-precision weapons, which are identified as a priority requirement for such special operations, are actually unavailable to the Russian forces. Russian military publications on the problems of “operations other than war” have also begun to appear. But the organizations and tactics described remain so generalized that their value in training for any specific conflict must be limited.24 Civilian analysts have examined in more detail the blurring of the internal and international aspects of localregional conflicts and emphasized that “it is impossible to define the effectiveness of operations of a nonmilitary type in military terms.”25 They have also suggested the need to assess the particular contribution of the Russian internal troops on Russian territory in the Chechnya 21
Interview in Segodnya, March 7, 2001. Mikhail Khodarenok, Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, March 23–29, 2001, pp. 1–2. 23 Malashenko and Trenin, Vremya yuga, pp. 136–138. 24 For example, Col. Sergei Batyushkin, Armeyskiy sbornik, no. 10 (2002), pp. 29–34, translated as Relying on Surprise (Camberley, UK: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, October 2002). See also Anatoly Kornukov, “Kontrterroristicheskaya operatsiya na Severnom Kavkaze: osnovnyye uroki i vyvody,” Voennaya mysl’, no. 4 (July 2000), pp. 5–10. 25 Ye. Stepanova, Voenno-grazhdanskie otnosheniya v operatsiyakh nevoennogo tipa (Moscow: Pravda Cheloveka, 2001), p. 46; see also pp. 20–30, 39–47. 22
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campaign in “operations other than war,” that occur during the course of military operations with regular troops.26 A fundamental problem, however, has been the Russian General Staff’s apparent unwillingness to view the Chechnya campaigns as an exemplar in any respect, except at the level of tactical training. Two factors help to explain this unwillingness. First, these campaigns challenge cherished traditional strategic concepts and represent operations for which Russian officers still are neither trained or wish to fight. Second, the General Staff views these campaigns as a domestic security matter. These considerations and the highly problematic “premodern” conduct of operations in Chechnya have resulted in a failure to develop guidelines from the Chechnya experience for the use of Russian military power in other southern tier conflict zones or potential future “operations other than war.” THE RUSSIAN MILITARY ROLE IN PEACEKEEPING/PEACE ENFORCEMENT IN CIS CONFLICTS
Russia developed a body of military guidelines in the 1990s, nonetheless, for its “peace support” or “peace creation” operations in CIS regions (as in the Russian description, referred to below for convenience as peacekeeping or peace enforcement). These eventually had some influence in regulating the use of Russian force in the conflicts involved, even if the nature of the initial Russian military involvement in these conflicts was less constrained and the conduct of subsequent peace-enforcement operations varied from case to case. These guidelines contrast markedly with the Russian use of military power in Chechnya. In particular they have been influenced though not determined by broader international norms on peacekeeping operations. However, in the early 1990s the assumption gained ground in the Russian high command that military power should be the deciding political instrument in the “near abroad.” The Russian defense ministry managed to exert strong operational control over the peace-enforcement operations in Moldova-Transdnestria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Tajikistan. It viewed these operations largely “as a means to promote Russian security interests and protect ethnic Russians, as well as to legitimize the Russian troops’ presence in certain of the former Soviet 26
Ibid., pp. 205–208.
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states.”27 The interventions varied, but they had some common features that seem to have been determined in advance by the Russian defense ministry and General Staff. First, Russia showed a strong preference for unilateralism in undertaking the initial intervention; in military terms, the CIS was a structure that could provide some ex post facto legitimacy. Second, Russian troops could be introduced when a conflict reached a phase of relative stability or a stalemate, which enabled Russia to press the combatants into a sort of consent on the terms of a cease-fire. By freezing the status quo, Russia was able to quell the violence, but the status quo ante could not be restored and political solutions were more difficult to reach. This made the Russian military commitments open-ended from the beginning. Russian commentators admitted later that in this way Russia’s enforcement operations “turned out to be unable to address the deeper roots and causes of the conflicts and achieve a self-sustainable peace.”28 Third, Russia ensured it had a tactical superiority of forces. A small number of observers of a cease-fire were supported by a strong grouping willing to act forcefully against any major violations, which would be determined by Russia itself.29 All this required a sustained Russian political commitment to an interventionist policy in CIS conflicts during 1992–94 that was neither automatic nor uncontested. There was a spectrum of political thinking in Russia about the desirability of using force, which was shaped by the actual experience of engagement in conflict zones. The general trend across the political spectrum was toward a greater willingness to use force.30 However, isolationist attitudes toward conflict resolution in the near abroad were quite prominent. Others argued in favor of a strategy of “selective engagement” in determining the role of Russian forces in conflict zones on the ground, which would require the application of differ27
Neil Malcolm, Alex Pravda, Roy Allison, and Margot Light, eds., Internal Factors in Russian Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 271–272. 28 Valeri Ermolin, “Russia and New Types of Military Conflicts,” FSU 15 Nations, August 1998, p. 7. 29 Pavel Baev, “Russian Military Thinking and the ‘Near Abroad,’” Jane’s Intelligence Review, December 1994, pp. 532–533. 30 Andrew Bennett, Condemned to Repetition?: The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism, 1973–1996 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), pp. 305–328.
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ent rules and patterns to varying situations.31 In practice it proved difficult for Russia to roll back its initial intervention or for the Russian military to adopt a nuanced approach to such conflicts. The core issue was the tendency by Russian strategists in the 1990s to place “peace operations” within the continuum of low-intensity conflicts. Russian “forces to prevent local conflicts” were assigned a war-fighting role, and the peacekeeping mission was integrated into the spectrum of conflict. Peacekeeping forces represented the first echelon capable of responding to small-scale threats, to be supported by strong secondechelon forces if the need arises. But many Russian officers found it difficult to conceive of this distinction in practice once a conflict had escalated into an armed confrontation. In any case, forces earmarked for peace operations were trained to be able to forcefully separate the opposing sides before a cease-fire has come into effect.32 Russian commanders sought to ensure that they had predominant forces available to dominate the local military situation. They also maintained their preeminence within peacekeeping contingents qualitatively and quantitatively—in relation to any contingents provided by other CIS states. But it was not viewed as necessary for these states to represent neutral forces or even for Russia itself to be impartial; they could actually be involved in the conflict concerned. Indeed, in a challenging innovation, Russia created structures that enabled the parties to the conflicts in Transdniestria and Abkhazia to become full participants in the peacekeeping operations that were eventually established.33 31
Tatiana Shakleina, “Russian Policy toward Military Conflicts in the Former Soviet Union,” in Bruce Parrott, ed., State Building and Military Power in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), pp. 96–104. 32 See Maj. Gen. Ivan Vorobyev (ret.), Krasnaya zvezda, February 22, 1994; and in “Mirotvorcheskie operatsii,” Voennaya mysl’, no. 5 (1994), pp. 43–47. The initial training program is set out in Programma podgotovki chastey mirotvorcheskikh sil (Moscow: Russian Ministry of Defense, 1992). The ministry issued further temporary training instructions the following year. For the general debate among officers in Russian military structures, see Dov Lynch, Russian Peacekeeping Strategies in the CIS: The Cases of Moldova, Georgia, and Tajikistan (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 96–104. 33 Maj. Gen. V. Osipenko, “Command and Control Organization in Peacekeeping Operations (CIS Experience),” Military Thought, no. 2 (1997), pp. 53–60. The analysis of the previous two paragraphs is developed in Roy Allison, “The Military Background and Context to Russian Peacekeeping,” in Lena Jonson
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The high level of force used in Russian peace operations and justified by Russian military analysts in the early and mid-1990s was possible because unlike UN peacekeepers the Russian forces were unrestrained by questions of legitimacy, rules of engagement, or public scrutiny. The prime objective of the Russian peacemaking missions was to restore order, and political considerations occupied a subordinate status. However, as Russia remained entrenched in the conflict zones and international criticism of the modus operandi of the Russian interventions continued, Moscow felt it necessary to clarify the basic principles of its participation in peacekeeping operations. In 1995 the Russian government drafted a document on such principles.34 In January 1996 it set out its intention to regulate these operations on CIS territory through documents that defined peacekeeping principles and rules of engagement. Although these documents were accepted by most of the CIS states,35 they failed to change the existing missions on CIS territory or the way Russia implemented them; and even as formal principles, they left important loopholes. First, the question of which conditions warranted military means and who would decide on such use was left ambiguous. It was now accepted that “operations in support of peace” could take place only after the parties have agreed on a cease-fire. But the documents still envisaged elements of enforcement that did not require the consent of the parties. Second, the documents failed to regulate operations in armed conflicts before a cease-fire agreement. Third, they did not address the crucial issue of Russian partiality in its interventions in CIS conflicts—perhaps the key factor that explains the failure to find political solutions for most of them.36 Despite the inadequacies of such peacekeeping principles, which Moscow has not yet replaced, the Russian military has become more
and Clive Archer, eds., Peacekeeping and the Role of Russia in Eurasia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 44–46; and Pavel Baev, The Russian Army in a Time of Troubles (London: Sage, 1996), pp. 135–141. 34 Moscow Interfax, August 29, 1995, in Foreign Broadcast Information ServiceSOV-95-168, August 30, 1995, pp. 30–31. 35 Diplomaticheskiy vestnik, no. 2 (February 1996), pp. 38–52. 36 Lena Jonson, Keeping the Peace in the CIS: The Evolution of Russian Policy, Discussion Paper no. 81 (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1999), pp. 23–27; and Lena Jonson, “In Search of a Doctrine: Russian Interventionism in Conflicts in Its ‘Near Abroad,’” Low-Intensity Conflict and Law Enforcement, vol. 5, no. 3 (winter 1996), pp. 440–465.
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restrained in the use of force in CIS conflict regions since 1996. In addition, Russian leaders have displayed a more determined search for political solutions for these conflicts and for compromise. These changes reflect in part a growing appreciation that military means cannot resolve every conflict—a message underlined by the outcome of the first Chechnya campaign, even if Moscow reverted to reliance on military solutions in the second Chechnya campaign.37 Sophisticated Russian analyses of Russia’s peace operations were prepared in the second half of the 1990s.38 Military studies accepted the need for greater regulation of Russia’s peace operations but still justified the differences between the control of these operations and generally accepted international practices. They argued and still argue that the Russian experience even contributes to the theory and practice of international peacekeeping. This rationalization of Russian à la carte or sui generis peacekeeping is based on a rather partial interpretation of its “effectiveness.”39 However, the most knowledgeable military analysts on this issue in Moscow, who give a great deal of credit to Russian peace operations, can still identify numerous recommendations and proposed reforms that are necessary to improve these operations. Progress has been slow and confusing.40 Russia seems to be grappling with an attempt to develop and approve a “doctrine” on peacekeeping that combines some of its experience in the CIS with international practice. It still does not possess a national concept of peacekeeping that can be incorporated into appropriate manuals for the military.41 Consequently, Russian military practice on 37
Jonson, Keeping the Peace in the CIS, pp. 50–51. For example, V. Vartanov, ed., Mirotvorcheskie sily: opyt sozdaniya i primeniya v vooruzhennykh konfliktakh (Moscow: Institute of Military History, Russian Ministry of Defense, 1996); A. Nikitin, O. Khlestov, Yu. Fedorov, and A. Demurenko, Mirotvorcheskie operatsii v SNG (Moscow: Moscow Social Science Foundation, 1998); and Maj. Gen. V. Zolotaryev, ed., Rossiya (SSSR) v lokal’nykh voynakh (Moscow: Kuchkovo pole, 2000), pp. 366–417. 39 For example, Col. Gen. V. Barynkin, “Russian Armed Forces and Peacekeeping,” Military Thought, vol. 7, no. 6 (1998), pp. 18–21; and V. Iakovlev, chief of staff for Coordination of Military Cooperation of CIS Member States, “Peacekeeping in the CIS: Military Aspects,” International Affairs (Moscow), vol. 48, no. 2 (2002), pp. 12–18. 40 See Zolotaryev, Rossiya (SSSR) v lokal’nyky voynakh, pp. 414–417. 41 Ibid., p. 374; and Dmitry Polikanov, “The Evolution of Russian Peacekeeping 38
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the ground continues to vary from one regional conflict zone to another. The conduct of the Russian military in these CIS conflicts of course has not simply reflected whether principles of military or peace operations exist or are consistently enforced by local commanders. At times Russian generals and military subunits have engaged in certain “freelancing” activities that expressed their political partiality, institutional interests, or search for local advantage whether in Abkhazia, Transdniestria, or Tajikistan. This indicated a failure of firm central Russian military command and control over local commanders, or perhaps an excessive devolution of authority. Alternatively, it suggested the existence of divergent agendas between the Russian defense ministry and General Staff, on the one hand, and the foreign ministry or other political bodies, on the other.42 However, the most controversial instances of such deficiencies in control or coordination occurred during the transitional years of the early 1990s, and top-level Russian state policy now appears to be well expressed in military policy on the ground. Tajikistan Russia’s use of military power in Tajikistan merits special attention as a case study among Russian military engagements in CIS conflicts, because Russian military forces have played a variety of overlapping roles over the course of more than a decade of military involvement in the country. These roles reflect an evolution in Russian foreign policy and strategic priorities, changing threat perceptions, and military demands on the ground and, as noted above, some acceptance of the need for constraints on the conduct of peace-enforcement operations. The nature of these operations (and their departure from UN norms on peacekeeping) have been studied in detail by Western and Russian specialists.43 This section focuses instead on the role of Russian military forces in Tajikistan during and after the Tajik civil war and the rationale for their deployment in this conflict zone. under President Putin,” in Mackinlay and Cross, Regional Peacekeepers, p. 199. Roy Allison, “Military Factors in Foreign Policy,” in Malcolm et al., Internal Factors in Russian Foreign Policy, pp. 266–277. 43 For example, Lynch, Russian Peacekeeping Strategies in the CIS, pp. 150–173; Lena Jonson, The Tajik War: A Challenge to Russian Policy, Discussion Paper no. 74 (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1998); and Nicole Evans, Russian Policy in CIS Conflicts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), chap. 7. 42
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In one sense Russian forces in Tajikistan from the outset have been a broad instrument of state policy, supporting core Russian security and geopolitical goals: stabilization and containing threats at a distance from Russia. In 1993, for example, the Russian Security Council described Russian goals in the so-called peacekeeping operation as to initiate national reconciliation in the country and to “stabilize” the situation on the Tajik-Afghan border.44 The Russian foreign ministry specified the goal of establishing a “security belt on the Russian periphery.”45 It seems that the goal of ensuring the integrity of the former Union border was also viewed as necessary because of the impracticality of creating a new frontier on the perimeter of the Russian Federation. Some Russian politicians also thought in terms of a domino theory, fearing the loss of Tajikistan to Islamic fundamentalism. However, such rationales for the Russian military role were developed post factum after Russian forces deployed in Tajikstan had already become embroiled in the Tajik civil war. During summer and autumn 1992, the Russian army on the ground in Tajikistan, particularly the 201st Motorized Infantry Division, was actively involved on the side of the Tajik communists, initially on a haphazard and disorganized basis and then more actively supported by the senior command. Therefore, the local military units stationed in Tajikistan initiated the Russian military involvement.46 But this only became official after Tajikistan had asked Russia in July 1993 to assume the burden of “peacekeeping,” which led to a CIS agreement on collective peacekeeping forces (CPF). Significantly, these forces were formally set up a full year before a cease-fire for the civil war was reached in October 1994. Their mandate from the outset created a potential for the CPF and border force missions to become intertwined. Moreover, the CPF commander was given powers by CIS meetings, which allowed the use of a high level of force to halt or restrict the conflict and persuade the warring parties to negotiate. The operation approximated more to collective security (under the 1992 CIS Collective Security Treaty) than to peacekeeping. Indeed, the CPF command seemed to view the force’s mandate as including what is effectively a counterinsurgency role. This way of thinking continued in later years, although Russian mili-
44
Diplomatichesky vestnik, August 15–16, 1993, p. 59. Diplomatichesky vestnik, October 19–20, 1993, p. 70. 46 Jonson, The Tajik War, pp. 12–13. 45
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tary policy became more cautious and reactive. The CPF sought to maintain an image of “neutral third party” intervention, but its deployment in a region of active combat operations tipped the political and military balance in favor of the Tajik government. In fact, Russian forces in the CPF were part of an active Russian policy of full support for the regime of Emomali Rakhmonov.47 Their role in assisting Russian border guards in Tajikistan when necessary also increased the chance that the CPF troops would become active combatants. The border troops themselves, the largest force operating outside Russia, were committed by treaty to nonintervention in the internal Tajik conflict, but nevertheless appear to have actively participated in the civil war.48 Overall, the peculiarity of the Russian-dominated CPF was that it could not act as an appropriate model for one kind of military operation or another. It was too compromised in supporting one party in the civil war to be accepted as a peacekeeping force, yet not committed enough to fight a counterinsurgency campaign. The June 1997 peace accords in Tajikistan, which brought the civil war to an end, were made possible by a shift in Russian policy involving a gradual realization that a military solution was not viable. Some senior Russian officers had been openly critical of the Russian military role in propping up the Rakhmonov regime, because this policy made it appear as an occupation force and required an ever-increasing military contingent. One argued, for example, that the decline in Russia’s potential required a “preemptive scaling back of Russia’s zone of direct involvement and control” in Central Asia.49 Even the commanders of the Russian border forces seemed at the time to expect a reduction or even withdrawal of the contingent in Tajikistan. In fact, the main change has been in the composition of those forces. Russia has built up and trained the Tajik national army and transferred tasks along part of the Tajik-Afghan border to Tajik national border troops. The ranks of the Russian 1st Division of border troops (some 11,000 men) and the 201st Division (now reduced to some 8,000 personnel) have increasingly been filled with Tajik nationals. The CIS mandate for the Russian forces in the CPF terminated at the end of the year
47
Ibid., pp. 13–16. Ibid., pp, 16–17. 49 For example, V. Slipchenko, “Russia’s Political and Military Problems in Central Asia,” European Security, vol. 6, no. 1 (spring 1997), pp. 116–118. 48
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2000, and the 201st Division is now earmarked for law enforcement and antiterrorist activities. However, a Russian-Tajik agreement was signed in 1999 to reorganize the division into a military base. As of late 2003, Moscow was still seeking to do this and even to increase its military presence in Tajikistan.50 The same geopolitical rationale for the Russian military presence in 1993 seems to hold true in Russian political thinking more than ten years later. Concerns about the impact of Islamic extremism emanating from Afghanistan on the stability of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and about drug trafficking have, if anything, increased and provide specific reasons for maintaining a Russian force presence in Tajikistan, although conflict in the country has been reduced to border skirmishes.51 However, the Russian forces’ involvement in the drug trade reduces the effectiveness of their role on this issue. Moreover, since late 2002 the access of U.S. and other Western military forces to Tajik airfields and new security assistance packages has undermined the rationale for the Russian 201st Division and made Russian border troops in Tajikistan less indispensable. The military-technical rationale for the Russian force presence here seems less important now than the image of these forces—the role they play as a confirmation to Russian leaders that their country can still present itself as the principal security manager in Central Asia. RUSSIA, REGIONAL/EXTERNAL POWERS, AND REGIONAL CONFLICTS
Russian political and military leaders have been very cautious about military involvement in any regional conflict around the Russian periphery that risks a direct military clash with a significant regional power. At the same time Moscow has sought to elaborate and shore up a Russiandominated CIS collective security system based on the May 1992 Tashkent Collective Security Treaty (CST). This effort, however, has been as much for political objectives as to deter actual military encroachments by regional powers in the “CIS space.” In any case Georgia and 50
Interview of Col. Gen. Alexander Baranov, commander of the Volga-Urals Military District, Krasnaya zvezda, May 16, 2003. 51 Statement by President Putin during a meeting with the command of the 201st Division, BBC Monitoring, Inside Central Asia (henceforth Inside Central Asia), April 27, 2003; and Roger McDermott, Border Security in Tajikistan: Countering the Narcotics Trade (Camberley, UK: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, October 2002).
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Azerbaijan failed to ratify their membership in the CST and together with Uzbekistan have allowed their membership to lapse, so Russia cannot even in principle seek to rally these conflict-prone countries against some “external” military adversary. Moreover, the CST has not been and cannot be invoked against member states that are in conflict with each other. In practice the CST can continue to provide a form of existential deterrence against military conflict between its weaker or more vulnerable member states and powerful neighbors—for example, between Central Asian CIS states and China. In this case the smaller CST states could be regarded as falling under a Russian nuclear umbrella. But Moscow has been careful that this implicit nuclear guarantee is not abused or devalued so that it loses its credibility in a real crisis—for example, by the posturing of the president of Belarussia, Aleksandr Lukashenko, against NATO and Western states. Moscow has concluded a few strongly worded bilateral agreements with CIS states, which could result in a general relationship of alignment in regional conflicts. Many of these, however, remain inactive or have lapsed. An exception is the August 1997 Russian-Armenian Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, which followed an earlier pact of May 1992 and creates a direct mutual defense commitment for the parties in the event of war.52 This treaty is reinforced by a separate agreement that governs the status of the extensive Russian military presence in Armenia. Together these create an indirect warning to Turkey not to consider supporting any attempt by Azerbaijan to try to win back lost territory in or around Nagorno-Karabakh by military means. As such the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been one small source of risk of direct military conflict between Russia and a regional power, Turkey—the kind of scenario discussed abstractly by the Russian General Staff in their analyses about local wars. In 1992 Marshal Evgeny Shaposhnikov, the Russian commander of the then CIS joint forces, briefly and exceptionally raised the threat of
52
A. Gadzhizade, in Nezavisimaya gazeta, September 4, 1997, discusses this treaty and the subsequent cooperation treaty Russia signed with Azerbaijan. Russia gave military priority to only one of these treaties, that with Armenia. Because Armenia chooses not to define the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as an interstate war, the clauses on mutual assistance in the 1992 and 1997 treaties cannot be invoked to induce Russia to side with Armenia in the bilateral Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Karabakh.
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military conflict with Turkey if it were to intervene in Karabakh. In 1994 a Russian analyst went so far as to elaborate a detailed and alarmist scenario whereby conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan escalated into full-scale war between Russia and Turkey and even to a limited Russian nuclear strike against Turkey.53 In fact Turkey’s membership in NATO has made a direct Russian-Turkish military clash most unlikely, whether over Karabakh, over developments in Turkish-Georgian military relations and the Russian military presence in Georgia, or over disputes in the Black Sea region. This improbability has been reinforced by the growing Russian-Turkish rapprochement under President Vladimir Putin and Russian acquiescence in spring 2002 to a U.S. military training program in Georgia. By contrast, the risk of military clashes in the Caspian Sea region is growing. This arises from the failure to reach an overall agreement on the principles for the territorial delimitation of the sea, the growth in naval strength of the littoral countries, and the high commercial stakes involved as exploration for oil and gas fields proceeds. To Moscow’s growing frustration, Iran still rejects the formula for delimiting the Caspian Sea on the median line principle that Russia has agreed bilaterally with Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. A clash between Russia, which has some 40 naval craft based at Astrakhan and Makhachkala, and Iran, which has nearly 50 at Bandar-e Anzali, is conceivable in the future, despite rhetorical talk of a Russian-Iranian strategic partnership.54 Russia has renounced the goal of the demilitarization of the sea, which Iran still promotes. In August 2002 Moscow conducted the largest joint maneuvers in post-Soviet history of its army, air force, and Caspian flotilla—the Sea of Peace-2002 antiterrorist military exercises, which included a joint Russian-Kazakh component.55 In the absence of agreed confidence-building measures 53
Pavel Felgenhauer, “Caucasian War at Center of World Policy in the Year 2000” (in Russian), Segodnya, January 4, 1994. 54 For a detailed breakdown of military and naval assets around the Caspian Sea, see Alexander Plotnikov, “Kaspiyskiy gorodovoy,” Novye izvestiya, August 11, 2001. 55 Igor Plugatarev, Nezavisimaya gazeta, August 1, 2002; BBC Monitoring, Inside Central Asia, August 12–18, 2002; and Igor Torbakov, “Russia to Flex Military Muscle in the Caspian Sea with an Eye on Future Energy Exports,” July 31, 2002, http://www.eurasianet.org. Iranian officials were restrained in their response to these exercises, however, and some suggested they were directed against any NATO involvement in the Caspian Sea. Ardeshir Moaveni,
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among the Caspian Sea states, small incidents could escalate into serious clashes. As in the Soviet period, however, the objective of Russian naval exercises and port visits may be a combination of deterrence and coercive diplomacy, which does not spill over into direct military engagements with other states. Russian military and military-economic capabilities remain severely constrained and are insufficient to offer confidence about the outcome of any military clashes with Iran, let alone Turkey or China. Russia has no militarily significant allies that could assist in the event of a major confrontation. Lacking powerful and reliable conventional forces and still in the throes of the Chechnya imbroglio, Moscow is likely to try to deter direct conflict with regional states ultimately through nuclear deterrence. During 2000–02 there was also a lower-level risk of a military standoff between Russia and the United States over Russian military pressures against Georgia, which represented a minor spillover south of the Chechnya conflict. The risk arose from the Russian readiness to use military intimidation against Georgia in a way that has been exceptional in overall Russian policy toward CIS neighbor states since the early 1990s. Tensions have focused on the Pankisi Gorge, located on Georgia’s northern border with Chechnya in the Akhmeta District, which Moscow claims has served as a sanctuary for Chechen fighters. But Russia is likely to be far more cautious since the commencement in spring 2002 of a U.S. incountry program to train Georgian antiterrorist units. One risk has been the localized extension of the zone of military operations from Chechnya to Georgia, as a result of cross-border operations, and a dispute over the delimitation of the border. In March 2000 Russian airborne troops briefly seized the Georgian village of Pichvi. Another risk was that Georgia could become a direct party in the Chechnya conflict as a result of Russian pressure to establish a so-called joint Russian-Georgian military operation against “Chechen and international terrorists” in the Pankisi Gorge. Georgia has resisted this. But in November 2001 a bombing raid was carried out by apparently unmarked Russian aviation on the Pankisi Gorge deep in Georgian territory as well as on villages near Omalo. A similar raid occurred in August 2002.56 Shortly
“Iran Largely Silent on Russian-Led Caspian Sea Military Exercises,” Eurasia Insight, August 8, 2002, http://www.eurasianet.org. 56 Vremya novostei, August 9, 2002; and Rossiyskaya gazeta, August 31, 2002.
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afterward Georgia decided to try to exert its authority in the Pankisi Gorge by sending in internal troops. The Russian action could be interpreted as a “deniable” form of military pressure with a specific goal in mind. More overt Russian military pressure took the form of a temporary deployment of Russian paratroopers in the Kodori Gorge in northwest Georgia, which threatened a direct interstate military clash before Moscow withdrew its troops. Such incidents may have represented a tendency at military freelancing by Russian officers in the North Caucasus command, similar to previous activities in Abkhazia in the early 1990s. Alternatively, and more likely for a military once it was placed under Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, a close confidante of President Putin, they may have been more sophisticated probing operations sanctioned at high levels, from which Putin could dissociate himself easily enough in the face of any strong international response. Whichever is the case, Russia has sought to establish its right to carry out “preventive strikes” against Chechen militants on Georgian territory, evidently modeled on the American assumption of this right in prosecuting its antiterrorist campaign.57 However, the growing U.S.-Georgian security relationship, including a new bilateral security pact in March 2003, makes it improbable that Moscow will exercise such a right to strike against targets in Georgia. This is consistent with Putin’s reluctance to risk confrontation with the United States in regional conflict zones. RUSSIAN ENGAGEMENT IN AND RESPONSES TO WIDER REGIONAL CONFLICTS
Kosovo and New Prospects for Peacekeeping Russian responses to the international crisis around conflict in Kosovo during 1999 expressed a serious effort to project Russian national interests beyond post-Soviet borders in the context of a major regional military conflict. The crisis is revealing in three respects for this chapter. First, it provided Moscow a graphic illustration of the operations of a hightechnology NATO military campaign, which could offer uncomfortable lessons for Russian military development. Second, the Russian “march to Pristina,” illustrated the constraints on its exercise of military power in conflicts beyond the CIS zone. Third, it showed the positive opportuni57
Vadim Solovyev, Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, September 20, 2002.
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ties for Russia in such conflicts to play a role in a genuine European peacekeeping operation, through KFOR, further to the experience of IFOR/SFOR. It offered experience for Russian peacekeeping in other theaters, perhaps also in association with NATO, although in spring 2003 Moscow decided to withdraw its peacekeeping forces from the Balkans. Russian analysts viewed the NATO military campaign in Kosovo as a showpiece demonstration of the alliance’s most advanced and sophisticated weapons, command and control systems, operations, and tactics.58 The air campaign was interpreted as technically well executed, but as failing to achieve NATO long-term strategic and political goals. It failed to seriously degrade the Serbian army, to force its withdrawal from Kosovo by NATO airpower, or to prevent ethnic cleansing. In addition, Serbia’s air defense systems were largely preserved in anticipation of a NATO ground assault. NATO proceeded to attack Yugoslav industrial assets, infrastructure, and administrative and communications facilities. Russian observers chose widely to interpret this as an image of a possible future scenario with Russia on the receiving end of surgical strikes against industrial, infrastructure, and military targets. These strikes “would be especially targeted against nuclear forces and C3I [command, control, communication, and intelligence] sites, and would be sufficiently selective not to provoke a nuclear response,” but they would “efficiently destroy Russia’s deterrence capability within a few days or weeks.”59 This scenario supposedly had been a serious concern of the Russian military for some time—a military command that still found it difficult psychologically to reorient their planning mentalities from western contingencies involving NATO to immediate southern threats. It encouraged an emphasis on building up and modernizing Russia’s air defense, air force, and naval assets. Planning for “a robust conventional defense 58
For a detailed Russian military assessment of the effectiveness of the military operations of NATO and Serbia in the Kosovo campaign and of what this suggests about future NATO strategy and military operations, see Yu. Morozov, V. Glushkov, and A. Sharavin, Balkany segodnya i zavtra: Voenno-politicheskie aspeky mirotvorchestva (Moscow: Center of Military-Strategic Studies of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces/Institute of Political and Military Analysis, 2001), pp. 250–256. 59 Alexei Arbatov, The Transformation of Russian Military Doctrine: Lessons Learned from Kosovo and Chechnya, Marshall Center Papers, no. 2 (GarmischPartenkirchen: George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies), pp. 13–15, 17–19.
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against a ‘Balkan-type’ threat to Russia and its allies” could be defined as a defense priority for the longer term. The temptation at the end of the 1990s was to prepare Russian conventional forces “for the kind of hightechnology warfare dictated by NATO and the West, rather than focussing on the requirements of local or regional ground wars in the south.” In reality, however, this task was beyond Russia’s financial means. An alternative response, therefore, was to think of placing “even greater emphasis on a robust nuclear deterrence, relying on enhanced strategic and tactical nuclear forces and their C3I systems.”60 However, as Russian relations with NATO were gradually restored during 2000–01, and as the second Chechnya campaign became more torturous, the priority of countering NATO capabilities in regional conflicts was probably diluted in Russian military planning. It is not yet clear how far the subsequent U.S.-led campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have revived the Russian sense of vulnerability to the capabilities that it does not possess for limited military conflicts, and transferred the object of concern from NATO at large to the U.S. military potential. The Kosovo conflict provided an exceptional point of potential NATO-Russia confrontation, described later by the NATO secretarygeneral as a “reckless piece of brinkmanship in political and military terms.”61 In retrospect this seems an aberration from the “fundamental rule of prudence” exercised by Russia as previously by the Soviet Union: to avoid a direct clash between uniformed NATO and Soviet forces.62 On June 11–12, 1999, a mechanized column of Russian troops was suddenly moved from Bosnia into Pristina, Kosovo, to occupy the Slatina Airport and preempt the planned arrival of the KFOR peacekeeping force. At this time the Russian military was outraged by NATO military action in Kosovo and its efforts in setting the terms for the peacekeeping intervention in Kosovo.63 The Russian military command apparently expected Russia to deploy many more troops than the 3,600 Russian peacekeepers eventually sent to form part of KFOR in Kosovo. They also 60
Ibid., pp. 17, 19–20. Speech by Lord Robertson on December 13, 2002, http://www.nato.int/ pfp/nato-ru.htm. 62 See Stephen Kaplan, Diplomacy of Power: Soviet Armed Forces as a Political Instrument (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1981). 63 See Victor Gobarev, “Russia-NATO Relations after the Kosovo Crisis: Strategic Implications,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies, vol. 12, no. 3 (September 1999), p. 3. 61
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wished Russia to have its own sector for the deployment of its troops. The march to Pristina could be viewed as a use of military means to exert political leverage on NATO in support of these goals. It demonstrated the assertiveness of the Russian General Staff, circumventing the foreign ministry altogether, although it is likely that President Yeltsin approved the action in advance.64 However, despite initial Russian jubilation over the bold action, the limits on Russian force projection in noncontiguous conflict zones were soon confirmed. Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary supported NATO’s requests to deny Russia access to their airspace, thereby blocking Moscow from flying in reinforcements to Slatina Airport, and ultimately Russia failed to obtain a separate sector for its peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo. Moscow’s decisions to participate in the multinational peacekeeping missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina (IFOR and SFOR) and eventually in Kosovo (KFOR) reflected a more benign Russian use of military means for political ends.65 The missions provided a symbolic reminder of Russia’s continued importance in Europe and of its interests in the Balkan region. The peacekeeping presence was also viewed as a means of guaranteeing participation in defining the terms for the eventual resolution of these conflicts. Russian traditional ties with the Serbs gave them an interest in preventing retaliation against the Serbs after the cessation of hostilities. Russian forces functioned well alongside NATO forces in the SFOR operation in Bosnia-Herzogovina in the day-to-day tactical tasks of peacekeeping and peace enforcement, although reports circulated about the involvement of some of these forces in organized crime. Russian officers learned a variety of lessons and acquired new experience in SFOR.
64
Ibid., pp. 6–7; and Brian Taylor, Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 315–316. Although in his memoirs, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott at the time suggests that even President Yeltsin may have been misled about the operation by the chief of the General Staff, Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin. Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 2002), pp. 332–349. 65 For analyses, see Sharyl Cross, Russia and NATO toward the Twenty-first Century: Conflicts and Peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, NATO-EAPC Research Fellowship Award Final Report, NATO/Academic Affairs, 1999–2001, August 2001; and Jacob Kipp and Tarn Warren, “The Russian Separate Airborne Brigade—Peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in Mackinlay and Cross, Regional Peacekeepers, pp. 34–62.
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More broadly, Bosnia was one of the first opportunities for Russian forces to participate in a real deployment under UN control, and therefore to learn international command and control and organization. At the time Russia’s premier military institute, the General Staff Academy, did not offer any lectures on peacekeeping operations; senior Russian military officers did not receive any theory or explanation of how to interact with other armies.66 However, as noted earlier, the conduct of Russian missions in CIS regional conflicts has only partially been adapted to such experience and broader international norms on peacekeeping. The climate between Russia and other NATO participants was more strained at the outset of the KFOR peacekeeping deployments. The grudging participation of Russia’s military leadership was especially evident at the operational level, where issues of control in planning and coordination would periodically arise, although tactical-level cooperation as in Bosnia appeared to be excellent.67 NATO and Russian troops took part in joint training, joint patrolling, and joint de-mining tasks. Liaison functions developed on the tactical and strategic levels. Moscow’s decision announced in January 2003 to withdraw Russia’s peacekeeping contingents from the Balkans could reflect the belief that their political function and value is no longer worth the cost of maintaining these units and diverting them from more pressing potential tasks in regional conflicts in CIS states.68 But the possibility of joint NATORussia peacekeeping operations in other future conflicts cannot be excluded, despite the weakening of the cohesion of the alliance over the Iraq war. By spring 2003 the political framework for future RussiaNATO peacekeeping exercises had been agreed in the NATO-Russia Council, and discussion moved to the military framework for such exercises. In the new climate of NATO-Russia relations, which has radically improved since the Kosovo campaign, there may be opportunities for coordination in certain regional conflicts, which would allow Russia the political access and influence it seeks from its military engagement.
66
Timothy L. Thomas, “Russian Lessons Learned in Bosnia,” Military Review, vol. 75, no. 5 (September–October 1996), pp. 38–43; and Elena Kalyadina, Komsomolskaya pravda, May 29, 1996. 67 Cross, Russia and NATO, p. 22. For a Russian assessment of the participation of Russian forces in KFOR, see Morozov, Glushkov, and Sharavin, Balkany segodnya i zavtra, pp. 279–287. 68 Reports by Vladimir Urban, Novye izvestiya, January 1, 2003; and Vadim Soloviev, Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, May 16, 2003.
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Afghanistan Russia’s use of military forces on the Afghan-Tajik border to deter threats from Afghanistan has ultimately been ineffectual compared with the U.S.-led military campaign that overthrew the Taliban. Moscow may have sought to play up the challenge of the Taliban to firm up its geopolitical and military ties with Central Asian CIS states. But even this political objective has been undercut by new U.S. military agreements with those states. Russia has viewed the U.S. military achievement equivocally, despite its official plaudits on the removal of the Taliban, and is only beginning to absorb the military lessons of the successful U.S. use of military power in a country that had resisted years of Soviet occupation. During the period of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, Russia sought to use the presence of its border forces on the Afghan-Tajik frontier in a rather unsuccessful attempt to bolster the 1992 CIS Collective Security Treaty structure, particularly between Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. In fact, the likelihood of Taliban cross-border incursions into Central Asia seemed low despite Taliban successes against the opposition Northern Alliance. Nevertheless, in February 1997 Russia and the other Central Asian CST member states reportedly discussed a contingency plan of jointly creating two motorized rifle divisions to respond to any advance of Taliban forces toward CIS Central Asian borders, although this was not implemented.69 The following spring Moscow reinforced its border troop contingent in Tajikistan and tried to confirm demilitarized zones along the Tajik-Afghan border.70 During another flare-up of tensions in May 2000, an aide to President Putin even stated that Russia might carry out preventive air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan, in a rare direct threat of military action outside former Soviet borders. However, this threat was repudiated by Uzbekistan, was viewed askance by Kazakhstan, and appears to have been empty rhetoric.71 Plans announced by the Russian General Staff in July 69
Report on meeting of defense ministers of Russia and the CIS Central Asian states in Tashkent, BBC Monitoring, Inside Central Asia, May 19–25, 1997. 70 Interview of former Border Troops Commander in Chief Andrei Nikolayev, Nezavisimaya gazeta, May 29, 1998. 71 There were also unconfirmed media reports in late 2000 that the United States requested assistance from Russia and Central Asian states for strikes against terrorist bases in Afghanistan, or discussed the option of joint special operations for this purpose. See Gennadi Charodeyev, Izvestiya, November 23, 2000; and Yuri Sigov, Novye izvestiya, May 26, 2001.
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2000 to “deploy powerful groupings of general-purpose forces in the southwestern and Central Asian strategic directions” were equally rhetorical. Russian military experts believed that the plan to increase forces in the two directions by 50,000 men by 2003 would enable Russia to stop possible border and internal military conflicts in these regions.72 But there has been no evidence of activity to implement this plan. The threat of regional conflict arising from a clash of interests between the loose coalitions around Afghanistan was more serious than possible border skirmishes with the Taliban. But it was precisely because of the lineup of countries arrayed against the Northern Alliance supported by Russia (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey) that prevented Russia from becoming openly and directly militarily involved in the Afghan conflict. Nor would Russia have risked direct support for any Iranian incursion into Afghanistan against the Taliban (as seemed possible in 1997 with the killing of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif), despite its supposed strategic partnership with Iran. Instead, Moscow provided substantial arms and covert military assistance to the Northern Alliance. Special forces of the Tajik interior ministry, which fought in units of the Northern Alliance, may have received Russian military training.73 There were even reports that in this proxy war Russian pilots flew Northern Alliance aircraft and that unmarked Russian attack planes had bombed Taliban positions.74 In September 2001 Defense Minister Ivanov initially indicated that Moscow would not participate in U.S. military operations against terrorist bases in Afghanistan. After two weeks of consultations with senior political and military leaders, President Putin offered a package of support to U.S. operations in Afghanistan, but this lacked an explicit offer of direct military assistance. It included cooperation over intelligence, the opening of Russian airspace for aircraft carrying humanitarian supplies, Russian involvement in international search and rescue operations, and a pledge of further supplies of weapons and military hardware to the 72
Interfax news agency, Moscow, July 12, 2000, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Former Soviet Union, 3892 S1/2. 73 This combat role was confirmed by Maj. Gen. Sukhrob Kasymov, commander of the special assignment operational brigade of the Tajik internal troops. See Vladimir Georgiev, “Tajik Commander in Afghanistan,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, December 26, 2001. 74 Pavel Felgenhauer, “A Vicious Circle of Terror,” Moscow Times, September 27, 2001.
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Northern Alliance. The last proposal was apparently linked to a Russian request that military supplies to the Northern Alliance should consist solely of older weapons of Russian manufacture. Moscow may have sought to prevent advanced U.S. weaponry from being introduced into an unstable area near Russia’s southern border, and also to retain the Northern Alliance and a future Afghan government as a client for its own weaponry. Under previous agreements with the Northern Alliance, until at least early 2002 Russia transferred military equipment directly to Gen. Mohammed Fahim, a former Northern Alliance commander and the defense minister of the new Afghan Transitional Authority, to the irritation of Pakistan and the United States. In February 2002 Fahim toured military bases in Russia and discussed various forms of arms and military technical supplies.75 It seems that the United States did not seek assistance from Russian ground forces in Afghanistan after September 2001. In any case this option was strongly and publicly opposed by former commanders of Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s, who scorned the idea of introducing U.S. ground forces in the country.76 Defense Minister Ivanov raised the possibility of “the planning of joint military operations” in the event that NATO and the United States were to propose to Russia a “mechanism of cooperation in the battle with terrorism.”77 However, this option has not been developed. Russia reinforced its 201st Division in Tajikistan with 2,000 troops from the Volga-Urals Military District, and to the consternation of the United States, a special mission of troops
75
Sergei Blagov, “Russia Strives to Maintain Political Clout in Afghanistan,” Eurasia Insight, February 12, 2001, http://www.eurasia.org. In trying to use defense ties to the new Kabul administration as a principal means to exert influence, Russia also discussed military supplies when Afghanistan’s interim leader, Hamid Karzai, visited Moscow in March 2002. Jamestown Foundation, Monitor, March 18, 2002. 76 Jamestown Foundation, Monitor, September 20, 2001; Washington Post, September19, 2001; and Gen. Ruslan Aushev, in Argumenty i Fakty, no. 39 (September 2001). 77 Reports on September 26, 2001, meeting of NATO defense ministers together with Sergei Ivanov. Jamestown Foundation, Monitor, October 1, 2001. 78 Igor Torbakov, “Russia’s Growing Presence in Afghanistan Hints at Regional Rivalry with Western Powers,” Eurasia Insight, December 3, 2001, http://www.eurasia.org; Jamestown Foundation, Monitor, November 30, 2001; and Guardian, November 28, 2001.
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supposedly from the Russian ministry of emergency situations arrived suddenly in Kabul in November 2001.78 But Ivanov specified later that “Russian servicemen will not be taking part, in any form and in any aspect with weapons in hand, in any actions on the territory of Afghanistan.”79 This may reflect the sensitivities of past Soviet operations in the country. But such a Russian military role became still less likely once NATO decided in April 2003 to run the command headquarters for the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. Russia opted instead to try to capitalize on its relations with former Northern Alliance leaders. Russian generals have argued that the presence of the U.S. military in Central Asia will be “unnecessary” once the antiterrorist operation is completed in Afghanistan.80 The desirability of the U.S. military presence in Central Asia has been vigorously debated among Russian military and political commentators.81 In spring 2002 the head of the Bishkek headquarters of the planned CIS collective rapid deployment forces suggested a division of roles whereby the U.S.-led coalition takes responsibility for the security of Afghanistan while Russian-led CIS forces take responsibility for the security of Central Asia.82 Such a formal division is not likely. But in a kind of minor geopolitical counterbalance to the new access of U.S. personnel to Central Asian military facilities, Russia also decided to establish an air base at Kant in Kyrgyzstan, nominally under the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization. The type of warfare in the U.S. operations in Afghanistan undoubtedly astonished the Russian military as much as they were shocked by the rapid collapse of Taliban resistance.83 Russia had failed to modernize or 79
Cited in Vladimir Iakovlev, “Peacekeeping in the CIS: Military Aspects,” International Affairs (Moscow), vol. 48, no. 2 (2002), p. 18. See also Jamestown Foundation, Monitor, December 12, 2001. 80 As stated by the head of the Russian Federal Border Guard Service, Col. General Konstantin Totskiy, in BBC Monitoring, Inside Central Asia, January 14–20, 2002. 81 The aspects of this debate are summarized by R. Streshnev, Krasnaya zvezda, January 24, 2002. 82 Maj. Gen. Sergei Chernomyrdin, in Jamestown Foundation, Monitor, April 26, 2002. 83 See Sergei Sokut in Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, April 10, 2001, and April 21, 2000. See also Pavel Baev, “The Challenge of ‘Small Wars’ for the Russian Military,” pp. 189–208, in Anne Aldis and Roger McDermott, eds., Russian Military Reform, 1992–2002 (London: Frank Cass, 2003).
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restructure its forces in the 1990s for the contingencies of limited military and regional conflicts, as illustrated by the Chechnya campaigns. It is to be expected, therefore, that Russian military theorists will be slow to absorb and publicize their analysis of the lessons of the campaign in Afghanistan for the Russian use of military power. Following the experience of the Chechen wars, however, the Russian General Staff already has a better understanding of the need in principle to modernize military structures, C3I systems, and armaments in a manner that would focus the revolution in military affairs (RMA) on limited military conflicts. Nonetheless, the Russian armed forces are stuck with pre-computer age technology, which limits their capacity to deal with rebel organizations and terrorist networks in regional conflicts. Their leadership is aware of being hopelessly behind not only the vanguard of the RMA, consisting of U.S. forces “but also its second and third echelons, quickly losing the edge in potential conflicts to the south of Russia’s borders.”84 The Iraq War This Russian perception of falling behind key developments in the RMA could only be reinforced by the display of U.S. combat potential in Iraq in 2003. It has been suggested that despite the rapid overthrow of the Taliban, Russian military intelligence assessments predicted a more protracted campaign in Iraq to unseat Saddam Hussein, which would have involved low-intensity operations for which U.S forces were poorly prepared and would suffer significant casualties. Such a prediction may have reflected wishful thinking born of frustration with the campaign in Chechnya, diplomatic failures in the lead-up to the Iraq war, and a reluctance to write off the effectiveness of Soviet training and armaments in Iraq.85 However, at least some Russian military thinkers dismissed the likelihood of this outcome. Before combat operations began, an influential Russian military theorist argued that a primary U.S. objective in the com-
84 85
Baev, in ibid. For an assessment of these diplomatic failures, see Alexei Arbatov, “Iraq Lessons,” Moscow News, June 18–24 2003, p. 4. For the role of Russian intelligence assessments over the war in providing forecasts and analysis for President Putin to make decisions, see Igor Yuriev, Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, March 28–April 4, 2003.
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ing campaign was to test its latest high-precision weapon systems, especially air and naval missiles and bombs, which would destroy the Iraqi armed forces. He estimated that the operation would last up to one month and would not involve a ground war in the classic sense.86 Some Russian civilian specialists argued similarly that, as during previous military conflicts, the Iraq war would be used to demonstrate and test new weapons systems and that in general such armed conflicts stimulate the rapid development of new weapons.87 After the conclusion of major hostilities in Iraq, at a meeting of the Science Council of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences, senior officers laid particular emphasis on the effectiveness of high-precision weapons in assuring strategic superiority, on the role of satellites for command and control, and on intelligence. The adaptability of U.S. aviation and troops in “dynamic planning” impressed one general so much that he considered it to be “impossible to effectively withstand the adaptive actions of the troops…with the forms and means traditional for the Russian armed forces.”88 But as in the case of the recent Afghanistan campaign, this could only offer “virtual” lessons for Russian military conduct in a major regional conflict—because Russia could not expect in the medium term to possess the high-technology weaponry or C3I involved. In this context, the Russian high command is likely to follow with interest the growing guerrilla resistance on the ground in Iraq to the U.S. and British occupation, which succeeded an unexpectedly poor initial level of resistance by the formal Iraqi forces.89 It confirms the difficulty of peace enforcement after the end of major combat operations in a regional conflict, especially under conditions of occupation. At the least, with the Chechnya conflict still simmering, it will further dissuade Moscow from risking involvement in the future in new regional conflicts. It may also deter the participation of the Russian military “in the normalization of the situation in Iraq,” in a multinational peacekeeping force, 86
Maj. Gen. Vladimir Slipchenko (ret.), interviewed in Rossiyskaya gazeta, February 22, 2003; and in Kommersant-Vlast, March 10, 2003. 87 Maxim Pyadushkin, assistant director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, Profil, no. 12 (March 2003), pp. 26–27. 88 Lt. Gen. Vladimir Barvinenko, in report on meeting by Oleg Falichev, Krasnaya zvezda, June 28, 2003. 89 Gen. Vladimir Lobov argued that Iraq could have mounted a successful fight against the occupying forces even with the military hardware it retained after 1991, Krasnaya zvezda, April 12, 2003.
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which President Putin has said is not excluded “theoretically.”90 But it seems unlikely that Russia will seek to derive any significant lessons from the Iraq occupation for its own military and security operations in Chechnya. CONCLUSION
Russia has had to contend with conflicts in Chechnya and CIS zones in the southern tier and has used its military power to greater or lesser effect to support its perceived national interests and to try to achieve conflict outcomes consistent with those interests. However, a requirement for success in these interventions, particularly in the military and security management of conflict regions after the cessation of major combat, has been a reform of Russian forces, military structures, and military thinking. It has been necessary to adapt these to the demands of low-intensity conflict involving subnational groups, or to peace operations that have included varying levels of enforcement. This kind of adaptation has failed to take place during or between the Chechnya campaigns and has only partially been achieved with respect to CIS conflict zones. A central paradox exists. Chechnya, while representing the greatest demand for reform—conceptually and organizationally—to shift the balance relatively from high- to low-intensity operations, has also proved to be the principal obstacle to the implementation of such change and arguably even for the broader process of military reform. The “premodern” style of combat in Chechnya and the steady drain on resources associated with it have distorted the role of military force internally in Russia and sustained an ends-justify-the-means approach. Consequently there has been no positive spillover or transference from the Chechnya imbroglio for Russian military engagement in other regional conflicts. This outcome reflects the impasse that military reform efforts have encountered, as described elsewhere in this volume. The confusion and disorder that followed the collapse of the USSR as a metropolitan power with union-wide military structures explain the initial preoccupation of the Russian military authorities with other priorities. But by 1992–93 military leaders could not deny the risks and existence of conflict along the southern tier.
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“Putin Hints Solution on Iraq Possible,” Moscow Times, September 22, 2003.
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A root problem has been that their training and psychological predispositions, even a decade after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, have inclined them to planning for large-scale conventional military campaigns, generally oriented toward the West. Their reluctance to seriously reorient the focus of military efforts toward regional conflicts involving subnational groups was reinforced by the absence of military resources and earmarked funding to develop the capabilities to engage in combat in a “modern” way in such conflicts. In contrast the Russian high command probably devoted considerable attention to scenarios whereby regional conflicts on the periphery of Russia and other CIS states could escalate into confrontation with major regional powers—a level of conflict more familiar to General Staff exercises. However, the analysis above confirms that Russian leaders have been careful not to encourage such escalation. Some Russian operations in CIS conflict zones could become more regulated after years of relative peace and resemble peacekeeping in some respects. But the Chechnya campaigns remained “premodern,” and Russian leaders lacked the political will to compel innovation on the military command while these campaigns were under way. In any case attempts at innovation are likely to have floundered among the exigencies of combat operations and the inertia of the military bureaucracy. The course of Russian operations in Chechnya contrasts dramatically with the Western campaigns in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. One might expect that the example of these campaigns would shake up the Russian interpretation of major regional conflict. But the effect of these campaigns has been less to prompt Russian military leaders to lobby for new weapon systems and for changes in operational style to achieve greater success in current or possible future regional conflicts than to think of what Russia’s lack of modern military capabilities might imply for the East-West military equation—the traditional focus of attention of the General Staff. With a military that is only partially capable in and adapted to regional conflicts of varying intensities, and with a tendency to over-rely on the use of the military instrument, Russia is likely to have only partial success in military interventions in such conflicts. However, in contemporary Russia the political and economic cost of such partial success still appears easier to bear than the effort of seeking a wholesale modernization of Russian military thinking, organization, training, and culture.
CHAPTER 5
The Economics of Defense in Russia and the Legacy of Structural Militarization VITALY V. SHLYKOV
T
he key reason for the Soviet Union’s sudden demise and for many of Russia’s current economic and military problems can be traced to a phenomenon that has largely gone unnoticed: the structural militarization of the Soviet economy. In this chapter, I examine the characteristics of this phenomenon and assess its consequences for the Russian defense sector and the country more generally. WHAT IS STRUCTURAL MILITARIZATION?
According to State Planning Committee (Gosplan) archives declassified in the early 1990s, the Soviet Union’s Second Five-Year Plan (1933–37) slashed the production of military aircraft from 3,515 to 2,000 and of tanks from 4,220 to 2,800. At the same time, it called on the defense industry to increase its mobilization capacity from 13,100 to 46,300 for aircraft and from 40,400 to 90,000 for tanks. The mobilization capacity of the Soviet defense industry after World War II remains classified, but approximations are still possible. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the Soviet General Staff claimed that the U.S. defense industry could produce 50,000–70,000 tanks a year (a gross overstatement, but that is beside the point). Indeed, as late as 1990, the Soviet high command believed that if the United States were to mobilize, it could achieve an annual production rate within six months of 50,000 tanks, while its NATO allies in Western Europe could produce another 25,000. As with the U.S. estimates, however, the mobilization capacities T H E R U S S I A N M I L I TA RY
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of NATO countries to outproduce the Soviet Union in other types of weaponry (aircraft, artillery, missiles, etc.) were also exaggerated. Nevertheless, the General Staff used these and other inflated numbers to spur the Soviet defense industry in an attempt to match NATO production levels. Assuming that the Soviet Union’s mobilization requirements for a future world war were similar to those of the United States, and that the Kremlin was determined to reach military parity with its Cold War adversary, it is possible to use estimates of U.S. mobilization capacities as a basis for approximating the calculations of the Soviet General Staff. This in turn makes possible an approximation—with the help of input-output tables—of the quantities of metals, oil, rubber, and other materials needed to produce the required amount of armaments within the General Staff’s specified time frame. The figures generated through this exercise are staggering not only with regard to the Soviet economy but also with regard to the Russian economy of the 1990s. To satisfy the military’s mobilization demands, Soviet industry had to maintain the uninterrupted production of metals, fuel, and other primary goods in volumes greatly exceeding the peacetime needs of the economy. A case in point is aluminum. Russia currently produces 3.4 million tons of aluminum a year. About 300,000 tons are consumed domestically; the rest is exported. In contrast, the Soviet Union produced 4 million tons of aluminum a year. However, because aluminum was considered a strategic material, the government prohibited its export. The Soviet defense industry consumed, at most, one-quarter of the country’s aluminum; the rest either was used to produce low-quality consumer goods or was turned into scrap. The main reason for this gross overproduction was the military’s need to keep the aluminum industry (not to mention the steel and titanium industries, among others) in a state of permanent readiness. In other words, in the event the Soviet armed forces were mobilized, defense-related industries would already have at their disposal the resources needed to immediately accelerate the production of planes, tanks, and other weapons. Given this huge, mandated overproduction, the Soviet economy had no incentive to raise its productivity rates or reduce its defense-related consumption levels. The greatest victim of this policy was the civilian sector of the Soviet economy. For more than a half century, the government channeled the country’s best technologies as well as human and material resources into
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its defense sector. Meanwhile, civilian industries and infrastructure suffered decades of gross neglect and rising inefficiency. Indeed, the level of backwardness in the Soviet civilian sector was proportional to the amount of funds diverted into military production. Given this extreme inefficiency, the civilian sector required massive levels of basic resources—raw materials, fuel, and industrial facilities—merely to sustain itself. In the agricultural sector, for example, the Soviet Union had to manufacture six to seven times as many tractors and produce several times the amount of fertilizers as the United States to achieve the same levels of output. Compared with the civilian sector, the Soviet defense sector was significantly less energy, material, and labor intensive. During peak production in the 1970s and 1980s, the defense sector consumed only 6–9.3 percent of all rolled steel, 23.6–25 percent of rolled aluminum, 1.7 percent of all steel pipe, and 3 percent of timber utilized in the Soviet economy. It employed just 10.45 million people, or 8.4 percent of a labor force of 135 million. An economy whose high-quality resources are concentrated in a relatively small defense sector, while the rest of the economy teeters on the verge of total neglect, can function only by defying the laws that govern market systems. It does not respond to such measures as cutting defense spending, nor does it allow the transfer of financial resources from the defense sector to the civilian economy. It is, in other words, a structurally militarized economy. In an economy of this type, even if all defense procurement were suspended, there would be no corresponding increase in the efficiency of the civilian sector, no “invisible hand,” and no noticeable improvements in the economy overall. When a structurally militarized economy switches abruptly to a market-based system, the linkages between the various sectors within it slowly pull apart and eventually disintegrate. This is what occurred in Russia in the 1990s. At the time of its collapse, the Soviet Union had tremendous excess mobilization capacity in both its energy and its raw materials sectors. Accumulated over 50-plus years of preparation for a world war, these surpluses were an important source of export revenue. They also helped to satisfy domestic demand during the 1990s. Indeed, throughout this period the Russian leadership continued to market these surpluses domestically at subsidized prices, in the belief that this would help to prevent social instability. Even today, natural gas is sold to domestic users at one-seventh of its export price.
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RUSSIA AT THE CROSSROADS
Russia has reached a turning point. Its surpluses have largely been exhausted, and a lack of investment is taking an ever-greater toll on economic productivity. With the breakdown of the Soviet/Russian structurally militarized economy, the time has come to overhaul Russia’s defense industry. The only exceptions to this effort should be certain highly specialized sectors (e.g., the nuclear weapons and missile enterprises). The Russian defense industry currently comprises 1,700 officially recognized enterprises and about 2 million employees—the same numbers as in 1992, not including the nuclear industry, which has traditionally been kept separate. These figures are proof that Russia has yet to make the transition to a market economy. In addition, since the early 1990s, the ministry of defense has failed to pay many defense industry enterprises for its weapons purchases—except for the occasional, largely symbolic, payment. At the same time, no one even seems sure about what actually constitutes a defense enterprise. Officially, an enterprise is considered part of the defense industrial sector if at least 5 percent of its output is defense related. In reality, however, the government acknowledges that 90 percent of the enterprises that make this claim have no defense contracts. Indeed, by declaring membership in the defense establishment, many of these enterprises are simply hoping to avoid having to pay at least some of their bills (e.g., utilities and taxes). Given the myriad of difficulties confronting Russia’s defense industry, the majority of medium and small defense enterprises—especially parts suppliers and subcontractors—have redirected their focus toward the considerably more attractive civilian sector. Unlike its Soviet predecessor, the Russian government can no longer arbitrarily set and maintain artificially low prices for military hardware. Nor can it force privately owned parts suppliers and subcontractors to fulfill defense orders against their will. Therefore, if the government wants to increase defense production while adhering to the economic policies of the past decade, it will need to dramatically expand its defense procurement budget. Russia, however, does continue to possess one of the world’s largest defense research and development establishments in terms of both number of research centers and number of employees. Russia’s R&D defense sector inherited about 80 percent of the 450 scientific and 250 design organizations that were once part of the Soviet Union’s military indus-
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trial complex (voenno-promyshlennyi kompleks), or MIC. Today, they are part of what has come to be known as Russia’s defense industrial complex (oboronno-promyshlennyi kompleks), or DIC. The large-scale production of modern weapons during the Soviet era was based on a unique nonmarket system where the defense sector enjoyed priority access to all kinds of resources: skilled labor, the top scientists and managers, the newest technology, and guaranteed supplies of required inputs at heavily subsidized prices. The abolition of this prioritybased system after 1991 essentially inflicted a mortal blow on the defense industry. Not all sectors of the industry, however, felt its impact at the same time or in the same way. The pace of change in the nuclear and missile sectors, for example, has been more gradual than it has been in the electronics and shipbuilding industries. Data on the state of Russia’s defense industrial complex made public by President Vladimir Putin in March 2000 reflect the industry’s dire straits. Since 1996, for example, the average age of industry employees has risen from 47 to 58 years. (In Russia, the pensionable age for men is 60.) The average age of machine tools is 25–30 years. (Officially, it should be no more than 10–15 years.) About 300 weapons production technologies have been lost forever, and the Soviet system of quality control is now defunct. Given these huge changes, any attempt to put into production new designs developed by the defense industry’s R&D sector faces two formidable hurdles: (1) acquiring recent foreign technology as well as large amounts of foreign-made equipment, and (2) recruiting and training an almost entirely new labor force to fill jobs in an industry that no longer seems attractive to most Russians, especially young workers and scientists. Moreover, after a decade of plummeting defense procurement, and without serious government intervention, the defense industry has become highly unresponsive to demands to resume or accelerate the production of existing weapon systems—let alone develop new ones. Many of its enterprises no longer consider defense production as their raison d’être. As mentioned earlier, some of these enterprises have converted to civilian uses. This includes a number of manufacturers of oil- and gasrelated equipment. Others eke out an existence by leasing their facilities to commercial companies for a variety of uses (e.g., offices, storehouses, and even supermarkets).
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Russia’s military/defense industrial complex is no longer separate from the rest of the economy, nor is it under the centralized guidance and control of the state as it was during the Soviet era. All that remains is a loose collection of enterprises that belong to the MIC’s successor (the defense industrial complex) and that view their association with the DIC as a shield against threats of privatization, bankruptcy, or hostile takeover by more efficient companies. Membership in the DIC has brought with it with a number of advantages that to some degree have helped to compensate Russia’s defense enterprises and, in some cases, their directors for the lack of government defense orders. First, it has allowed the defense directors to run their enterprises as if they were the true owners. Recently, for example, the security services in Moscow discovered that a large, fundamentalist Uzbek Muslim organization had established its headquarters on the grounds of the heavily guarded, highly sensitive Granit enterprise. More than 100 fundamentalists were arrested when officials discovered that the group had not only opened a café and bakery on the premises but had been paying rent to Granit’s director. Second, in the 1990s defense directors were able to take out commercial bank loans guaranteed by the state. According to government accountants, this practice created a system of kickbacks in which half of the money spent by the state on defense procurement went to banks that had provided these loans. Not surprisingly, many plant directors grew rich in the process. A third example involves the military draft and helps to explain how the DIC is able to support its claim of having about 2 million workers despite a dearth of procurement orders. Draft evasion is a widespread problem in Russia. The most common way to avoid military service is to pay the draft authorities and a medical institution $5,000–$10,000 for a document certifying the draftee’s supposed unfitness for reasons of health. There is, however, another way to escape the draft. The government allows state-owned enterprises to provide their employees with military deferments. According to media reports, draft dodgers are paying the directors of some of these enterprises to list them as employees even though they are not on the enterprises’ payrolls. Despite the problems this has created, Russia’s recently appointed deputy prime minister, Boris Alyoshin, has promised to extend this privilege to private defense enterprises as well.
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Fourth, regional and local administrations have also profited from the presence of defense enterprises on their territory. During the Soviet era, nearly 100 so-called closed cities were built around large, highly sensitive defense R&D facilities and production enterprises. Most have continued to enjoy the benefits of their privileged status, including exemption from paying taxes. Not surprisingly, thousands of commercial enterprises have flocked to these tax-free havens. This has been especially true around the Space Center in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The government’s accounting department estimates that lost taxes from these cities are equivalent to 60 percent of Russian defense expenditures. According to a poll conducted in 2002 by the nongovernmental organization League in Support of the Defense Enterprise, a majority of defense enterprise directors believed that the central authorities had abandoned them. The survey asked respondents which government entities had favorably or unfavorably influenced their work (see table 5.1). As the table shows, respondents believed that neither the president nor the State Duma had demonstrated much interest in the affairs of the DIC; indeed, for the most part, they had created more difficulties. The ministry for industry, science, and technology, which is responsible for restructuring the DIC, was thought to have the least influence (78 percent). As for Russia’s so-called defense federal agencies (aviation and space, conventional arms, control systems, shipbuilding, and ammunition), 78 percent of the respondents said that none had helped them in running their enterprises. Interestingly, 69 percent of those polled were convinced that these enterprises would soon face dissolution.1 TABLE 5.1
Attitudes of Defense Enterprise Directors toward Russia’s Central Authorities President Government State Duma Ministry for industry, science, and technology Defense ministry Regional authorities 1
Influenced Favorably
Caused Difficulties
20% 15 10 17 24 32
8% 50 22 5 32 26
V. Vitebskiy, O. Kolennikova, L. Kozals, M. Kuznetsov, R. Ryvkina, Yu. Simagin, and Yu. Yuvitskaya, Oboronnye predpriyatiya Rossii: 1999–2001 (Moscow: 2002), pp. 101, 103, 104.
Had No Influence
72% 35 68 78 44 42
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Not long ago Igor Ashourbailey, general director of the Almaz concern, the designer and producer of the S-300P air defense system, echoed some of these concerns: “In reality it is only the directors of the corresponding enterprises who control the situation in the defense industry. Today, the director of the enterprise is the first and the last level at which Russia’s DIC is being managed. The effectiveness of such management is fully dependent on the personal qualities of the director—his competence, integrity, and decency, as well as his belonging to this or that financial industrial group.”2 Many defense industrialists understand that, under market conditions, any attempt to induce the DIC to substantially increase production of state-of-the-art weapons for the Russian armed forces would require huge financial incentives. Such incentives, however, will remain beyond the means of the Russian government for the foreseeable future. In November 2002, I chaired a roundtable, “Army Reform and the Future of the DIC,” organized by the journal Otechestvenniye Zapiski (the transcript of the roundtable discussion was published by the journal). Among the participants were the owners of Russia’s largest private defense companies, Boris Kouzyk of the New Programs and Concepts Holding and Sergei Nedoroslev of the Kaskol Group. All of the participants were asked to comment on President Putin’s appeal to make arms production a successful sector of the Russian economy. The following observation by Nedoroslev met with unanimous support: “This is practically impossible. Nowhere is defense production run on a commercial basis. There are very few successful companies in this market. These few have one feature in common—they are companies of a national defense industrial complex. Yet we do not really have a defense industrial complex. What we do have is a number of enterprises that produce defense equipment for foreign armies—India, China, and so on. To make defense production a successful sphere of business, we need at least half of the U.S. defense budget and a GDP of $4 trillion. To try to make the defense industry successful in a…country with a GDP of $300 billion is impossible.”3
2
Quoted in Mikhail Khodarenok, “Oboronke trebuetsa inventarizatsia” [Defense industry needs innovation], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, July 19, 2002. 3 Quoted in “Reforma armii I buduschee VPK” [Army reform and the future of the MIC], Otechestvenniye Zapiski, no. 2 (2003), pp. 476–477.
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Compounding these difficulties has been the near total lack of ideas about how to reform the Russian defense complex. This is hardly surprising given that the political elite that came to power in 1991 chose to have nothing to do with the armed forces or the defense industry. Association with the DIC, it seemed, carried with it a kind of social stigma. Indeed, many of the liberal politicians around Boris Yeltsin took pride in proclaiming their ignorance of defense-related problems. During this period, the Russian political leadership dissolved the Gosplan and the Military Industrial Commission (including its defense industrial ministries) without first determining how these bodies had operated during the Soviet era. No effort was made to mine their rich trove of archives, and to the best of my knowledge, no one showed any interest in Western defense systems. As for the military, President Yeltsin and other politicians for the most part seemed content simply to allow it muddle through. Not wanting to become entangled in the problems of the armed forces, they chose not to establish a civilian defense ministry to assist the post-Soviet military in adapting to a radically new economic and political environment. Former Soviet generals and other officers, who lacked a liberal education, spoke no foreign languages, and had never been given access to contemporary military literature and thinking, were suddenly expected to reform along Western lines. In addition, when the Soviet Union collapsed—and here I am drawing on my own experience—there was no independent community of defense experts to whom the leadership could turn. The number of such experts outside the ministry of defense and the MIC began to dwindle following Nikita Khrushchev’s ouster in 1964. During his 11-year rule, Khrushchev was determined to see the Soviet Union overtake the United States in every possible sphere—economic, scientific, and military. At the same time, his thorough mistrust of the military led him to establish a number of large, well-funded think tanks with access to the centers of power. Prime examples of this type of organization were the institutes within the National Academy of Sciences. Khrushchev’s successors, however, decided that they would be better served if all externally focused defense research were concentrated within the General Staff (specifically, within the military intelligence administration) and the KGB. A decision by the Politburo in 1972 led to the gradual disappearance of the Academy of Sciences’ relatively independent civilian think tanks until, by the mid-1980s, the General Staff and the KGB had acquired a monopoly on
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defense research. Under the auspices of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a few civilian experts who dealt mostly with disarmament issues were hired to ascertain the veracity of often questionable information supplied by the ministry of defense. They did not, however, have much success in challenging the General Staff on data concerning the West’s defense posture and defense economics. In the post-Soviet era, the situation has only grown worse. Most of the remaining defense experts in the Academy of Sciences have left to pursue careers in business or politics. Meanwhile, recently established “research groups” with impressive-sounding names (institutes and centers for strategic or national security studies, defense policy, etc.) are in reality one- or two-person operations whose claims of conducting important research are highly suspect. At the same time, the ministry of defense remains as hostile as ever to what it perceives as civilian meddling. Instead, it supports the work of the Academy of Military Science, which is led by a former deputy chief of the General Staff and is largely composed of retired officers. Under these circumstances, the emergence of a viable plan to reform Russia’s military and defense industry seems highly unlikely. The presidential Security Council, which is responsible for developing such a plan, already has an overcrowded agenda—from nuclear safety to demographics to the war in Chechnya. This does not mean, however, that the situation is hopeless. But if the defense industry is to reform, Russia’s political forces will need to play a critical role, which until recently they have been reluctant to do. The vast resources accumulated during the Soviet era lulled the leadership into believing that the struggling defense sector could somehow right itself without government intervention. Now, with those resources largely depleted, the need for reform has at last been recognized. The next section describes recent government efforts, including by President Putin, to address the defense complex’s mounting problems. RECENT REFORM EFFORTS
In October 2001, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov signed resolution 713, “On Reforming and Developing the Defense-Industrial Complex in 2002–06.” In January 2002, President Putin approved an armaments program that calls for the “coordinating, management, and control functions” held by federal entities that manage the DIC to be transferred to
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so-called system-building integrated structures after 2010. As part of the government’s plans, the number of defense enterprises will be slashed from 1,700 to fewer than 600. These in turn will be amalgamated into system-building integrated structures, which the media refer to simply as “holdings.” The plant equipment and intellectual property of the 1,000plus enterprises no longer considered a part of the DIC will be transferred to these holdings. The main mechanism for reforming the DIC is the increase in governmental ownership of this complex. Currently, 43 percent of DIC enterprises are state owned, 29 percent are stock companies with some form of state participation, and 28 percent are in private hands. By 2006, the government is expected to have controlling stock in all the head companies of the system-building integrated structures. To achieve this, the government has devised a simple trick: declaring the intellectual property of the state to be worth 100 percent of the stock of the head company. As a rule, the head company running a holding will be a design bureau. During the Soviet era, design bureaus were usually separate from production plants. The new program is intended to put an end to this separation by integrating the design bureaus and the production plants into new system-building structures. In addition, the state’s shares in the remaining enterprises in the DIC holdings will be put into trusts held by the head companies. To regain control over the DIC, the government plans to rely mainly on administrative tools. In an interview with the business weekly magazine Ekspert in 2002, Ilya Klebanov, then minister for industry, science, and technology and a former deputy prime minister, laid out the government’s thinking: Ekspert: In discussing the reform of the DIC, you like to refer to the American experience. Practically all defense firms in the United States are privately owned. In the aviation sector, there are two corporations: Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Your opponents argue that it took American corporations more than twenty years to integrate, yet you propose that our aircraft firms integrate within eight years. What can you say in response to your opponents? Klebanov: If we do not do this within the proposed time frame (i.e., by 2006—Ekspert), which by the way was approved by the
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government, the Security Council, and the State Council, then we will not have much left to integrate. We simply do not have twenty years. In the West, integration has been largely driven by the demands of the market. We, unfortunately, besides the demands of the market, are forced to use administrative methods, because the state is still the main owner in many leading integrated structures. At the same time, apart from this, the state carries the responsibility for the reform process. Ekspert: This is certainly not the U.S. model. Klebanov: We are not yet ready for the American model, although I will not conceal from you that in general I like it. We lack an important ingredient possessed by the United States. In the United States, the idea of ownership is in people’s blood. But this is not the case in Russia. In the 1990s, we privatized a portion of our defense industrial complex when the notion of ownership was still largely foreign. That is the situation. Unfortunately, we often see that the number-one priority of many of these owners is to service export contracts instead of investing in new technologies. The result has been calamitous. Ekspert: Does this mean that in the first stage of the DIC reform program the state should be the principal owner of the defense enterprises? Klebanov: Yes, we have made that decision. But try to understand, we recognize that in reality the state is also a bad owner. Today, however, when the country does not have enough effective owners, there is no other way. With time, as the state is able to create a more conducive business environment, more individuals will want to participate in the defense sector. Then it will be possible to privatize many of the defense enterprises.4 The most effective way for the state to regain control and improve productivity is by assuming ownership of the defense enterprises’ intellectual property. As in the Soviet era, the defense bureaus, which will control this intellectual property, are naturally antagonistic toward the pro4
Quoted in “Kriticheskaya tekhnologiya” [Critical technology], Ekspert, January 14, 2002.
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duction plants. In another interview, Klebanov was equally candid about the government’s intentions: I want you to understand the following, probably the most important, point: In the absence of government resistance, Russian defense enterprises have in effect been using state intellectual property unlawfully. The intellectual property rights for the Su-24, Su-27, and Su-30 aircraft designs do not belong to IAPO (the Irkutsk aviation plant), or KnAAPO (the Komsomolsk-on-Amur aviation plant), or NAPO (the Novosibirsk aviation plant). They belong to the state, because the governmentcontrolled Sukhoi design bureau developed their designs. Therefore, when the state decides who should have the rights to this property—and this is sure to happen in the near future—it will choose Sukhoi.… For our part, we have to create conditions that will spur the development of new equipment. However, this is something that only the design bureaus can do. For this reason, they should be given the intellectual property rights to military equipment designs. In turn, the defense bureaus can give the production plants the right to manufacture weapons as if, in effect, under a license.5 The government considers the reclaiming of this intellectual property as a way largely to nationalize the defense sector. Klebanov continues, First, the state ought to remember that this intellectual property is one of its main assets. Unfortunately, this has not been sufficiently taken into account during the privatization process. If the state had paid attention to the issue of intellectual property sooner, then the level of private capital in the defense industry would probably be much lower today. We are conducting a cost estimate of intellectual property using as our example the Permskiye motory enterprise [Russia’s largest aircraft engine producer]. When the ministry of state property undertook the monumental task of estimating the value of the intellectual 5
Quoted in “Ilya Klebanov: My dogovorimsya o pravilakh igry, ya vam obeschayu” [Ilya Klebanov: We’ll agree on the rules of the game, I promise you], Vedomosti, August 2, 2001.
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property of the PS-90A engine, we realized that as the main stockholder of Permskiye motory, the state is in fact very wealthy. A huge amount of the intellectual property of Permskiye motory belongs to the state.6 For Klebanov, the reclaiming of these and other defense-related intellectual property rights is not the state’s ultimate objective. Through it, he hopes that the government will eventually assume control of the financial flows of the defense enterprises, a goal that he makes no effort to conceal: There is one other issue that I have not yet spoken about. Today, we do not have the resources to develop the next generation of weaponry: tanks, aircraft, and so forth. In accordance with the government’s armaments program, we have to develop and start delivering to the armed forces replacements for the aging Su-27, the MIG-29, and so on. This will require huge investments. The funds earmarked for this project, however, are insufficient. We therefore have to find new sources of revenue, possibly from [an increase in arms] exports.…But the production plants that hold these export contracts, together with the governors of the regions in which they are located, simply do not want to invest a portion of the profits from their foreign arms sales in new weapons development.7 Given the unwillingness of the production plants to share their profits with the state, the government has decided to convert these plants into new holdings (i.e., system-building integrated structures). The government’s program has two stages. In the first stage (2002–04), head companies are being chosen to develop new weapons and equipment and to establish new integrated structures (holdings) along the lines of existing defense industry branches. The plan contains a list of 74 such holdings, including 19 in the aircraft industry, 10 in the missile and space industry, 6 in the ammunition and special chemistry sector, 9 in the conventional armaments industry, 17 in the electronics industry, and 13 in the shipbuilding industry. In the second stage (2005–06), the program calls for the creation of new kinds of diversified research and production complexes that will 6 7
Ibid. Ibid.
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combine enterprises from different branches of industry, produce both military and civilian goods, and be capable of competing in the world market. The composition of every structure, at both the first and the second stages, will have to be approved by presidential decree. The ministry for industry, science, and technology is responsible for the program overall. The ministry of atomic energy, the aviation and space agency, the conventional arms agency, the control systems agency, the shipbuilding agency, and the ammunition agency are responsible for achieving the program’s objectives within their respective branches. The first system-building integrated structure to be set up under the program was the aviation holding company Sukhoi. President Putin signed the decree establishing this new entity in November 2001. By May 2003, three more holdings had been created by similar decrees. In April 2003, President Putin appointed Boris Alyoshin as deputy prime minister in charge of defense industrial policy and arms exports. As a result, Alyoshin became Klebanov’s boss—an interesting turn considering that several years ago Alyoshin (then the deputy minister for industry, science, and technology), resigned his position when Klebanov became head of the ministry and Alyoshin found himself in disagreement with Klebanov’s policies. The prevailing view among experts was that Alyoshin, who is considered a staunch supporter of both the large-scale privatization of the defense industry and close cooperation with defense industries in Europe, would seek to abolish the defense agencies. At the same time, he continued to stress the urgent need to accelerate the holdings process. A majority of defense industrialists greeted the publication of the DIC restructuring program with a combination of outrage and scathing criticism. Here, for example, is what Igor Ashourbailey, general director of Almaz, the designer and producer of the S-300P air defense system, had to say: “The [decree establishing the] program to reform the defense industrial complex is largely a superficial…and abstract document, far removed from a system analysis of realities and perspectives of military development. One has the peculiar feeling that one is dealing with a formless and systemless mass of defense enterprises thrown together into so-called vertically integrated structures.”8 Boris Kouzyk, general direc-
8
Quoted in Vadim Solov’yov, “Mify I legendy oboronki” [Myths and legends of the defense industry], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, March 29, 2002.
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tor of the private defense holding New Programs and Concepts and a former Yeltsin adviser on arms trade, wrote: “No matter how big the temptation today to solve the problems of the armed forces at the cost of the DIC, tomorrow such a decision would inevitably lead to a crisis for the army and the industry.” 9 The idea of creating new defense industrial holdings from above using administrative means is not new, and the difficulties are well known. In 1997 the government adopted a similar initiative, the Federal Program for the Restructuring and Conversion of the Defense Industry in 1998–2000, which called for the formation of “integrated defense industrial structures.” No such structures ever materialized. One of the government’s failed attempts involved the Sukhoi holding. On August 26, 1996, President Yeltsin signed a decree paving the way for the merger of the Sukhoi Construction and Design Bureau, KnAAPO, IAPO, NAPO, and the Taganrog aviation science and technical complex (TANTK) to form the Sukhoi aviation company. Proposing the merger was Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Potanin, one of Russia’s famous “oligarchs.” Alexei Fyodorov, director of IAPO, which was on friendly terms with Potanin’s Uneximbank, was appointed to head the new company. However, Sukhoi’s general director, Mikhail Simonov, Uneximbank’s rival Incombank, and the Khabarovsk Region governor all strongly protested the plan. In the end, Fyodorov was unable to privatize KnAAPO and NAPO, and the new company that eventually emerged received only the state’s stakes in the Sukhoi design bureau (51 percent), IAPO (14.7 percent), and TANTK (38 percent). In January 1998, the government dismissed Fyodorov as general director of Sukhoi; he went on to become the president of IAPO. Mikhail Pogosyan, chief constructor of the S-37 Berkut plane, was chosen to head Sukhoi. In a November 2001 decree, Putin ordered the conversion of KnAAPO and NAPO into stock companies with 100 percent state ownership: 74.5 percent of their stock would be transferred to the Sukhoi holding, which already possessed 14.7 percent of IAPO and 38 percent of TANTK. The remaining 25.5 percent of KnAAPO’s and NAPO’s shares would be transferred to the Russian Foundation for Federal Property. In reality, however, the Sukhoi holding is a small management
9
Boris Kouzyk, “Oboronka mozhet byt’ vysokopribyl’noi” [Defense industry can be highly profitable], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, May 31, 2002.
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company that controls only the design bureau, 51 percent of which belongs to the state. NAPO’s controlling stock is in the hands of Fyodorov, the head of the plant; the state possessing only 14.7 percent of the plant’s shares. The plant is able to make its own marketing and creative decisions, financed with profits from the lucrative sale of jet fighters to India. This is also true of TANTK: the state owns only 38 percent of TANTK’s shares, though it hopes to garner huge profits from the sale of the company’s Beriev amphibious plane. THE FORGOTTEN ARCHIPELAGO
The notion that Russia has a defense industrial complex is largely a myth. As noted above, the hundreds of defense plants generally referred to as the DIC are essentially a loose collection of enterprises trying to survive on their own with very little state control or guidance. Ashourbailey describes the situation in vivid detail: Today a great number of ministries, other government bodies, and organizations deal with the DIC. Among them are the ministry for industry, science, and technology, the ministry of state property, and five federal agencies, which are now being joined by the new and numerous holdings and concerns. This means that there is no lack of controlling structures. They occupy a huge number of beautiful buildings in downtown Moscow. Unfortunately, none has even a single small room where you could expect to find even the most elementary things related to the DIC, namely, 1,700 files with information on the 1,700 defense enterprises in Russia. I am saying this because at present the state does not know what is going on in the defense industry. The state does not possess copies of notarized official documents of the enterprises it owns, no updated lists of these enterprises; it does not even know who their stockholders are. The state is ignorant about such basic matters as the quantity and degree of obsolescence of the plants’ production equipment and capital stock, the composition and average age of the enterprises’ employees, the number of remaining weapon designers and engineers and their qualifica-
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tions, the number of patents and designers’ certificates, and the amount of know-how in the defense industrial sector. The state does not know how much office and production space the defense enterprises have, how many hectares of land they occupy, whether this land legally belongs to the enterprises, or how much of it is being rented out and at what price. As a rule, most of this information simply does not exist. Now, without having ascertained these fundamental facts, the state is beginning to transfer this property to the new integrated structures for nothing in the hope that the situation will somehow sort itself out. Maybe it will, but would that be in the interests of the state? In the end, we will inherit with these integrated structures a situation even worse that created by Chubais’s privatization program.10 Ashourbailey knew what he was talking about in comparing the DIC conversion program to the privatization of Russian industry under Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais in the second half of the 1990s. The majority of Russians and experts alike agree that Chubais’s action led to the emergence of the so-called oligarchs, the wholesale corruption of the state, and the unprecedented criminalization of the economy. On June 6, 2003, Igor Klimov, who had been appointed acting head of the Almaz-Antei holding in February of the same year, was shot dead outside his Moscow apartment building. He had been given responsibility for merging nearly 50 companies into a giant concern that would virtually monopolize Russia’s air defense industry. Following his appointment, Klimov pledged to complete the merger by year’s end, adjust the holding’s marketing strategy to boost annual sales to $2 billion within the next five years, and obtain an arms export license so that Almaz-Antei could avoid having to sell its products through the state exporter, Rosoboronexport. The Almaz-Antei holding was formed following the signing of a presidential decree on April 23, 2002. Its establishment was preceded by bitter rivalry among its members, especially between the two biggest companies—Antei and Almaz—which have been at each other’s throats since their formation in the early 1950s. Antei is the designer and producer of 10
Quoted in Khodarenok, “Oboronke trebuetsa inventarizatsia.”
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the S-300B air defense system, and as mentioned earlier, Almaz (headed by Ashourbailey) designed the better-selling S-300P air defense system. Despite their similar designations, the S-300B and S-300P are very different systems. Following the merger, Antei’s and Almaz’s top managers have continued to quarrel as they jockey for greater control over the new concern. On the same day Klimov was murdered, Sergei Shchitko, the commercial director of RATEP, was killed with three gunshots to the head while sitting in a car outside a café in the same Moscow suburb where the company is located. RATEP is one of dozens of smaller concerns that make up the Almaz-Antei holding, and it too has been rocked by a number of disputes in recent months. Settling business disputes through contract killings is not new in Russia. Klimov’s murder, however, was particularly unusual because of his close ties to senior officials. Before joining Almaz-Antei, Klimov had been an aide to Col. Gen. Viktor Ivanov. Ivanov, a former intelligence officer, deputy head of the presidential administration, and personal friend of Putin’s from their days together in St. Petersburg, was appointed by the president to head Almaz-Antei’s board of directors. Believing that he had the backing of the Kremlin, Klimov moved quickly to overhaul the finances of Almaz-Antei’s subsidiaries. The prosecutor general’s office launched a number of criminal investigations, including one into RATEP and another into Antei. In the Antei case, when the enterprise sold its Tor-M1 air defense system to Greece, some $45 million of the purchase price was diverted to Montenegro; another $16 million simply vanished. It is unlikely that Klimov’s murder was related to Almaz-Antei’s consolidation strategy or to the battle for the general director’s chair. Such issues are decided at much higher levels. Ruling out the possibility that Klimov was the victim of a random crime, the media have put forth three explanations for his killing. First, Klimov’s sacking of several directors may have prompted others within Almaz-Antei to act before they too fell under the ax. Second, his murder was meant to send a message to the Kremlin or perhaps, more specifically, to Ivanov: stop the administrative seizure of the defense enterprises or face their owners’ wrath. Third, and most likely, the murder was carried out by criminals with large stakes in the defense industry. Over the years, criminal gangs have bled dry a number of research institutes and defense plants. Given the indifference of the
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Russian leadership (which has been dominated by the export-oriented oil, gas, and metals “oligarchs”) to the problems of defense industry, many of the directors of state-owned defense plants have looked to other sources for their survival. This has often meant not only developing close contacts with some of Russia’s most notorious criminal gangs but also entering into sometimes dangerous “shadow agreements.” According to polls conducted by the League in Support of Defense Enterprises, the defense directors estimate that criminal gangs control 32 percent of Russia’s defense enterprises, and their influence is only getting stronger. In a 2000 poll taken after Putin’s rise to the presidency, 17 percent of respondents thought that this criminal influence would weaken; 11 percent felt that it would grow. In 2002, the trend reversed itself when, in another poll, only 9 percent of the defense directors thought that criminal influence in the industry would decline, 24 percent predicted that it would grow, and 67 percent believed that it would remain the same. Twenty-three percent of the directors stated that if their enterprises had been free from criminal influence, their production would have expanded by more than 40 percent.11 Given this reality, it is quite plausible that Klimov’s murder was the work of organized crime. Not only had Klimov fired directors at AlmazAntei, but he had also demanded that the defense enterprises’ shadow owners return what they had stolen. As one Russian economic observer put it, “In a sense it was no different than demanding that the looters put everything back on the shelves after a riot.”12 In addition, many defense industrial experts were convinced that Klimov’s and Shchitko’s murders would stall the completion of the Almaz-Antei merger, perhaps for years, and put a brake on the government’s conversion program. To this should be added the negative attitude of the DIC directorate to the government’s strategy of organizing its holdings from above. When asked recently whether the government’s program would benefit the DIC, only 15 percent of the directors answered yes. Seventy-four percent stated that it would be beneficial only if carried out at the initiative of the enterprises themselves (i.e., from below), with the state confining its role to endorsing the mergers.13 11
Vitebskiy et al., Oboronnye predpriyatiya Rossii: 1999–2001, p. 114. Yuliya Latynina, “Expect Swift Retribution for Klimov’s Death,” Moscow Times, June 11, 2003. 13 Vitebskiy et al., Oboronnye predpriyatiya Rossii: 1999–2001, p. 102. 12
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Perhaps the greatest resistance to the government’s holdings program comes from regional authorities that over the years have increased their control over the defense enterprises within their territory. Given the massive financial losses that the regions would incur if control of these enterprises were returned to the state, it is not surprising that some authorities have shown resistance to the plan. Indeed, in at least a few cases they have developed their own plans for converting local defense plants into new holdings. In the Sverdlovsk Region, for example, local authorities want to establish a tank and artillery holding with Uraltransmash (the leading producer of self-propelled artillery in Russia) as its head. The federal government, however, plans to include Uraltransmash in its own artillery systems and rocket complexes holding, with the Barrikady enterprise, located in the Volgograd Region, as the head company. As the Kremlin’s conversion program continues to evolve, clashes between federal and regional interests will likely multiply and become more bitter. This does not augur well for the government’s program, which in the end will probably produce a few defense industrial “fiefdoms” ruled by either top government officials or so-called St. Petersburg chekisty (a term widely used to describe President Putin’s KGB colleagues from his St. Petersburg days). DIC representatives frequently discuss the conditions within the defense sector in tragic terms. As the president of the League in Support of Defense Enterprises, Anatoly Dolgolaptev, has noted, “Since 1992 the state has not once paid in full and on time for weapons and equipment delivered by the industry to the armed forces. At the same time and without fail, it has exacted taxes and fines from the enterprises—not to mention threatening them with bankruptcy. Imagine the paradox: enterprises, half ruined by their state, were in effect crediting it!”14 This situation raises two questions: First, why does the defense industrial complex not put up stiffer resistance to the Kremlin’s economic and political reforms? Second, how has the DIC managed to survive in the absence of payments from the state and a dearth of government contracts? In any other country, the result would have been a deep crisis within the defense industry, resulting in plant closures, layoffs, and efforts to diversify. Not so in Russia, where all 1,700 plants that have been part of the DIC since 1992 remain open. 14
Quoted in Sergei Grigoriev, “Vo glave oboronnogo soobschestva” [In charge of the defense community], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, May 17, 2002.
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One answer is obvious: arms exports, a solution praised by President Yeltsin who, during tours of a tank plant and an aircraft factory, encouraged both to increase their arms exports. In addition, he promised them 80 percent of the proceeds from every tank, aircraft, and other piece of military equipment sold abroad. Yeltsin also told Russia’s missile producers that he would not bow to U.S. pressure over Russian missile sales to India. Russian shipbuilders also saw their prospects brighten when government officials dismissed Western objections to the delivery of newly built Russian submarines to Iran. A Yeltsin assistant, Mikhail Malei, publicly stated that Russian arms exports would be profitable even if they were priced six times below what Russia’s competitors charge. Indeed, Malei assured anyone who was willing to listen that Russia would still be able to earn $10–$12 billion a year from such exports.15 Although not reaching the optimistic levels promised by Malei, Russian arms exports have grown tremendously—from $1.1 billion in 1992 to $4.8 billion in 2002. As a result, they have become the defense industry’s main source of revenue. There is, however, a far more important but less well known reason for the defense industrialists’ lack of resistance to the government’s reform efforts. From the beginning, the Soviet defense industry was designed to function autonomously for long periods of time (months, even years). Every defense plant possessed the means to continue production in the event of war, when regular supply lines might be cut or the demand for arms rise precipitously. As a rule, Russia’s mobilization stockpiles were considered untouchable in peacetime. These stockpiles should not be confused with Russia’s strategic reserves, which are an approximate equivalent of the U.S. National Defense Stockpile and the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Russia’s strategic reserves, which it inherited from the Soviet Union, include more than just mineral and oil products (though not oil itself). They also comprise foodstuffs, rails, rolled metals, and so on. As with the United States, Russia’s strategic reserves are meant to help sustain the economy and the population in extraordinary circumstances. The central government knows their exact size and value and administers them directly through a special state agency. Mobilization stockpiles differ from strategic reserves in a couple of 15
Moskovskyi Novosti, February 21–27, 1993, p. 13A.
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ways. First, they are decentralized, usually located within the plants themselves. Second, they are measured in physical units (numbers, tonnes, meters), because in the event of war they would be used to produce specific quantities of weapons over a specific period of time, regardless of the cost. During the Soviet era, mobilization stockpiles were never calculated in terms of their monetary value, a task that would have been impossible in any case given the government’s bizarre pricing structure. In 1990–91, the size of the Soviet Union’s mobilization stockpiles was recalculated based on the need to sustain autonomous defense production at a preplanned mobilization rate for a period of four to six months (four months in the Asian part of the Soviet Union and six in the European part). This was based on the belief that it would take four to six months for the rest of the economy to gear up for total mobilization.16 The question is: how much would this cost in rubles or, better still, dollars? The answer depends on the number of weapons planned for production in case of war, which in turn would determine the quantity of inputs needed (i.e., raw materials, machinery, and a host of other components). CONCLUSION
Based on information supplied by the General Staff, the Soviet leadership believed that within six months of the start of a world war, the United States would reach a production rate of 50,000 main battle tanks a year to which its European allies would add another 25,000. In contrast, the Soviet Union could produce only 35,000–40,000 main battle tanks a year. Clearly, the Soviet military believed that, to counter the greater industrial preparedness and mobilization capacity of the West, it had to have numerical superiority in tanks at the beginning of the war. Given the vast stocks accumulated during the Soviet era, the Russian defense industry has managed to survive for more than a decade through a combination of increased exports, some state orders, and partial diversification. It has retained most Soviet-era military-technological skills, especially in the nuclear, space, and missile industries. The new era of high-
16
Unpublished statement by Vladimir Ladygin, chairman of the State Committee on Material Reserves of the USSR, session of the Committee on Defense of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, April 19, 1991.
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technology warfare, however, will pose huge challenges for the Russian military. Whether it can make the transition will depend on the character and quality of the national leadership and its economic policies. The foundation of the Soviet/Russian structurally militarized economy has always been the natural resources complex. Price liberalization in 1992 revealed this complex to be the only viable sector of the Russian economy. And almost from the beginning, other segments of the economy—including the defense industry—found themselves heavily indebted to it. Given its precarious financial situation, created largely by the dearth of government contracts, the DIC is not the political and economic powerhouse it once was. The raw materials sector has in effect become a state within the state. As the most important power player, it influences politics from the Kremlin on down. In effect, the raw materials complex has created a parallel economy, in which the DIC has no place. Thus, the Russian leadership’s hope that the impoverished defense industry can not only survive through arms exports but also finance the rearmament of the Russian military with a new generation of weapons is ludicrous. According to most experts, the boom in Russian arms exports could fizzle as early as 2005, when most of the current aircraft contracts with China and India will be fulfilled, and both countries will start producing (under license) their own Sukhoi fighters. Moreover, prospects for further large-scale export contracts with China and India are bleak, as both countries strive to increase the autonomy of their defense industries. Finally, cooperation with the West (especially Europe) in designing and producing a new generation of arms—despite the growing popularity of this idea among Russian politicians and industrialists—would require too many institutional changes (e.g., removal of broad restrictions on foreign investment in the defense industry, clarification of R&D-related intellectual property rights, etc.) to have a positive effect on the DIC. Russia’s demand for arms is likely to remain flat or even decline over the next 10 to 15 years. Given the state of the Russian economy and the economic policies of the current leadership, which has no serious opposition, future defense budgets will likely remain around 2–3 percent of Russia’s gross national product. This does not leave much room for increases in arms procurement. The prospects for increasing defense procurement by shrinking the force structure are bleak. Russia has 1,262,000 soldiers in uniform;
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according to the General Staff’s plans, it will more or less remain at this level for years to come. The General Staff also intends, with the approval of President Putin, to increase the number of relatively well-paid (compared to draftees) volunteer contract soldiers from 130,000 to about 300,000 by 2007. This will inevitably increase the share of personnel expenditures in the defense budget at the cost of acquisitions. Any significant defense expenditures increases would put a politically undesirable strain on public financing, already weakened by a long-term program for tax cuts. Moreover, according to presidential economic adviser Andrei Illarionov, to achieve President Putin’s goal of doubling Russia’s GDP in 10 years, the public sector’s expenditures will need to be slashed from 37 percent to about 20 percent. Ideally, these expenditures should continue to drop until they reach the same level as China’s in 1995 (14.3 percent). In that year, Illarionov pointed out, China’s defense expenditures amounted to 1.09 percent of GDP, three times lower than Russia’s.17 In this scenario, Russia would lose its capability both to reequip its conventional forces with domestically produced state-of-the-art weapons and to project significant military power beyond its borders. Given this, Moscow will instead concentrate its limited financial resources on maintaining its strategic and tactical nuclear forces, along with their R&D and production facilities. Indeed, in his annual address to the Federal Assembly on May 17, 2003, President Putin announced that the defense industry is developing a new generation of strategic weaponry, though he did not provide any details. Regardless, such weaponry will not be cheap. Putin’s plan does not represent a mortal danger to Russia’s long-term national interests. In an emergency, Russia can always turn to the West for conventional arms, as it did in World War II by accepting weapons under the 1941 U.S. Lend-Lease Act. As currently structured and managed, Russia’s so-called defense industrial complex has become a huge drag on the country’s economy. This does not mean that Russia should cease military production. Rather, the DIC’s specialized branches within this self-contained “defense economy” should be broken up. Speaking about the future of one of these branches, the Russian aviation industry, Sergei Nedoroslev once said:
17
Maxim Blant, “Spor liberalov” [Dispute of the liberals], Ezhenedelnyi zhurnal, June 30–July 6, 2003; and “Udvoenie VVP—skromnaya zadacha” [Doubling GDP is a moderate objective], Vremya novostei, July 4, 2003.
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“Let’s mourn it, then bury it, and forget about it.” This sage advice must now be applied to Russia’s Soviet-era defense industry. Defense production should be integrated into civilian industrial production. Where this proves impossible or unnecessary, as in the manufacture of missiles or munitions, the production facilities should be turned over to the defense ministry and managed similar to the way the United States manages its arsenals. Unfortunately, the Russian political leadership has yet to rise to this difficult and dangerous challenge. Only after doing so, however, will it be able to seriously address the prospects of Russia’s military revival.
CHAPTER 6
Nuclear Weapons in Current Russian Policy ROSE GOTTEMOELLER
T
his chapter considers a topic that has been somewhat neglected since the breakup of the Soviet Union: the continued role in policy of the considerable nuclear arsenal of the Russian Federation. Although nearly always a front-burner issue in the first thirty years after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, nuclear weapons retreated into the background during the last decade. With little public interest and limited professional attention, nuclear weapons have often been dismissed as doing nothing more than permitting the Russian Federation to maintain a vestige of its superpower past. By examining both Russian domestic policy toward nuclear weapons and their role in the U.S.-Russian relationship, this chapter explores the degree to which this statement is true. Have nuclear weapons played a role in Russian debates over military reform? What is the current status of nuclear weapons in Russian defense doctrine and strategy? Is there anything left of the nuclear arms control relationship with the United States? And can Russia play a role in ongoing and future policy initiatives, such as efforts to control the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction? Thus, the discussion looks both inward, at the role of nuclear weapons in Russian domestic defense policy, and outward, at Russia’s nuclear relationships and efforts at cooperation with the outside world—primarily the United States. STRUCTURE OF RUSSIAN NUCLEAR FORCES
The Soviet Union deployed the preponderance of its strategic warheads on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), under the command of the strategic rocket forces (SRF). This emphasis was the legacy T H E R U S S I A N M I L I TA RY
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of its status, and that of the Russian empire before it, as a great land power in Eurasia, with an army to match. The establishment of the strategic rocket forces in 1959 was seen as an extension of the Soviet army’s long-range artillery tradition, and indeed, the original SRF officers came out of artillery schools.1 Navy nuclear missiles on strategic strike submarines came second, and bomber-based weapon systems, gravity bombs, and cruise missiles, which were under the long-range aviation forces, came a distant third. Again, the reasons for this ranking were linked to Soviet and Russian history. Although the czars had been determined to open the Russian empire to the oceans from the time of Peter the Great, their access remained limited by geography and by the strength of other great oceangoing powers such as Great Britain. As a result, the Russian and later Soviet navy struggled against the dominance of the ground forces in both doctrine and force acquisitions. For most of Russia’s history, the oceans simply were not the country’s natural medium for warfare. Likewise, long-range aviation grew out of a tradition of strategic bombing that other powers, principally the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, had perfected during World War II. Their driving goal had been to take the war to enemy territory, even if an invasion were premature or impossible. Again, hemmed in geographically and accustomed to fighting against invaders who had already penetrated its borders, Russia found this tradition somewhat foreign. The tradition also ran against a Russian and Soviet predilection for strong command and control. Once a bomber was launched, it could of course be called back, which was always seen as an advantage in the U.S. context. For the Soviet leadership, however, the man in the loop, the pilot, was an opportunity for loss of control if communication with him should be lost. This was also a factor in Soviet resistance to building up the navy’s strategic strike capabilities. Communication with submarine platforms was simply too uncertain and subject to detection by the enemy.
1
However, even these early decisions about the SRF spurred intramilitary debate in Moscow. For an interesting commentary on this debate, see the interview with then SRF Commander in Chief Vladimir Tolubko by Valerii Gorbunov, Literaturnaia gazeta, August 8, 1984, cited in Rose Gottemoeller, “Intramilitary Conflict in the Soviet Armed Forces,” in Bruce Parrott, ed., The Dynamics of Soviet Defense Policy (Washington, DC: Wilson Center Press, 1990), p. 97.
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The outcome of this history can be seen in the numerical breakdown of the nuclear arsenal as it was at the end of the Soviet era. In 1991, the Soviet Union deployed 6,411 warheads on land-based ICBMs, 2,932 on submarines, and 1,329 on bombers. Following the reductions of the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), the structure remained essentially the same, although the numbers had been cut in half.2 Only after the conclusion of the second strategic arms reduction treaty, START II, did this situation seem destined for change. START II would have banned land-based multiple-warhead ICBMs, which, although the core of the old Soviet strategic arsenal, had long been considered highly destabilizing by the United States and other powers.3 Large Soviet-era ICBMs such as the SS-18 and SS-19, some carrying 10 warheads each, would be high-value targets for an opponent because of their destructive power. In a burgeoning nuclear crisis, the United States might be tempted to preempt those forces, hitting them early and hard in an attempt at a disarming first strike. Russia, on receiving warning of such an attack, might be tempted in turn to launch out from under it. The two nuclear superpowers would thus be caught in a preemptive spiral, with disastrous consequences. This concern about “first-strike stability,” arcane as it seems, was deadly serious throughout the 1980s. After years of talks to convince the Soviets that it was a real danger, the United States finally succeeded in the early 1990s in gaining their agreement to make it a conceptual underpinning for START II reductions.4 In this way, it resulted in the ban on multiple-warhead ICBMs in START II. However, it also created a situation whereby the Soviet Union, later the Russian Federation, would have had to change the composition of its nuclear arsenal, placing more weapons at sea and building new, single-warhead ICBMs. From a strategic stability standpoint, banning multiple-warhead ICBMs was the correct approach, and remains so today. From a practical 2
For a tabular history of these deployments, see table 6.1. For the texts of START I and II, as well as a useful summary and analysis of the treaties, see Thomas Graham Jr. and Damien J. LaVera, Cornerstones of Security: Arms Control Treaties in the Nuclear Era (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), pp. 883–1168. 4 These Strategic Stability Talks were led by Dennis Ross, then chief of the U.S. State Department’s policy planning, and Georgiy Mamedov, then head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Directorate of the Soviet ministry of foreign affairs. 3
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standpoint, however, it placed a heavy burden on the Russian Federation after the breakup of the Soviet Union, when defense budget funds were scarce. The ban thus prompted serious complaints among Russian military men about the “fairness” of START II. They criticized Soviet negotiators, and especially President Mikhail Gorbachev, for giving up too much in the waning days of the USSR, when Soviet power was at its weakest. These complaints and criticisms, in turn, served as the underpinning for a major debate in the Russian high command over priorities between nuclear and conventional force modernization. THE DEBATE OVER MILITARY REFORM AND THE NUCLEAR FORCES
Nuclear weapons policy has been a focal point in the struggle to reform the Russian armed forces. The debate over the role of nuclear weapons in Russian national security has been at the center of the debate over military reform, with all the key questions very much in play: What are the threats that Russia faces today? What force structure will best protect Russia against those threats? Will the resources be available to ensure the effectiveness of that force structure? Like Russian military policy overall, nuclear policy has been whipsawed in a changeable environment, where weak political structures and personal animosities have played as much a role as a thorough analysis of the requirements of Russian national security. As a result, the nuclear forces have been on something of a policy roller coaster for the past 15 years—sometimes up, sometimes down, but often with a precipitous drop on the downward trajectory. A brief sketch of the period illustrates the point. In 1998, Marshal Igor Sergeev, former commander in chief of the SRF and since May 1997 the minister of defense, sought and gained approval by the Russian Security Council to create a strategic deterrence force. This force would combine the strategic nuclear capabilities in the SRF with those of the navy and air force, together with certain other early warning and command and control assets, including in Russian reconnaissance satellites in space.5 In this way, it would form an integrated strategic command
5
The inception of the strategic deterrence forces is described in Jacob W. Kipp, “Russia’s Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons,” Military Review, May–June 2001 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies Office), http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/fmsopubs/issues/russias_nukes.
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similar to the strategic command being formed during a similar period in the United States. This “victory” for the strategic forces was short-lived, however. By April 2000, a fierce debate between Sergeev and Chief of the General Staff Anatoly Kvashnin had become public. Kvashnin, putatively the senior deputy to Sergeev, apparently went around him to present a proposal directly to President Vladimir Putin. Kvashnin argued that the SRF should be downgraded as a separate service and folded into the air force. Sergeev responded sharply and openly to this proposal, angrily insisting that it be withdrawn.6 Putin, who had ascended to the presidency only months before, in January 2000, was faced with the unprecedented task of rebuking his two top military men for their public display of animosity. By August, however, Putin seemed to be deciding in Kvashnin’s favor. Through the summer, he fired several generals who were seen as allies of Sergeev. Then, at a Security Council meeting in August, he gave lip service to the continued need for strong nuclear forces, but otherwise placed emphasis squarely where Kvashnin wanted it to be: on strengthening the conventional armed forces for regional conflicts such as the war in Chechnya. The notion of a strategic deterrence force was officially dead; indeed the strategic rocket forces were to be subordinated to the air force. Sergeev remained as minister of defense until April 2001, when he moved to the Kremlin to become senior adviser to the president for arms control: an important post, but one that put him out of line control of the command structure of the ministry. At that point a civilian, Sergei Ivanov, assumed the post of minister of defense. Ivanov, one of Putin’s closest advisers, had been chairman of the Security Council during the Sergeev-Kvashnin debate. He therefore had reason to know the issues intimately. His greatest asset in taking over the minister’s chair was his close relationship to Putin. However, he was also the first civilian to be named to the post of minister of defense; therefore, he did not have the 6
David Hoffmann, “Putin Tries to Stop Feuding in the Military,” Washington Post, July 15, 2000, p. 14. For a good summation of Russian commentary on the debate, see Nikolai Sokov, “’Denuclearization’ of Russia’s Defense Policy?” created July 13, 2000, updated July 17, 2000, http://www.cns.miis.edu/ iiop/cnsdata. Another good precis of the debate is Philipp C. Bleek, “Russia Ready to Reduce to 1,500 Warheads, Addressing Dispute Over Strategic Forces’ Fate,” Arms Control Today, vol. 30, no. 7 (September 2000), http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2000_09/startsept00.asp.
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traditional structure of allies and supporters within the uniformed ranks of the military. This outcome to the debate seemed to foretell a permanent victory for Kvashnin. Russian military policy appeared to be heading in the direction of a profound and unprecedented “denuclearization,” a trend that generated its own mini-debate in Moscow. Analysts such as Vladimir Dvorkin, a retired SRF general and an eminent expert on the nuclear forces, argued that the Russian Federation was prematurely weakening itself in the face of continued uncertainty about the future nuclear policy of the United States. A keystone of Kvashnin’s concept was that the Russian Federation no longer needed to maintain nuclear parity with the United States, and that it could succeed at deterring U.S. aggression with a minimal nuclear force. Kvashnin proposed, for example, to reduce the number of land-based ICBMs from 756 to 150 by 2003.7 While Western analysts called this idea “strategic decoupling,” Dvorkin and other experts called it “a gross strategic mistake.”8 Within two years, however, external events had combined to restore the status of the strategic nuclear forces. In December 2001, the United States announced its intention to withdraw from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. The Russian Federation responded with restraint, officially calling the withdrawal a “mistake,” but not otherwise overreacting. The Kremlin did, however, what it had long warned it would do: it stated that it would not implement the START II treaty. In this way, it would have the flexibility to counter future U.S. missile defenses that might reduce the effectiveness of the Russian strategic arsenal. The Russian decision not to implement START II, which had never concluded its ratification process and had not entered into force, meant that multiple-warhead missiles that had been slated for retirement were to be kept in deployment for another decade or more. According to some analysts, the SS-18s, SS-19s, and SS-24s could be refurbished and maintained well beyond their guaranteed life span, perhaps until 2020 or even beyond.9 The Russian nuclear arsenal was very far indeed from 7
For a good review of Russian sources on this point, see Sokov, “‘Denuclearization’ of Russia’s Defense Policy?” 8 Vladimir Dvorkin, “Russia Needs a Transparent Development Programme for Its Strategic Nuclear Forces, Vremya novostei, no. 1 (January 2003), translated in the CDI Russia Weekly, no. 240, Center for Defense Information, Washington, DC. 9 According to Col. Gen. Yury Kirillov, chief of the SRF Military Academy,
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Kvashnin’s stated goal of 150 land-based ICBMs by 2003, and Sergeev seemed to be vindicated. As 2003 began, the debate seemed to have quieted, but the issues remained, and the future was uncertain. President Putin remarked approvingly about new strategic capabilities in his “state of the union” address in May, but it was unclear whether he was talking about new advanced conventional weapons or new nuclear weapons.10 Likewise, faced with questions about how the Russian armed forces could sustain a modern strategic nuclear force and still accomplish urgently needed improvements to the conventional forces, Russian experts began talking increasingly about strategic modernization “on the cheap.” Dvorkin, for example, spoke about putting multiple, independently targetable warheads on the Topol-M, the new Russian ICBM that had been designed with a single warhead to conform to START II.11 A new chapter in the debate opened in October 2003. At a meeting with top-ranking military leaders, President Putin seemed to be saying that the time for upheaval was over when he announced, “We are moving from radical reforms to deliberate, future-oriented development of the
“Considering Russia’s economic capabilities, the preservation of Russia’s nuclear potential requires a maximum possible extension of the service life of the RS-20 and RS-18 MIRVed missile complexes.” The NATO designators for these missiles are the SS-18 and SS-19. Interview with Col. Gen. Yury Kirillov, “Possibly It’s Time to Advance the Idea of a Nuclear Deterrence Safeguards Treaty,” Yadernyy kontrol (Moscow), November–December 2002, translated in Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS)-SOV-2003-0114, October 5, 2002. 10 President Vladimir Putin’s Annual Address to the Federal Assembly, in the Federal News Service, May 16, 2003, http://www.fednews.com. Deputy Prime Minister Boris Alyoshin asserted after the president’s speech that Putin was talking about a new strategic command and control system to allow “the use of in-depth space, air and earth systems,” not new nuclear weapons. See Natalia Slavina, “Deputy Premier Says Russian Government to Pursue Tasks of Putin’s Address, ITAR-TASS, May 16, 2003, transcribed in FBIS-SOV-20030516. See also “Russian Deputy Premier Calls for Developing IT-Intensive Weapon Systems, Interfax news agency, May 16, 2003, in FBIS-SOV-20030516. 11 Discussion among Aleksandr Golts, Sergey Parkhomenko, and Vladimir Dvorkin, moderated by Sergey Buntman, Ekho Moskvy Radio, May 21, 2002, http://www.echo.msk.ru/interview/8529.html.
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armed forces.”12 Defense Minister Ivanov also seemed to be calling a halt to the roller-coaster debate over defense reform, asserting that the Russian army has already adapted to new realities. No longer, Ivanov said, would the Russian army have to consider global nuclear war or a large-scale conventional war as the most likely contingencies. Therefore, nuclear and conventional forces had already been trimmed substantially.13 In fact, President Putin said, the Russian armed forces had gone low enough: “Beginning in 1992, the armed forces were cut more than two times. That was truly a difficult and divisive process. Enough. At this stage, the process has essentially been completed.”14 Reporting accompanying Putin’s comment noted that the current level of the armed forces is just below 1.2 million. That figure will drop further by 2005, to 1 million, but that was said to be the final figure—further cuts were not foreseen. The makeup of the forces was also discussed. At the end of 2003, more than 55 percent of armed forces personnel were serving under contract, including 400,000 officers and 200,000 noncommissioned officers. By 2008, 70 percent of armed forces professionals were to be serving under contract, including 50 percent of the sergeants. According to the defense minister statement, “There is no alternative to a steady transition to the contract system.”15 Accompanying these statements was a reconfirmation that Russia was taking steps to maintain the capability of its strategic nuclear arsenal. Defense Minister Ivanov underscored the continuing strength of Russian strategic nuclear forces: “Russia retains a significant number of landbased strategic missiles.…I am speaking here about the most menacing missiles, of which we have dozens, with hundreds of warheads.”16 12
Quoted in Lenta.Ru, http://vip.lenta.ru/fullstory/2003/10/02/doctrine/ index.htm. 13 Russian Information Agency Novosti military analyst Viktor Litovkin, “Security Is Best Achieved through Coalition: Russia’s New Military Doctrine Highlights Community of Goals with the World,” http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?msg_id=34938334. 14 Quoted in RTR-Vesti.Ru, http://www/vesti.ru/comments_print.html?pid=23746. 15 RTR-Vesti.Ru, http://www/vesti.ru/comments_print.html?pid=23746. 16 Simon Sradzhyan, “Putin Beefs Up ICBM Capacity,” Moscow Times, October 3, 2003, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/10/03/001.html. See also Jeremy Bransten, “Russia: Putin Talks Up Power of Nuclear Arsenal,” http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/10/03102003170748.asp.
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Ivanov was referring, in part, to 20 SS-19 liquid-fueled missiles that had been in storage in Ukraine and had never been fueled. Russia bought the missiles, which can carry 10 warheads each, from Ukraine, and brought them back to Russia. According to Gen. Viktor Yesin, former chief of staff of the SRF, these particular SS-19s were in the last batch of missiles to be produced before the SS-19 production line was shut down. He said that they would be kept in storage until they were needed to replace older SS-19s that had been in operational deployment. Because of the volatility and corrosiveness of their liquid fuel, the SS-19s cannot be maintained indefinitely. The “new batch” SS-19s, Yesin emphasized, would not add to numbers in deployment, but simply replace those that could not remain in active service any longer.17 Once START II was gone and the Russians could maintain the deployment of earlier generations of multiple warhead missiles, they no longer had an urgent requirement to spend money on modernizing the strategic forces. Those monies could be spent on trimming, restructuring, reequipping, and reforming the conventional army. Another effect of this outcome was that the strategic nuclear forces would retain essentially the same composition as they had had during the Cold War years. If START II had been implemented, it would have tended to put more warheads at sea, because only single-warhead missiles could have been deployed on land. The Russians in that case would have had to carry out a major restructuring of their strategic forces, at a time when they had few funds for any defense acquisitions, let alone purchases of nuclear weapon systems. This necessity, driven by START II, might have been behind Sergeev’s insistence on continued large expenditures on the nuclear forces, despite the overall budget problems of the armed forces. The attitudes of defense decision makers were no doubt also affected by difficulties encountered in naval weapons developments in the 1990s. The Yury Dolgorukiy strategic submarine remained under construction throughout this period, apparently because of insufficient funds to complete it. The naval missile that was to arm it, moreover, evidently suffered technical problems and was canceled. Finally, one of the most modern
17
Yesin made his comments at a seminar sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 3, 2003. See the report of the meeting at http://www.sgpproject. org/events/2003_oct03_washington.html.
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submarines in the Russian fleet, the Kursk cruise missile submarine, sank while submerged following a probable internal torpedo explosion in August 2000. From a technical standpoint, therefore, the navy was not in a good position to assume the dominant position in the Russian strategic arsenal at the close of the 1990s. Kvashnin might in fact have been expressing frustration at this situation when he insisted that nuclear systems take a backseat to conventional modernization efforts. Alexei Arbatov, then deputy chairman of the Duma Defense Committee, had described the Sergeev-Kvashnin debate well in November 2000, when he wrote about the difficulty of finding sufficient resources to fund the military requirements of the Russian Federation: “The exit from our dilemma is closely tied with the resolution of two key problems of military policy. One is the choice of priority between strategic nuclear forces and conventional forces. On this question there is no agreement among the top military leadership of Russia; what is more, personal and organizational motives have brought forth such sharp conflicts between the ministry of defense and the General Staff that they poured out into an unprecedented public fight in the summer of 2000. In reality, under the umbrella of the official Russian doctrine, there are now two military doctrines, with all the consequences flowing therefrom.”18 Arbatov went on to say that the choice between these two doctrines would determine the structure of the defense budget as well as its maximum limits. If Russia were to concentrate more on conventional forces, then of course an army of 800,000 would be insufficient; in fact, Russia might need two or three times more than the 1.2 million men currently under arms. In that case, 85 percent of the defense budget would go toward paying for manpower, and only 15 percent would go to modernizing the strategic nuclear forces. However, if the second variant were chosen, then Russia might reduce its army to 800,000, and manpower costs would be considerably lower. However, Russia would then have to ensure that 50 percent of its defense budget was devoted to a massive modernization not only of the strategic nuclear forces, but also of the conventional forces. Training and benefits, especially for the officer corps, would also have to be improved.19
18
Alexei Arbatov, “The Dilemma of Military Policy in Russia,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, November 16, 2000, http://ng.ru/printed/ideas/2000-11-16/ 8_dilemma.html. 19 Ibid.
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Seen in this light, the Sergeev-Kvashnin debate is at the core of the struggle for the future of the Russian armed forces, with attendant impacts on the reform process as well as the budget. It clearly revolves around different perceptions of how to handle the primary threats facing the Russian Federation in coming years. Kvashnin focused on the threat that regional conflicts such as the war in Chechnya could pose to the Russian Federation as a whole, unless met with coherent and effective conventional forces. To him, nuclear weapons had little relevance in this struggle. Modernizing and strengthening the conventional forces was the most urgent task. Sergeev’s conception of the threat, by contrast, drove him to conclude that only if the Russian Federation maintains a strong strategic nuclear force will it be able to face down strategic competitors, such as the United States and NATO, as well as new regional actors. In his view, strong nuclear forces help to keep all threats in check: a strong nuclear deterrent equates with a strong Russia. The urgency of modernizing the conventional forces is tempered. Whether October 2003 represented an accurate time to declare the reform of the Russian armed forces complete seems doubtful. Even by the evidence that Putin and Ivanov presented in their public comments, reform still was a work in progress—especially the continued transformation of the armed forces into a contract rather than a conscript army. Nevertheless, it is possible to point to a “settling out” of the relationship between the nuclear forces and the conventional forces. Neither Kvashnin, in his insistence on a “denuclearization” of the Russian armed forces, nor Sergeev, with his emphasis on strong strategic nuclear forces and investment to match, had it precisely right. Each, however, was to some measure correct. The compromise path, as noted above, was engineered through the demise of START II. Freed of any START II constraints, the Russian Federation found a way to retain strategic nuclear weapons “on the cheap,” relieving the chief contradiction pressing on Russian security policy: as long as strategic nuclear weapons remained a vital national insurance policy, they must be maintained and modernized. Their claim on scarce budget resources, however, would dissipate energy to do what was needed to reform the Russian conventional armed forces. With this contradiction resolved, perhaps progress on reforming conventional forces would accelerate.
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NONSTRATEGIC NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN RUSSIAN MILITARY DOCTRINE
At least for the time being, this resolution of the contradiction between the strategic nuclear and conventional forces does not address the place of nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Russian military doctrine. One of the oddest aspects of the Sergeev-Kvashnin debate is that it took place against the backdrop of a newly established consensus, at least in theory, on the utility of nonstrategic nuclear weapons to counter Russian conventional weakness. In April 2000, a new version of Russian military doctrine was issued, consistent with earlier versions except in its emphasis on the provenance and importance of nuclear weapons in deterring and countering attacks on Russian territory. This doctrine had been preceded, in January 2000, by a new national security concept that emphasized the same point. In describing the concept, then Secretary of the Security Council Sergei Ivanov spoke about the nuclear issue: “Russia never said and is not saying now that it will be the first to use nuclear weapons, but at the same time, Russia is not saying that it will not use nuclear weapons if it is exposed to a full-scale aggression which leads to an immediate threat of a break-up and [to] Russia’s existence in general.”20 The doctrine stressed that even a conventional attack on targets that the Russians considered of strategic importance on their own territory could produce a nuclear counterattack, anywhere in the theater of military operations. The exercise Zapad-99 showed the type of scenario that underpinned this doctrine: enemy forces (and NATO was heavily implied, in alliance with regional opponents of Russia) were beginning to overrun Russian territory, at the same time that they were using highprecision conventional weapons to attack strategic targets, such as nuclear power plants, on Russian territory. In response, Russia launched bombers armed with nuclear air-launched cruise missiles against enemy territory. Such threats, although they might come from the long-range strategic weapons of the United States, might also flow from regional threats against Russian territory. It was interesting, therefore, that the greatest innovation of the National Security Concept of January 2000 was the 20
Interview with Sergei Ivanov, “Security Council Chief Says New Concept ‘Unique,’” ITAR-TASS, February 24, 2000, in FBIS-SOV-2000-0224. The doctrine may be found at “Voyennaya doktrina Rossiiskoi Federatsii,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, April 22, 2000, http://ng.ru/printed/politics/2000-04-22/ 5_doktrina.html.
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suggestion that nonstrategic nuclear weapons might be used in a limited way to counter a conventional attack, without spurring a major escalation to all-out nuclear use. The concept essentially restated long-standing policy, renewing the mission of the nuclear forces to deter any attack— nuclear, chemical, biological, or conventional—against the territory of the Russian Federation.21 In another sense, however, the notion that a limited nuclear response could be used to de-escalate conflict was a departure from long-standing Soviet-era doctrine, which tended to stress the inevitability of rapid escalation as a counter to the U.S. position. During that era, the United States asserted that it might have to launch a limited nuclear strike to counter an overwhelming Soviet conventional attack on Western Europe. The arrival of this idea in Russian nuclear policy seems to indicate that the shoe is now on the other foot: it is Russia that might have to contemplate the limited use of nuclear weapons, to compensate for its weakness against a determined and overwhelming regional aggressor. The advent of this position coincided with a wave of anti-Americanism among the Russian public and key elites, including military general officers. In an August 1999 opinion poll, for example, the United States was at the top of a list of countries deemed likely to initiate nuclear war.22 Military hawks were criticizing U.S. “hegemonic” tendencies, and nationwide military exercises were portraying the United States as likely to enter a regional conflict against Russia. As noted above, in one such exercise, Zapad-99, the aggression was only halted with Russia’s limited use of nuclear weapons. This anti-Americanism was an important artifact of that period in Russia, but it masked a major trend that was emerging in Russian nuclear security policy: nuclear weapons would not only be used in a large-scale coalition war involving exchanges with a major power such as the United States. They might also be used in conflicts on Russia’s periphery, where the Russians had no other option to counter a weapon of mass destruction attack involving chemical or biological weapons, or attacks by smallscale but capable conventional forces against targets that the Russians considered to be strategic in importance. 21
For a useful commentary on the link between Zapad-99 and the security concept, see Nikolai Sokov, “Russia’s New National Security Concept: The Nuclear Angle,” http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/sokov2.htm. 22 Igor Khripunov, “Last Leg of the Triad: Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 56, no. 4 (July/August 2000), pp. 58–64.
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It is also worth stressing that the trend had earlier antecedents. As early as the mid-1980s, the Soviets were becoming concerned about what they termed “strategic conventional attacks” against Soviet territory. In that era, their expressed worries were on the new U.S. long-range landattack cruise missiles that were capable of carrying either conventional or nuclear warheads. The Soviets complained at the time that they would not be able to distinguish between a nuclear and a conventional attack and would therefore either have to treat the attack as nuclear or lose their opportunity to launch on tactical warning. In this way, “strategic” conventional weapons might deprive them of their options to limit damage from a nuclear strike.23 At the time, the Soviets were not stressing the “de-escalatory” nature of limited nuclear response options—in fact, they tended to threaten that a cruise missile attack on Soviet territory, even if it turned out to be conventional, could lead to all-out nuclear war. They did claim, however, that such response options would be consistent with Soviet no-first-use policy, because they would be responding on warning of what appeared to be a nuclear attack—once their opponent had launched such an attack, they were justified to respond. Even if the cruise missile turned out to be conventionally armed, they would have been responding to “nuclear” warning. This somewhat elastic interpretation of the no-first-use doctrine that prevailed during the Brezhnev era showed the degree to which the Soviet military establishment was in revolt against it in the mid-1980s. The Soviet high command, and some of the Warsaw Pact leaderships— especially the East Germans—had always been concerned that what in their view was a propaganda move would hamper real operational planning and decision making in the nuclear sphere.24 Once the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Russian military leaders lost no time in retiring the Soviet-era no-first-use doctrine in favor of an 23
For a discussion of this period in Soviet doctrine, see Rose Gottemoeller, Land-Attack Cruise Missiles, Adelphi Paper, no. 226 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, winter 1987/88), pp. 18–19. 24 Brezhnev’s declaration of a no-first-use doctrine was actually read to the General Assembly of the UN Special Session on Disarmament by Foreign Minister Anatoly Gromyko on June 12, 1982. The declaration, therefore, had just over a decade of life before the breakup of the Soviet Union effected its demise. For the text of Brezhnev’s message, see Documents on Disarmament, 1982, pp. 349–352.
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approach that would give them more flexibility, especially in light of the conventional weakness of the residual Russian armed forces. In 1993, the no-first-use doctrine was replaced with a statement virtually identical to that maintained by the United States. As Sergei Rogov, director of the USA and Canada Institute, commented at the time, “Russia can use nuclear weapons if it suffers a setback or defeat in a conventional conflict, and in that case Russia would use nuclear weapons first.”25 ROLE AND FUTURE OF ARMS CONTROL IN RUSSIAN NUCLEAR POLICY
Depending on who tells the tale, arms control in the U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-Russian nuclear relationship has been a spectacular success, a modest but useful step, or a dismal failure. Each of these assessments tends to rely on certain examples to prove its point—and indeed there are vivid examples to support each conclusion. Moreover, each side of the negotiating table has its favorites. The U.S. side, for example, tends to cite the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty as an unvarnished success, because it bans an entire class of nuclear missiles.26 But for some Russian military men, the INF treaty is a problem because they might need such missiles one day against China. By contrast, until the United States withdrew from it in 2002, Russian experts used to cite the ABM treaty as an unvarnished success. Once it disappeared from the scene, however, they did not lose too much time in regretting it. In fact, as noted above, they used its demise as a convenient excuse to rid themselves of START II. It is probably most accurate to say that arms control agreements, whether negotiated or put in place as a unilateral initiative, are like any policy mechanism. They can both succeed and fail during different peri-
25
The 1993 text of Russian doctrine on nuclear weapons use may be found in “The Basic Provisions of the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation,” http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/doctrine/russia-mil-doc.html. Rogov’s commentary can be found at “Press Briefing by Sergei Rogov, President of the National Security and International Relations Center, on New RF Military Doctrine,” in Federal Information Systems Corporation, November 29, 1993. 26 The INF treaty banned missiles between 500 and 5,500 kilometers in range. For the treaty text, as well as a useful summary and analysis, see Graham and LaVera, Cornerstones of Security, pp. 512–591.
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ods in their life span. Most success is gained when there is momentum in the policy process, as well as high-level attention and public concern. Once momentum falters, failure becomes more likely. At other times, a lack of momentum simply creates a hiatus during which the value of an agreement or initiative can mature. In still other circumstances, early success can be tempered by disagreements and bitterness in the downstream implementation process. The START I treaty is an example of both signal success and downstream problems. START I built on the progress toward more effective verification that was achieved during the INF negotiations. In fact, the ban on intermediate-range missiles was only made possible by the Soviets’ acquiescence, after years of resistance, to on-site inspections. On-site inspections were also built into the START I verification protocol, and that fact made it possible for the United States and the Soviet Union to contemplate deep and real reductions in strategic nuclear forces—from approximately 12,000 deployed nuclear launchers on each side to 6,000.27 Implementation of START I proceeded fairly smoothly, and in fact was accelerated following the breakup of the Soviet Union, because of the necessity of bringing almost 4,000 nuclear warheads out of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus and eliminating or redeploying their launchers.28 This acceleration was effected by the joint U.S.-Russian effort that is frequently called the Nunn-Lugar program after the two senators who created it, Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar. Officially known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, it is discussed in greater detail below.
27
The START I verification protocol, or to be more accurate, its several protocols, are reproduced in ibid., pp. 932–1167. As Graham and LaVera note, “There is a dizzying array of documents in the START I package. There is, of course, the treaty proper; then there are thirty-eight agreed statements on such subjects as nontransfer of strategic offensive arms, SS-11 reentry vehicle attribution, strategic offensive arms operations outside national territory, the relationship between the START and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaties, throw weight of new types of missiles deployed before the eighth flight test.…etc.” See ibid., p. 882. 28 Only the mobile SS-25 missiles in Belarus were redeployed in Russia as nuclear systems; the single-warhead ICBMs and bombers in Ukraine and Kazakhstan were eliminated or (in the case of some bombers) were returned to Russia and converted to conventional missions.
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In latter years, however, the complexity of the START I verification protocol has created disagreements in the implementation process. Both the United States and Russia have complained about inaccuracies or even violations in implementation of the treaty—differences that the two long remained unable to resolve in the compliance body for the treaty, the Joint Compliance and Inspection Commission. Thus, the early success of START I began to sour in the latter half of the 1990s. As a result, when George W. Bush took office in 2001, his administration began to search for ways to achieve arms control goals without the necessity of detailed negotiated agreements. It reopened an emphasis on parallel unilateral measures that had begun in 1990. President George H. W. Bush first proposed the concept of parallel unilateral reductions to President Gorbachev in 1990, and repeated it in 1991 with President Boris Yeltsin. The idea was ensconced in so-called presidential nuclear initiatives (PNIs), which were designed to remove nonstrategic nuclear weapons from deployment and begin to destroy them more quickly than would have been possible with formal arms control negotiations. The presidents agreed to undertake reduction measures as a unilateral step, without formal verification or legal treaty requirements on either side. The initiatives, again, had a measure of success: both the United States and Russia used them as a mechanism to de-emphasize nuclear weapons in their nonstrategic nuclear forces. Because the two sides had not agreed on measures of implementation, however, the PNIs also produced uncertainty and tension. The Russians, for example, claimed that they had indeed removed these nonstrategic weapons from operational deployment. They also claimed, however, that without the legally binding requirements of a treaty, they were bound by Russian law to keep spending money on maintaining and training their troops as if they continued to operate these very same nuclear weapons.29 The United States, by contrast, was only too happy to take the budget savings inherent in the disappearance of a mission requirement. Therefore, certain U.S. forces, such as naval surface vessels, no longer trained on a day-to-day basis for nuclear operations. This difference in approach created tensions between the United States and Russia, and also
29
For more discussion of this issue, see Rose Gottemoeller, “Offense, Defense, and Unilateralism in Strategic Arms Control,” Arms Control Today, vol. 31, no. 7 (September 2001).
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created confusion as to whether the Russian Federation was really deemphasizing nonstrategic nuclear weapons. Some U.S. observers argued that despite the PNIs, the Russian Federation continued training hard and maintaining all capabilities to use nonstrategic nuclear weapons in regional conflicts. Thus, neither negotiated treaties nor unilateral measures produced total arms control success in the decade following the Cold War. Both, however, produced some measure of progress in reducing operational deployments of nuclear weapons. Moreover, the pros and cons of each approach inspired a new experiment, the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty, also known as the Moscow treaty. The Moscow treaty was negotiated in a few months through late 2001 and early 2002, in contrast to the years that it took to negotiate START I. In contrast to START I’s 500-some pages, the Moscow treaty is less than 3 pages long.30 It offers a straightforward and simple commitment to reduce to a level of 1,700–2,200 “operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads” by 2012. These reductions had first been stated in unilateral declarations by President Bush and President Putin. However, the Moscow treaty turns these declarations into a legally binding document that was ratified in both the U.S. Congress and the Russian Duma. In short, the Moscow treaty is a hybrid between START-type legally binding agreements and unilateral parallel arrangements such as the PNIs. It is too early to predict its success or failure, but at least three factors in its success can be predicted. First, the United States and Russia must continue to implement START I according to its terms, as called for in the Moscow treaty. Second, the two countries must develop a workable and effective implementation body, also called for in the treaty. Third, the two sides must be willing to make progress in the working groups established under the Consultative Group for Strategic Security, a body chaired by the foreign and defense ministers of the United States and Russia. The task of the working groups is to develop additional transparency and related measures to support implementation, as called for in the presidential declaration that accompanied signature of the treaty. To this point, each of these areas has been clouded by lack of interaction or disagreements between the U.S. and Russian sides. Thus, at this moment,
30
For the texts and a summary and analysis of the treaty and its accompanying Joint Declaration on a New Strategic Relationship between the United States and Russia, see Graham and LaVera, Cornerstones of Security, pp. 1453–1455.
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implementation of the Moscow treaty seems problematic. Two more U.S.-Russian arms control efforts deserve attention for the success or failure that they were able to achieve in the 1990s. Oddly, the agreement that seemed most likely to succeed, the Helsinki framework of March 1997, became the most spectacular failure. The agreement that seemed dead on arrival, the Theater Missile Defense (TMD) Demarcation agreement, one of the New York protocols also signed in 1997, may yet enjoy a measure of success. The Helsinki framework agreement laid out the basic agenda for further U.S.-Russian strategic arms reductions beyond START II.31 It set down basic goals for a START III treaty, including reductions to 2,000–2,500 deployed launchers and, for the first time, steps toward verifiable elimination of nuclear warheads. Warhead elimination would have gone beyond the traditional approach in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and START, which had focused on elimination of launch vehicles— large objects that could be observed from a distance, even from national technical means (satellites) in space. Verifying the elimination of warheads would require each side to allow the other to enter into highly sensitive nuclear weapon facilities—a first for the arms control process. Helsinki also laid out the goal of negotiating reductions in nonstrategic nuclear weapons, and for addressing certain long-standing concerns, such as the Russian concern with U.S. sea-launched cruise missile programs. From 1998 to 2000, the United States and Russia embarked on a series of discussions, never formalized as negotiations, on the basis of the Helsinki framework. At the time, the Clinton administration was pressing Russia to amend the ABM treaty to permit a limited deployment of missile defenses. Russia was resisting, and also showed resistance to the notion of developing measures that would permit the verifiable elimination of warheads. Under these circumstances, the United States was unwilling to proceed with a full-fledged START III negotiation. In fact, neither Washington nor Moscow seemed to have the stomach for another Cold War–style arms control negotiation. The Russians complained incessantly about the high cost of conducting negotiations in Geneva, and the Americans were looking over their shoulder at oppo-
31
The full text of the Helsinki document, “Joint Statement on the Parameters of Future Nuclear Reductions,” may be found at http://www.usis.fi/whatshap/ summit30.htm. Commentary may be found at http://www.nti.org//db/ nisprofs/over/helsinki.htm.
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nents of the effort back in Washington, particularly in the Republicancontrolled Congress. Given complaints about the process in both capitals, Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin, who were nearing the end of their terms in office, did not seem to want to expend the political capital that would have been necessary to achieve START III. Thus, through lack of political momentum, the Helsinki framework stalled.32 An important backdrop to its failure was the Clinton administration’s difficulty in making progress with the Senate on ratification of the New York protocols, of which the TMD Demarcation agreement was one.33 The Demarcation agreement was designed to provide a clear line distinguishing theater missile defense systems, which were not constrained by the ABM treaty, from national missile defense (NMD) systems, which were. It also described measures that could be used to verify such distinctions. The TMD Demarcation agreement, like the other New York protocols, attracted the ire of Republican senators, especially Jesse Helms, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, because it laid out a path for continuing legal development of national missile defense within the confines of the ABM treaty. By that time, it was clear that Helms and other influential Republican senators were pushing to kill the ABM treaty outright. They did not want to lend their support—or their ratification vote—to an agreement that would create a means to continue the treaty in force. Thus, the TMD Demarcation agreement, like the other New York protocols, was essentially dead on arrival. Interestingly, however, the agreement may yet have a role to play in the bilateral cooperative process. At the present time, the Russian Federation and NATO, and separately, the Russian Federation and the United States, are developing cooperative projects on missile defense technology. The joint NATO effort is in the theater missile defense arena, while the bilateral U.S.-Russia effort is for 32
For further discussion of this period in U.S.-Russian arms control interactions, see Rose Gottemoeller, Beyond Arms Control: How to Deal with Nuclear Weapons, Policy Brief no. 23 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2003). 33 The New York protocols also included a succession agreement for the ABM treaty, making Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus signatories of the treaty, as they had become of START I. This was a particular point of contention with the Republican-controlled Senate. Texts of the New York protocols may be found in The Arms Control Reporter, (c)idds 10-97, 603.D.47-63.
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an NMD program. As NATO, the United States, and Russia work to sort out these various forms of cooperation, the measures developed both to distinguish between theater and national missile defense technologies and to verify these differences might be helpful in defining which projects belong in the NATO basket, and which ought to be in the bilateral basket. Thus, although the TMD Demarcation agreement long lay dormant, it might yet enjoy a measure of success as a policy instrument. This notion highlights an interesting development in the U.S.-Russian relationship: the onset of Russian interest in cooperating on missile defense developments. As the Russians acquiesced to the demise of the ABM treaty, an interesting theme began to develop in their commentary: the NMD system that the United States was contemplating would at no time in the foreseeable future threaten the viability of the Russian strategic nuclear deterrent forces. Therefore, Russia did not need to be especially worried about U.S. national missile defense developments. Shortly after this theme began to gather force in Russian discourse, a second theme developed: if the U.S. national missile defense system was not a threat to the Russian Federation, then Russian companies could safely cooperate with the United States on the development of missile defense technologies. Russian military industry would play a role in development of the NMD system of the United States. Although long a cherished goal of U.S.-Russian cooperation from the perspective of U.S. presidents—Ronald Reagan first raised the possibility in the context of his Star Wars program—joint work on such hightechnology defense projects is a challenging proposition. Sharing of sensitive information, protection of intellectual property, and accommodation of export control regulations are only some of the issues that must be confronted in making such cooperation work. Nevertheless, it is notable that there has been a sea change in Moscow since the demise of the ABM treaty, with aerospace industry representatives generally enthusiastic about trying to make joint cooperation projects succeed. Therefore, the old concerns about a balance between strategic offensive and defensive forces for the moment seem tempered by enthusiasm for cooperation in the missile defense arena. This enthusiasm seems wholly to flow from confidence in the continuing viability of the Russian strategic offensive deterrent. No matter what the United States deploys in the way of missile defenses for the foreseeable future, it will not negate the capabilities of Russian strategic nuclear weapons. Russian experts claim no interest in a national missile defense deployment for their country: they note, and rightly so, that the Russian defense
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budget simply has no money for such a project.34 Therefore, for the moment, they seem willing to accept a cooperative role in the U.S. effort, without demanding any similar capability for the Russian Federation. This position is very much in line with a theme first articulated by General Secretary Yuri Andropov after Ronald Reagan announced the Star Wars program in March 1983: the Soviet Union does not need to replicate every program of the United States, Andropov said, to be able to respond to it. Clever, effective, and above all cheaper countermeasures can be an adequate response. This “Andropov strategy” seems very much in place today as Russia contemplates the U.S. national missile defense program. Indeed, it appears to underpin Russian confidence in the ability of its aerospace industry to become involved in NMD cooperation. THREAT REDUCTION AND NONPROLIFERATION COOPERATION
Beyond the well-known paths of the traditional arms control relationship, U.S.-Russian nuclear cooperation has developed in two major directions since the Cold War: nuclear threat reduction, and technical cooperation on nuclear weapons safety, security, and transparency. Among the most innovative trends have been those flowing from the CTR and related nonproliferation programs. These have enabled the United States to engage directly, inside the Russian defense complex, on the cooperative elimination of Russian weapons systems, as well as on protecting Russia’s nuclear materials and warheads. The programs traditionally known as CTR have been administered by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. They have focused on the elimination of missiles and silos, submarines, and bombers from the strategic arsenal of the Russian Federation, or the residual missiles and bombers that remained in Kazakhstan and Ukraine when the Soviet Union fell apart. In latter years, as the weapon elimination work has been completed, CTR work has come to focus more on protecting warheads, in cooperation with the 12th Main Directorate of the ministry of defense, which is responsible for controlling warheads. CTR has also been responsible for construction of several large-scale facilities, such as the plutonium storage facility at Mayak. The
34
This does not prevent Russian experts from recounting with some pride that they, at the moment, have the only operational national missile defense system: the so-called Galosh system deployed around Moscow.
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program is also planning to commence work on a chemical weapons destruction plant at Schuch’ye, although the start-up of construction has been linked to concerns about former Soviet chemical weapon stocks. Until the Russians provide fuller transparency into their Soviet-era stocks, the United States will not begin work at Schuch’ye.35 The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) concentrates its work on protecting warheads and weapons-usable material and accounting for it. Since in Russia there are 600 metric tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) that are not in weapons (or “nonweaponized”) and approximately 100 metric tons of plutonium, this task is enormous. DoE, together with its counterpart organization, the ministry of atomic energy (MinAtom), is also responsible for projects to dispose of these materials. The most successful disposition effort thus far is for HEU, which has a market value in the civilian nuclear power sector and has thus been dealt with through a commercial venture, known as the “HEU deal.” Plutonium does not have a straightforward market value, so disposition of it has been a complicated matter largely bankrolled by governments. Thus far, the program to dispose of it has not gotten off the ground.36 The U.S. Department of State leads in the management of an additional category of programs, the so-called brain drain programs that were designed to ensure that Russian weapon scientists continued to receive payment for their work. These programs were especially important in keeping Russian weapons expertise from going abroad, perhaps to countries of proliferation concern, at a time when many in the former Soviet Union were not receiving their paychecks. The primary brain drain program is the International Science and Technology Center in Moscow (and its counterpart in Kiev, the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine), a multilateral entity managed by the Department of State 35
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency provides useful summary information on the status of the CTR programs. This material, in briefing format, appears at http://www.dtra.mil/ctr/ctr_score.html. 36 In federal budget terms, the programs in the DoE are not part of CTR at the Defense Department, although they frequently are lumped together in the media. “Threat reduction” or “threat reduction cooperation” is often used as a generic term to describe the entire array of cooperative nonproliferation work with Russia and the Newly Independent States. An excellent discussion of the DoE nonproliferation cooperation programs and related issues may be found at the Nuclear Threat Initiative website, “Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials,” http://www.nti.org/e_research/cnwm/overview/issue.asp.
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in the United States. DoE manages two smaller programs: the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention Program and the Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI), which grew out of the special relationship of the DoE weapon laboratories with their counterpart laboratories in the Russian weapon complex. These programs have enjoyed a measure of success at keeping Russian weapons scientists at work in their laboratories. Through NCI, they have also begun the process of transitioning scientists into civilian work and out of the weapon complex as it is downsized. However, these programs are very different from some of the other threat reduction programs, which are engaged in eliminating weapon systems and therefore have a tangible success metric to measure. For that reason, they have often encountered resistance in the U.S. policy and budget process. Indeed, the bilateral agreement underpinning the NCI was allowed to lapse in September 2003, putatively because of a legal technicality, but more likely because of a dearth of enthusiasm in the Bush administration. The decade of cooperation on threat reduction and nonproliferation projects that unfolded after the breakup of the Soviet Union was a major advance in U.S.-Russian cooperation on nuclear matters. The successes and lessons learned from the cooperation enabled new approaches to be contemplated in the arms control arena, as well as in bilateral interactions on nonproliferation “problem cases” such as Iran and North Korea. NEW DIRECTIONS IN NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL
There has always been a symbiotic relationship between traditional arms control treaties and threat reduction. For example, as mentioned above, from the outset of CTR in 1992, the program depended on the reduction schedule of the START I treaty to provide it with a work program in Russia. START I contained a detailed, mutually agreed schedule for eliminating bombers, missiles, and submarines. When Senators Nunn and Lugar wrote the original CTR legislation in 1992, they simply adopted that schedule as a way to define the agenda for work that would be done to eliminate weapon systems under the new cooperative program. Now the opposite is true: the CTR programs are in a position to bolster arms control. The new Moscow treaty on strategic offensive force reductions, signed by Presidents Bush and Putin in May 2002, does not have a built-in reduction schedule. But the CTR contracting process has become so established that it could effectively become the means by which Russian reductions are carried out in a transparent manner. In fact,
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a CTR contract might contain more information than would have been available through the START treaty alone. The problem is that the CTR program operates as a U.S. assistance program in Russia, so the Russians do not have the same opportunities to develop industrial relationships at U.S. elimination facilities. In effect, they lack the natural transparency that accrues from these relationships. In an ideal world, Russian companies would have an equal right to compete on contracts to eliminate U.S. weapons systems. However, given the competitiveness of U.S. defense contracting, this outcome is highly unlikely. Some small subcontracts might be awarded (e.g., to dispose of scrap metal). Russian experts have argued that even a small symbolic project of this type would do much to bolster confidence in Moscow. Another option might be to open the U.S. contracting process to Russian eyes. Once a contract for elimination of a U.S. weapons system has been negotiated with a U.S. company, the Russians could be brought in for a government-industry briefing on the schedule and venue for the work. Depending on confidentiality requirements, they might also be permitted to retain copies of the contract documents to help them monitor the progress of the work through national technical means of verification such as satellites. In essence, placing such contracting documents in Russian hands would augment some of the information exchange requirements that will still be operating under START I. Thus, although Cooperative Threat Reduction mechanisms are not equal on the U.S. and Russian sides, the experience gained in the program can nevertheless be mined to develop new ways for the Russians to have confidence that U.S. weapons are being eliminated. Ensuring equal confidence on both sides will be important. The information gained in this way will often go beyond what would have been produced as a consequence of data exchanged under the START I treaty. Another innovation already under way is U.S.-Russian cooperation to develop technologies and procedures for new arms control and nonproliferation efforts. A whole series of technical agreements and arrangements have come about in the past decade, beginning with the cooperation between U.S. and Russian weapons laboratories that started in 1992, and now extending to formal government-to-government agreements. Two such accords are the Warhead Safety and Security Exchange Agreement (WSSX) and the transparency arrangements under the HEU deal, formally known as the Highly Enriched Uranium Purchase Agreement. WSSX, which involves the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy and the Russian ministries of defense and atomic energy, provides for
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joint work on technologies and procedures to improve the safety and security of nuclear warheads. The HEU transparency arrangements were designed to enhance confidence that the enriched uranium blended down under the agreement in fact comes from dismantled weapons and not from other stockpiles.37 These agreements are significant because they have created a web of scientific and technical relationships between the United States and Russia that can be turned efficiently to new and complicated arms control tasks. How, for example, might a system be developed to monitor warhead dismantlement without compromising sensitive information? Joint U.S.-Russian teams have already been working on the technologies and procedures that would be needed. Could a system be devised to distinguish weapons from nonweapons material, again without divulging sensitive information? Russian and U.S. experts have been developing just such a system, an information barrier technology, in preparation for transparency requirements at the Mayak plutonium storage facility. There is no arms control or reduction task to which the U.S. and Russian scientific and technical communities could not immediately contribute as a team. This is a radical departure from earlier eras of arms control, when technologies or procedures were developed in their initial form by one side, then proposed to the other and laboriously negotiated over many months, even years. Therefore, an opportunity for rapid progress has emerged for new cooperation on arms control and nonproliferation policy. Thus, the new era brings new opportunity. Although the United States and Russia still will make use of START I, they need not depend only on its rules. Today both countries have many means of knowing what is going on inside the nuclear arsenals of the other. New tools, such as the CTR program and the technical cooperation described above, have come available since the Cold War. They can be combined with older approaches so that the combination is a better and quicker means of achieving nuclear arms reductions than the old treaty system alone could provide. However, the rule of law cannot be abandoned in the arena of arms control and nonproliferation. Project contracts might in some cases sub37
The Soviet Union produced more than 1,000 metric tons of highly enriched uranium during the Cold War years, some of which was used for weapons, some for naval propulsion, some for civilian power production, and some for research.
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stitute for negotiated agreements, but they are still legal arrangements that neither side should be willing to abandon. Handshakes do not substitute for legal arrangements in almost any transaction between countries, but so much the more so when the transaction involves nuclear weapons. Juxtaposed against a picture that has some positive elements, however, is a wholly negative one: the failure of nuclear risk reduction. After more than 10 years and many proposals to lower the level of nuclear stand-off, the situation remains essentially the same: the United States and the Russian Federation each still have approximately 6,000 warheads on hair-trigger alert, most of them aimed at each other.38 An additional issue to be considered is whether the United States and Russia might choose to develop new nuclear weapons.39 The advent of such a step would spell a crisis in the international community, because it would mean that the two largest nuclear powers had chosen to repudiate their existing moratoriums on testing as well as future entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. U.S. and Russian testing in turn would probably lead to new testing in China, and possibly in other regions such as South Asia—all spelling a burgeoning of nuclear capabilities around the world. This development would be extraordinarily negative. However, it is worth considering whether the United States and Russia, with a more transparent and positive relationship, might in these circumstances manage the nuclear weapons environment more cooperatively than they did during the Cold War. They might, for example, engage in more joint
38
Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin did agree to a formal detargeting of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces, but the measures undertaken can be easily reversed. There have been no significant physical changes in operationally deployed missiles to lower their high level of readiness. 39 The possibility of a new generation of low-yield, earth-penetrating warheads is already being debated in the United States, and some experts have predicted that the Russian Federation would also proceed to develop and test new nuclear weapons if the test moratorium were lifted. In fact, some experts fear that Russia might already be testing secretly at Novaya Zemlya, the Russian test site in the Arctic. For more on this issue, see Paul B. Irwin, “The ‘Seismic Event’ at Novaya Zemlya: Earthquake or Nuclear Test,” http://www.nti.org/ db/nisprofs/over/novztest.htm. For the emerging debate in the United States, see Sidney D. Drell and James E. Goodby, The Gravest Danger: Nuclear Weapons (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2003), pp. 69–71.
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transparency in the weapons development and testing arena than was possible historically. They might wish to try to assure each other, for example, that the new weapons under development were being designed against clearly identifiable regional or counterproliferation threats, rather than each other. Such reassurance would be difficult to accomplish, but if the United States and Russia are truly aiming at a relationship that is akin to the relationship between the United States and Great Britain, then more transparency and interaction on nuclear weapons would be a natural policy direction. RUSSIAN ROLE IN NONPROLIFERATION POLICY
The impact that such cooperation would have on the nonproliferation regime is another question. The Soviet Union and the United States were major players in the negotiation of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which was signed in 1968 and entered into force in 1970.40 Since then, as the largest nuclear weapons states in the treaty regime, they have had a major responsibility to reduce their nuclear arsenals, with the goal under Article 6 of eventually achieving zero nuclear weapons. This commitment was a major spur to the strategic arms limitation and reduction processes, which eventually, as recounted above, resulted in reductions of operationally deployed strategic nuclear weapons from approximately 12,000 on each side to just under 6,000 in 2003. The two sides are further committed, under the Moscow treaty, to drop these numbers to 1,700–2,000 by 2012. These reductions are major achievements, especially because they have been accompanied by significant reductions in the size of the nuclear weapon design and production infrastructure. This has been especially true on the U.S. side, but Russia has also shut down one out of its four nuclear weapons production facilities, the Avangard plant at Sarov, a step that was accomplished through cooperation with the United States under the NCI.41
40
For text of the treaty and commentary, see Graham and LaVera, Cornerstones of Security, pp. 98–190. 41 The demise of the Nuclear Cities Initiative in September 2003 was troubling for a number of reasons, but primarily because the program was poised to begin cooperation with Russia on shutting down a second warhead plant, the Penza-19 facility.
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However, the Bush administration’s focus on flexibility in nuclear weapons policy, combined with the lack of interest on both sides in further negotiated arms reductions, have served to cloud these achievements.42 Following the Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference in 1995 and the permanent extension of the treaty, the nonnuclear weapons states under the regime began to express concerns that the nuclear weapons states no longer took seriously their commitments to reduce nuclear weapons with the eventual goal of achieving zero. They were particularly concerned, after the Bush administration’s arrival in office in 2001, that the “13 steps” that had been laid out as goals for regime members, were simply being ignored by the United States.43 Russia’s role in this possible reemphasis of nuclear weapons was ambiguous. As noted above, in April 2003, President Putin included a reference to “new strategic systems” in his state of the union address to the Duma. Although many commentators hailed this remark as evidence of Russian intent to develop new nuclear weapons, Deputy Prime Minister Boris Aleshin, who was in charge of defense industries, told the press that the president was referring to new strategic conventional weapons and more effective command and control systems.44 A similarly cloudy picture emerged out of Putin’s address to the ministry of defense in October 2003. He referred to the need to develop “weapons of the 21st century,” without specifying whether he was talking about new nuclear weapons. In fact, his emphasis seemed to be on weapons for varied but nonnuclear missions.45
42
The flexibility focus has been associated with a quest for new nuclear weapons, as outlined above, but it has also been associated with a possible reversal of efforts to shrink the U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure. The administration has been exploring, for example, a new warhead pit production plant. 43 The 13 steps included a recommitment to Article 6, that is, eventual reduction of nuclear arsenals to zero. For a useful commentary on the 13 steps, see “Advancing the NPT 13 Practical Steps,” MPI Briefing Paper, April 2003, Middle Powers Initiative, Global Security Institute. May be accessed at http://www.middlepowers.org. 44 Additional comment on this issue may be found in Mikhail Khodarenok, “Vozrozhden ‘goluboy’ poyas,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, May 19, 2003, http://www.ng.ru/printed/politics/2003-05-19/2_kremlin.html. 45 Putin’s remarks are quoted in Vitaly Trubetskoy, “Rossiiskaya armiya: ot vyzhivaniya k razvitiyu,” RTR-Vesti.Ru, October 2, 2003, http://www.vesti.ru/comments_print.html?pid=23746.
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This ambiguity lent support to the notion that Russia was in a waitand-see mode and would follow the United States in openly pursuing new nuclear weapon capabilities. In particular, it would not be the first to openly breach the moratorium on testing—although, as mentioned above, it cannot be excluded that in 2003 Russia was already engaging in small, covert nuclear explosive tests at Novaya Zemlya. The most important contrast to note, however, is with Russian policy toward national missile defenses. Unlike the Andropov strategy, which emphasizes that there is no need to pursue a similar program to counter U.S. national missile defense developments, Russia seemed to be signaling that development of new U.S. offensive nuclear weapon capabilities would be an entirely different matter. It would require Russia to pursue new nuclear weapons on a par with whatever program the United States was undertaking to develop such weapons.46 If the United States and Russia both embark on major new nuclear weapon programs, they may prove to be a major spur to development of new nuclear weapons in China, and possibly among the new states possessing nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan. They also could lend encouragement to those aspiring to them such as Iran and North Korea. On the positive side of the ledger, the United States and Russia are probably in a better position than ever before to remedy proliferation problems. As recounted above, they have been working closely in the past decade to counter proliferation out of the Soviet-era nuclear arsenal. They have been cooperating to protect nuclear warheads and materials, to eliminate missiles and other weapon systems, and to prevent a drain of Soviet weapons expertise to countries and nonstate organizations that could pose a terrorist threat. This joint cooperation has provided a wealth of experience that could be applied in the future to countering, monitoring, and eliminating secret nuclear weapon programs in countries of proliferation concern. A particularly pertinent example is Iran. If the United States and Russia could agree to work together with Iran, the European Union, and the International Atomic Energy Agency to shut down Iranian fuel cycle facilities, then the U.S. and Russian joint experience could be highly valuable. They have cooperated widely, for example, in first protecting, then controlling and accounting for weapon-usable nuclear material, consoli-
46
See “Rossiya nameknula NATO na yadernuyu bombu,” Pravda, October 2, 2003, http://world.pravda.ru/printed.html?news_id=13986.
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dating such material in a single site, and accelerating its elimination. Although it is unlikely that Iran has much weapon-usable material, the same steps could be relevant to determining what it does have, and moving to dispose of it. The same might be said of the joint experience gained in shutting down the Avangard nuclear warhead plant and transferring it to other, civilian uses. Although such U.S.-Russian cooperation could be a positive factor in dealing with future nuclear proliferation problems in the international arena, it must be noted that Russia could continue to be a barrier in this regard. MinAtom and its associated institutes have traditionally been enthusiastic about selling nuclear technology abroad, citing Article 4 of the NPT, which extends to nonnuclear weapon states the right to nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes. Traditionally, this has been interpreted to mean that such states have the right to construct facilities for the full fuel cycle on their territories, including uranium enrichment and fuel processing facilities, which are also key elements in a nuclear weapon program. Russia was only too happy to sell them these capabilities. Russia’s recent experience, however, particularly with Iran, appeared to have adjusted this calculus. Nuclear industry players in Moscow seemed genuinely surprised at the extent of Iran’s secret nuclear enrichment program when it came to light in early 2003, and indeed it seemed clear that the technologies used in the program, such as centrifuges, had come from sources other than Russia. Russia continued to work to sell Iran fuel services for the Bushehr reactor, which Russia was constructing, but grew less enthusiastic about claiming that Iran should have the right to construct wide-ranging fuel enrichment and reprocessing capabilities. One of the interesting facets of this shifting Russian attitude seems to be that it contained an element of economic calculation. Russia could continue to try to sell fuel cycle equipment to Iran and other countries, but would accrue significant costs, in terms of policy pressure from the United States and multilateral entities such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group, of which Russia is a member. It would also potentially accrue costs in terms of burgeoning nuclear threats to its national territory. In addition, once the facilities or equipment were sold, the contracts would essentially end. By contrast, if Russia sold reactors and the fuel services to go with them, it had the potential to acquire paying customers throughout the operating life of the reactors. The fuel services economic relationship, in short, had much to recommend it. In this way, Russia seemed set to become less of a proliferation problem in Iran and more of a partner. The past history of MinAtom and the
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commercial nuclear sector must lend caution to the notion that this will be an easy transformation. There are likely to be some interests in the Russian nuclear industry who would like to continue the old ways. Nevertheless, Russia seems willing to take on some difficult tasks in the nonproliferation policy arena, and should be put to the test.47 CONCLUSION
For an issue that has been largely out of the public eye for the past decade, nuclear weapons have played a remarkable role in the post-Soviet transformation of the Russian Federation. In the realm of military reform, they have provided the foil against which conventional force modernization has had to compete in a very tight budget environment. The debate between Defense Minister Sergeev and Chief of the General Staff Kvashnin was at the core of a struggle for the future of the Russian armed forces. Kvashnin focused on the threat that regional conflicts such as the war in Chechnya could come to endanger the Russian Federation as a whole, unless met with coherent and effective conventional forces. To him, nuclear weapons had little relevance in the main threat that the Russian armed forces had to confront, regional conflicts such as Chechnya going awry and endangering the federation overall. Modernizing and strengthening the conventional forces was the urgent answer to this problem. Sergeev’s conception of the threat, by contrast, drove him to conclude that only if the Russian Federation maintains a strong strategic nuclear force will it be able to face down strategic competitors, among them the United States and NATO, but also new regional actors. In his view, strong nuclear forces help to keep all threats in check: a strong nuclear deterrent equates to a strong Russia. The urgency of modernizing the conventional forces was tempered. Russia’s decision to maintain a number of multiple-warhead ICBMs on deployment following the demise of START II released the budgetary pressure that built up as a consequence of this debate. Perhaps, for a few
47
Russia is already willing to take back spent nuclear fuel from Iran; it has also expressed some willingness to take and store the plutonium fuel rods from North Korea, if the North Koreans could be brought to agreement. For more on this point, see Rose Gottemoeller, “A Deal That Worked,” New York Times, April 26, 2003.
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years in any event, the defense ministry will be “freed up” to concentrate scarce budget resources on transforming and modernizing the conventional armed forces. Strategic nuclear weapons will maintain their strong deterrent role, however. On the arms control front, the existence of a highly organized legally binding instrument, the START I treaty, was vital to ensuring the fairly smooth transition that occurred from a Soviet arsenal deployed in five republics of the USSR to a Russian arsenal deployed only on Russian territory. It also was vital to ensuring accelerated reductions in former Soviet strategic nuclear weapons systems. The post-Soviet nuclear transition without START I would have been difficult and dangerous, perhaps even chaotic. In this case, an arms control treaty proved to be extraordinarily important. However, it is now possible to go beyond START I. The post-Soviet period produced a remarkable new stage of cooperation between the United States and Russia in the threat reduction and nonproliferation projects that have been undertaken to eliminate and protect Russian nuclear assets. Cooperation has also been established in the most sensitive areas, such as the safety and security of warheads. With this more intensive and sophisticated set of interactions in train, the United States and the Russian Federation have been developing the tools to move beyond the limitations of the Cold War arms control and reduction processes. The two countries might also employ these tools in developing a new partnership to solve proliferation problems in troubled regions of the world. This trend can develop if Russia tempers its traditional enthusiasm for being a nuclear supplier to countries that raise concerns about their nuclear weapons aspirations in the international arena. Nuclear weapons seem destined to continue their strong role in both Russian military doctrine and in the relationship of the Russian Federation to the outside world. The picture is more interesting, however, than that which is captured by the phrase “nuclear weapons maintain a vestige of Russia’s superpower status.” Nuclear weapons do have a primary role in strategic deterrence of potential enemies, but they also serve as an insurance policy under which the Russian conventional forces can continue their tortuous path toward reform. Russia’s status as a nuclear weapon state under the NPT also provides it with special tools and capabilities that will enable it to play an important role in solving new nuclear problems that confront the world—if it decides that it wants to play in a consistent, responsible way. Thus, Russia’s nuclear capabilities are not a vestige of its past, but a significant aspect of its future.
CONCLUSION
Gold Eagle, Red Star DMITRI V. TRENIN
T
he military organization of the Russian Federation is largely a relic of the second half of the 20th century. Among Europe’s militaries, the Russian situation is hardly unique. For more than a decade following the end of the bipolar standoff, virtually every former Cold War adversary has been at odds with the emerging new strategic landscape. There are, however, at least three important distinctions. First, the situation in Russia differs fundamentally from the situation in the West because the change in the international order coincided with the collapse of Russia’s domestic political, economic, and value systems. Second, Russia differs from its former Warsaw Pact satellites because from the beginning it had few prospects for early integration into Western institutions, such as NATO. Third, Russia is unlike any of the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union precisely because it is not a nascent state. It therefore did not have the option of creating a defense system from scratch. Rather, it entered the post–Cold War period saddled with an outdated, unwieldy military machine. In Russia, where the government historically dominated society, the army was both the salient institution of an omnipotent state and its true emblem. The continental-size czarist empire traditionally relied on a massive military both to maintain cohesion and to protect and expand its borders. The Soviet regime was born out of a cruel civil war eventually won for the Bolsheviks by the Red Army. The communist regime acquired domestic legitimacy and international prestige as a result of the Soviet Union’s 1945 victory in what became officially known as the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany. In the half century that followed, the Soviet Union owed its position as the world’s second superpower almost entirely to its military, particularly its nuclear might. When the USSR collapsed under its own weight in 1991, the military stood by, bewildered but unscathed. It refused to concede defeat and instead talked of treason. T H E R U S S I A N M I L I TA RY
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This historical outline makes clear that any attempt to radically reform Russia’s military organization cuts to the core of the nation’s identity. A further complication is that military reform is but one aspect of post-Soviet Russia’s massive transformation agenda. The collapse of the command economy and the introduction of a crude version of the market; the end of communism as the state’s unitary ideology and the arrival of political and ideological pluralism (it is still too early to talk of democracy in Russia); the tectonic shift in borders and dramatically altered relationships with international players, all had a direct bearing on the future of Russia’s military and had to be factored in by the government when developing this agenda. Evidently, this was a tall order, perhaps even too tall. Outwardly, the Russian military has undergone many major changes. The Soviet army, suddenly bereft of the state it had vowed to serve, was peacefully dismantled in 1991–92. With few exceptions (among them, the Black Sea Fleet), Ukraine and Belarus successfully claimed ownership of Soviet assets on their territory. Meanwhile, the Central Asians inherited most of the assets of the local Soviet infrastructure. Forces in the Caucasus, Moldova, and the Baltic States, as well as in the former East Germany, came under Moscow’s jurisdiction. In May 1992, when the armed forces of the Russian Federation were legally formed, they still counted 2.73 million servicemen (out of the almost 4-million-manstrong Soviet army). The strategic nuclear forces were still at their alltime Cold War high and, although under Moscow’s control, were deployed in four newly independent states. By January 2004, the Russian military’s authorized strength had plummeted to 1,132,000. Russian forces had withdrawn from East Germany, Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, Azerbaijan, and Mongolia, though small garrisons still remain in a few countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The nuclear arsenal, today concentrated exclusively in Russia, is steadily shrinking. Psychologists, often aided by Russian Orthodox priests, have replaced communist political officers. In essence, the Russian armed forces are a scaled-down, much battered version of the Soviet military. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, they experienced tremendous decay, yet remained surprisingly resilient. Although not a total failure, the Russian military has thus far failed to adapt to the new economic environment at home and the new strategic environment abroad. This volume addressed three central questions about the Russian armed forces in the early 21st century. First, why, despite the deeply
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troubled state of the Russian military, have there been no serious attempts at reform? It is striking that the areas in which the Soviet Union was clearly lagging behind, such as retail trade, the service sector, and even agriculture, experienced a revival in the 1990s while the armed forces, the Soviet crown jewel, fell into disrepair. Second, how has the military organization been able to withstand and absorb the seismic shocks brought on by the collapse of the Soviet Union? Indeed, there are few armies that under similar conditions would not have openly rebelled against the government or simply disintegrated. So what explains the Russian case? Third, what does the future hold for this organization? It is likely that Russia will play a significant role in Eurasian affairs in the early 21st century; that it will do so as an autonomous, essentially nonintegrated international actor is a certainty. What kind of a military instrument will Moscow wield in pursuit of its national interests? What follows is a summary of conclusions in all three areas. WHY THE LACK OF MILITARY REFORM?
In the fall of 2003, the Russian government pronounced military reform officially accomplished. It would be more accurate, however, to say that the reform effort had been largely abandoned. Russian politicians and citizens alike continue to view the military’s situation as abominable and intolerable. Most accept the urgent need for reform, because so far even basic changes have been minimal. The Russian army still relies on conscripts, and the projected increase in the number of contract soldiers will not automatically make it more efficient; the army continues to lack a corps of noncommissioned officers, and creating such a corps will take decades rather than years; finally, its doctrine, organization, and training remain overly focused on the fairly improbable scenario of defending Russia against an aerial attack by the West. What distinguishes this army from its Soviet predecessor is, above all else, its inferior quality. Many have been blamed for the lack of meaningful military reform in Russia. Some experts point to the lack of competence among the government officials charged with this task. As both Aleksandr Golts and Pavel Baev argue in their chapters, Soviet, and later Russian, leaders were for the most part ignorant of or uninterested in defense affairs. As president and commander in chief of the Russian armed forces, Mikhail Gorbachev, and later Boris Yeltsin, were unable and unwilling to consider the implications of their domestic reforms and foreign policies for Russia’s defense
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and security sector. Inevitably, the two leaders chose to rely on loyal senior officers who promised their political support in exchange for leaving the military organization largely intact. Both preferred these senior officers over younger reformers whose radical vision included the dissolution of the General Staff, or at least ridding it of “conservatives” who threatened to undermine military discipline and push the bulk of the army into the hands of hard-line communists or nationalists. The price the political leadership was forced to pay, of course, was allowing the military brass to reform itself—the functional equivalent of letting Gosplan carry out market reforms. It did not help that senior Russian officers, though well versed in military issues, were extremely narrow-minded in their overall outlook. Their knowledge of politics, economics, and world affairs was not only limited but also often distorted. In addition, they were accustomed to operating in an environment where resources were virtually limitless and, as far as the military organization was concerned, free. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some liberal academics and several younger officers sought to challenge the views of the entrenched military elite, but were significantly hampered by their own lack of specialized knowledge or relevant experience. In sum, the military brass managed to preserve their monopoly over defense-related expertise, but it was a truly Pyrrhic victory. Another explanation for the absence of genuine military reform was the vigorous opposition of certain vested interests. The General Staff and the defense ministry, which were entrusted with implementing the government’s reform program, were communities of survivors, not kamikazes. Unlike the captains and majors who in the late 1980s and early 1990s denounced the corrupt defense establishment, the generals and admirals had everything to lose in the event of a major overhaul of the system they had built to last. No military organization can reform itself on its own, and Russia’s is no exception. Still other observers support the notion of “original sin,” according to which the fate of the Soviet military organization—indeed of the Soviet Union itself—was sealed at the November 1991 annual meeting of the Soviet high command, attended by both Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Given the choice of supporting the high command or Yeltsin, the generals decided to cast their lot with the Russian leader. In return for the generals’ loyalty, Yeltsin allowed the military hierarchy to run their organization as they saw fit and barred would-be reformists from interfering. The influence of this loyalty pledge is still being felt today: one can well imag-
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ine the ever cautious Vladimir Putin carefully weighing the risks before taking on the top brass in a sweeping reform effort, only to have to resign in the wake of failure. Finally, some experts argue that military reform was sacrificed as the price for stability. Amid the revolutionary (and chaotic) changes of the 1990s, Russia’s defense ministry was faced with so many urgent tasks— including massive troop withdrawals and redeployments, adjustment to new borders and new neighbors, and even peacekeeping—that taking on additional responsibilities could have proved overwhelming. Moreover, beginning in late 1994, the high command trained its focus on the conflict in the North Caucasus. The war in Chechnya, while highlighting the inadequacy of Russia’s military organization and the lack of cohesion among its key components, became a major roadblock to reform by politically empowering the conservative war-prosecuting authority. As already mentioned, there were even broader reasons for the lack of military reform in Russia. The year 1991 represented the end of an era not just for the Soviet Union. The global security landscape also underwent abrupt and fundamental change. In this new environment, it was unclear what the principal security threats would be, and thus how to define them. Military establishments naturally look for identifiable enemies. So in 1993, when the Kremlin declared in a document entitled “Fundamentals of the Military Doctrine” that Russia no longer confronted any real enemies but only assorted threats and risks, the military leadership denounced it as naïve and irresponsible. Meanwhile, the top brass resolved to keep intact as much of the former Soviet military machine as possible, in the hope that someday Russia and its armed forces would be restored to their former glory. As it happened, this was not a futile hope. Ten years later, in the fall of 2003 the defense ministry issued a strikingly candid White Paper that emphasized defense against the United States as the prime mission of the Russian armed forces and proclaimed the military reform project to be over. Engaging in “strategic camouflage” (i.e., nominally accepting the absence of enemies while keeping the overall strategic matrix essentially intact) was relatively easy for Russia’s military elite, who still could not come to terms with the country’s fundamentally changed domestic environment. The military leadership failed to appreciate the implications of the replacement of the Soviet command economy with a primitive version of the market. On the other hand, government reformers saw their task as the swift demilitarization of the new economy, which was essen-
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tially a wartime economy with a relatively small, inefficient civilian sector. The reformers were in no mood to let the generals spend money on a bloated, outdated, and largely useless infrastructure. Typically for Russia, however, another de facto compromise was reached: in the early and mid1990s, the defense ministry would receive roughly half of its budget request, but in general would be allowed to spend the money as it wished. Compromises of this kind (or the “original sin” of buying the General Staff’s loyalty by renouncing radical military reform) were responsible for the relative peacefulness of Russia’s postcommunist development. At the same time, however, such compromises greatly limited the scope and depth of the changes to come. As Alexei Arbatov’s chapter illustrates, military reform was most closely linked to Russia’s foreign policy orientation. Here, the road taken was anything but direct. Initially, the Kremlin chose to pursue “integration on equal footing,” with Russia claiming to be second only to the United States within the expanded Western community. Spurned in this effort, the government then sought to develop a policy of “critical partnership,” which only increased tensions over NATO enlargement and nearly resulted in a conflict over Kosovo. Under President Putin, despite his post–September 11 opening to the West, Russia has stressed strategic independence, seeking a broad freedom of action, particularly in the former Soviet states. This international position sui generis has placed an especially high demand on the military to view the West as both a partner (i.e., against Islamic extremists) and as a potential adversary (regarding the CIS). Russia’s economic upheaval in the 1990s greatly aggravated the military establishment’s manpower problems. Many of the best and the brightest left to follow more attractive career paths. At the same time, the military’s loss of prestige and material advantage deterred others from joining. Even more important, the government’s passage of new deferral measures also in the 1990s (as well as an increase in illegal ways to dodge the draft) effectively limited the military services’ manpower pool to members of the lower classes whose families could not afford either to send their sons to schools that offered draft deferrals or to bribe recruitment officials. Not only the newly rich but also the liberal intelligentsia, enjoying de facto protection from conscription for their sons, lost much of their interest in military reform. Finally, with the end of the Cold War, virtually for the first time in Russia’s history, traditional defense concerns all but disappeared. There
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were, to be sure, military security problems along Russia’s periphery, from ethnic conflicts to small-scale wars (Chechnya included). None, however, was seen as an issue of life or death. The threat of a massive foreign invasion, calling for a patriotic war in defense of the motherland (which was consistently portrayed as the prime rationale for the existence of the Soviet/Russian military organization), had suddenly evaporated. The “June 22 complex” (i.e., fear of a massive surprise attack similar to the German assault against the Soviet Union in 1941), which had been so influential until the mid-1980s, began to lose its hold. As a result, defense procurement from 1992 onward plummeted to only a fraction of what it had been in the 1980s. Meanwhile, the armed forces’ numbers remained high, with the government clearly preferring to see Russian men in uniform and in the barracks rather than jobless and on the streets. Yet, as the specter of all-out war receded, the likelihood of more numerous small wars along the borderlands began to increase. These “southern wars,” however, were very different from the world war the Soviet Union had feared and prepared for during the Cold War. This difference was of decisive importance because, regardless of what they said, Russian political elites, the military brass, and society at large did not really consider fundamental military reform to be the top priority. WHERE IS THE SYSTEM NOW?
There is a maxim in Russia that the army is never as strong as it boasts, but also never as weak as it may appear. What is truly surprising is that, against all odds and dire predictions, Russia’s military organization (which in addition to the armed forces includes interior, border, and railroad troops, as well as armed services attached to the security services and other agencies) has neither collapsed nor even rebelled against the government. What has kept the system afloat, and how far can it go without a major overhaul? Not only was the Soviet military machine enormous, but it was also built to prevail in a nuclear war against the combined forces of the West. The Soviet Union, however, was not defeated in a war. Internal crisis, rather than outside pressure, led to its disintegration. Whether the Soviet system could have survived longer than it did is moot. The essential fact is that two policies initiated by the Gorbachev government—glasnost and perestroika—followed by détente with the West, led to the undoing of the USSR and its military. Over decades of confrontation, however, the
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Soviet military amassed huge stockpiles of resources that have kept its Russian successor going for years. These stocks are being depleted, however, and nowhere is this more evident than in the manpower sector. Human Resources The Russian Federation has thus far preserved the Soviet system of universal conscription. The country’s wealthier families, however, have taken advantage of the government’s system of deferrals to keep their sons out of the military; poorer families have not been as fortunate. At the same time, the population of Russia is declining even more rapidly than those in Europe, at an average rate (in the 1990s) of three-quarters of a million persons per year. Consequently, the pool of available conscripts is rapidly shrinking, which has raised growing concerns within the military leadership. For the first time in its modern history, Russia is unable to compensate in quantity what it lacks in quality in both personnel and materiel. Today, the defense ministry has to compete for human resources with both the civilian economy and the sprawling security establishment, which together employ more uniformed and civilian personnel than the armed forces. The manpower crisis is not only a demographic problem but also a structural one. Russia’s military remains virtually unique among the world’s major countries in not having a corps of professional noncommissioned officers. Currently, commissioned officers number around 450,000, while there are slightly fewer than 690,000 conscripts and hardly any professional sergeants or warrant officers.1 As a result, officers rely on “informal methods” to maintain discipline in the barracks, for example, through subcontracting authority to “senior” conscripts; this in turn has led to widespread hazing and other forms of abuse. The military’s key manpower problem, however, relates to the commissioned officers corps, which is top-heavy, poorly managed, and much too large. The sorry state of this pivotal body is the greatest testimony to the continuing degradation of Russia’s military organization. At the same time, the domination of old patronage networks at the highest levels of the military hierarchy has effectively immobilized this vertically managed system. Most general officers are so accustomed to leading huge, conscript-based formations configured for large-scale war that they are
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“Oboronnaya politika Rossii,” paper prepared by the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, November 2003, p. 5.
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unable to adapt to more realistic war-fighting scenarios. The inexcusable failure of the State Duma to substantially raise the level of civilian expertise in defense matters (if anything, the opposite may be true) completes this generally bleak assessment. Russia’s civilian leaders have by and large continued the Soviet tradition of civilian-military relations. They insist on the generals’ political loyalty in exchange for their own minimal involvement in defense matters. The appointment in 2001 of Sergei Ivanov as Russia’s “civilian” defense minister failed to result in the overhaul of the obsolescent defense ministry structure. On the contrary, the new minister soon became an advocate of the traditionalist mainstream within the military establishment. Under Putin, the civilianization of Russia’s military structures, meekly attempted by his predecessor, gave way to the pervasive militarization and securitization of the government at the highest levels. This change has had inevitable consequences for Russia’s foreign and security policy outlook. “Software” As Pavel Baev argues in his chapter, the Russian political leadership and the military high command are still in a doctrinal muddle. The national security concept and the military doctrine offer lengthy catalogues of threats and risks, but both fail to assign priorities. Throughout the 1990s, defense against a Western (U.S./NATO) attack remained the principal option, both for reasons of sheer inertia and for the sake of preserving the existing military establishment. In the wake of the October 2002 Moscow theater hostage drama, however, President Putin’s demand to refashion the military to better fight against international terrorism reflected the political leadership’s belief that Russia’s military organization had become outdated. Yet as Putin’s acceptance of the defense ministry’s October 2003 White Paper demonstrates, the Kremlin has no stomach for challenging the well-entrenched views of the top brass on defense issues.2 The White Paper contains references to a new security agenda while reflecting the essence of traditional thinking. It leaves little doubt that the Russian military continues to see the United States and its NATO allies as the country’s principal potential adversaries. Consequently, the main
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Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, “Relevant Tasks of Development of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,” September 23, 2003.
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thrust of Russian force development is on preparation for defense against a U.S.-led attack. And to the extent they exist, military education and training remain focused on the West as the likely enemy. As Rose Gottemoeller notes in her chapter, nuclear weapons play “a strong role in both Russian military doctrine and in the relationship of the Russian Federation to the outside world.” Russia’s nuclear posture is both a symbol of its residual status as a military superpower and its ultimate insurance policy vis-à-vis the United States and other major powers, such as China. Moreover, optimists at one time hoped that Russia’s huge nuclear arsenal would act as a foil by protecting Russian military reform from all kinds of strategic surprises. As discussed, however, the reform effort never got off the ground. The surviving Soviet military infrastructure continues to dictate Russian force deployments, with one important addition: the North Caucasus, which because of the Chechen war has become a second front line. The new southern front, however, has not replaced the old western front in Russian military doctrine, but has only been added to it. Russian military engagements in CIS states, as Roy Allison discusses in his chapter, were aimed at ensuring that the outcomes would be consistent with Moscow’s perceived interests. The Russian military observed with a wary eye what it saw as Western encroachments in its strategic backyard. Analogies to the Great Game were offered repeatedly, and never totally refuted. Hardware Although the Russian nuclear arsenal has shrunk, it remains a potent force. The absence of limitations that would have been imposed by the START II treaty, and the extension of the life cycle of Soviet-built intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), have allowed the Russian military to optimize its strategic nuclear force within existing financial constraints. By contrast, Russia’s conventional arsenals have drastically deteriorated. Only one weapon system out of five deployed can be called “new.” The army is still saddled with its Soviet-era arsenals, which as Vitaly Shlykov argues in his chapter, has had dramatic implications for Russia’s defense industrial base. Having seen government orders plummet 70–80 percent, military industrial enterprises have virtually ceased to exist. This once proud empire, Shlykov suggests, has become a “forgotten archipelago.” The only such enterprises that have managed to thrive are producing arms for China, India, Iran, and other foreign buyers. Attempts to
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streamline development and production have run against the grain of vested interests and have largely failed. Whether the Russian armed forces will eventually be able to equip themselves with domestically produced state-of-the-art weaponry is an open question. WHAT ARE THE PROSPECTS FOR THE RUSSIAN MILITARY?
While the top brass has pronounced the reform of the Russian military complete, outside critics of this organization call it “unreformable.” Both views, though seemingly incompatible, are correct. Like the state itself, Russia’s armed forces survived the upheaval and turmoil caused by the Soviet collapse to reach a point of partial stabilization. Further radical changes are unlikely in the short to medium term. At the same time, Russia’s military, like the country’s political system, has demonstrated the limits of reform. Rather than being replaced by a totally new entity, such as the streltsi under Peter the Great, the current system will continue to muddle through, despite its obvious failings. In this, a changed operating environment will help the Russian military. With the start of President Putin’s second term in March 2004, the traditional Russian state is staging a comeback. Should Russia’s economic growth, aided by high oil prices, continue, it would provide more resources for the military and security services. Defense modernization is one of President Putin’s stated priorities. From the Kremlin’s perspective, a strong conscript-based military is an institution of national consolidation. Although Russia will move cautiously toward building a more professional force, it will not abandon conscription for the foreseeable future. It is more likely that the deferral system will be reviewed and scaled back, and as a result more young men will be called up for duty. National service would become universal in more than name only, but the length of service would be slashed in half to one year. Military education is likely to be streamlined and better integrated with the civilian sector; officers’ housing and health care will probably see some improvements. Yet, characteristically, Putin has confined the focus of his military modernization efforts essentially to the support sector. The government’s aim to build a military where by 2007 slightly more than 50 percent of its members would be contract servicemen will probably be achieved, formally speaking. It is more difficult to see, however, what this will mean in practice. Contract soldiers’ salaries remain very low, particularly in the context of today’s often-harsh service condi-
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tions. A private under contract receives less than $180 a month; a lieutenant makes $200 a month (the average pay of a salaried worker); and a colonel earns $330 a month. As Arbatov argues in his chapter, to be even marginally attractive, the wages of an academy graduate should equal those of a colonel. In the short term, this is rather unlikely. Instead of attracting the best and the brightest, the military will continue to rely on forces that can be obtained at minimum cost. Contract soldiers are not professionals. Consequently, personnel decisions and supervision, officer evaluations, postings, and promotion will continue to be nontransparent and all too often corrupt. In the medium term, the situation may change if Russia’s foreign policy becomes progressively militarized, which could result in pay hikes for servicemen. However, the armed forces can hardly expect anything close to the windfall enjoyed by their colleagues in the domestic security services, which in recent years have increased in both size and strength. Currently, the gap in pay between military officers and security officers is 150 percent. The war against terrorism has revived the Russian security services, providing them with a new rationale and sense of mission. To the Russian armed forces, Chechnya has been less of a turning point and more of an add-on. In the early 21st century, the military will be configured to fight two types of war: regional or local conflicts against U.S.-led or U.S.-supported military forces, and counterinsurgency campaigns against Islamic rebels. The former will take precedence as the more intense and technologically more advanced form of warfare. Moscow confronts security vacuums south of its borders and feels obliged to act. Moreover, if Russia seeks to reestablish preeminence in the former Soviet space, the risk of military engagement in the CIS states will rise dramatically. This is likely to be accompanied by some kind of politico-military standoff with both the United States and Europe. Such a development would require a ready military force capable of power projection in the vicinity of Russia’s borders, which is currently the defense ministry’s key priority. Thus, the deterioration of Russia’s relations with the West may help the Russian military escape the kind of reform that was widely envisaged in the 1990s. Rather than focusing squarely on 21st-century missions, the military will have to balance a complex combination of old and new threats. In early-21st-century Russia, a civilian defense ministry will continue to be an oxymoron. Even if the titular head of the defense ministry is a retired general, his staff will be almost exclusively composed of uniformed officers. While recognizing the authority of the defense minister,
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the General Staff is likely to continue in its historical role as the principal decision-making agency on defense matters, the prime implementer and controller. Over time, it is likely to emerge as the central node of planning, coordination, procurement, logistical support, education, and training for the entire military organization. In a legislature where the Kremlin-affiliated group has a constitutional majority, independent parliamentary control of the military and security services will be minimal. The Kremlin, on the other hand, will be closely watching the armed services. Meanwhile, the Russian public will be given more official information about the state of the armed forces, while being encouraged to make greater displays of patriotism. Optimization and rationalization, rather than radical reform, will be the motto of Russia’s military reorganization. The nuclear forces could be streamlined, partly out of choice and partly out of attrition, with the nuclear/land/sea triad folding into a land/sea dyad with ground-based ICBMs becoming the dominant component. As Russia’s ongoing ICBM force modernization program shows, deterrence of both the United States (explicitly) and China (implicitly) remains a prime military security strategy. To make this strategy more flexible, Russia may consider three options: integrating its strategic and substrategic nuclear forces, developing miniaturized nuclear weapons to take account of an expanded array of possible targets, and lowering the nuclear threshold. Moscow will of course closely watch developments such as U.S. efforts to build a missile defense system and the so-called militarization of outer space. Meanwhile, nuclear weapons will allow the Russian high command breathing room to compensate for the growing gap in conventional capabilities and military technology. The nuclear shield could either facilitate or impede Russia’s military transformation. Current trends point toward a dual mission for Russia’s conventional forces in the early 21st century. With NATO expanding from Estonia to Bulgaria, and U.S. bases redeploying from Germany to Poland and Romania, the principal mission of the Russian military will continue to be preparation for repelling a conventional attack in the west (from the Baltic to the Black Sea) and in the east (from Lake Baikal to Kamchatka). At the same time, the armed forces could be engaged in putting down various types of insurgencies along Russia’s southern border. Lacking significant power projection capability, these forces would have to be deployed in the vicinity of the theaters of operation in the Caucasus and Central Asia. There is a clear need to develop rapid deploy-
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ment capabilities (for both airborne troops and the air force) and to create a network of local alliances. Over time, a new structure of regional and functional commands will have to replace the antiquated system of military districts. Whatever the thrust of Russia’s foreign and defense policy, the military’s education system will need to be drastically overhauled. This includes consolidating and improving the faculty and staff of the military academies; making further cuts in the number of academies and related educational institutions; and establishing a national security academy, under the authority of the president, that would train senior officers and officials for positions in the defense and other power ministries. A substantial increase in the civilianization of the curriculum and the coeducation of civilians and servicemen, however, is unlikely to occur. The officer corps will probably continue to be self-selective and keep its distance from the rest of society. A new development could be the growing prominence of the government’s security agencies, as the defense-security balance will continue to shift in favor of the security services. Consequently, the armed forces, even if they are able to reintegrate components such as the railroad troops and the construction units, will have no choice but to accept the new hierarchy in the national defense and security community, where the security agencies will dominate as the “senior service.” A SECURITY PARTNER FOR THE WEST?
In December 1991, in his first letter to NATO’s secretary-general, Boris Yeltsin wrote that Russia envisaged joining the alliance in the near future. Two weeks later, a memo arrived from the Kremlin apologizing for a misprint. The original letter, it said, should have read that Russia did not envisage joining the alliance in the near future. During the intervening fourteen-day period, Moscow took the opportunity to study NATO’s reaction. Similar ambiguities were notable in Putin’s first term. Talking to BBC journalists in early 2000, for example, Russia’s second president famously replied, “Why not?” to a question regarding possible Russian membership in the Western alliance. At the beginning of Putin’s second term, it is clear that Russia is not going to become part of an enlarged West. Rather, it will remain a freestanding political and strategic entity, attempting to play the traditional role of a regional great power in Central Eurasia. In addition, Russia’s postcommunist transition has had to confront a variety of major systemic
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obstacles on the road to democracy, a free market economy, and a vibrant civil society. This too has set Russia apart from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that have successfully made the transition and “joined” the West. As Russia aspires to reaffirm its great power status, largely guaranteed by its military might, the leadership does not envisage a return to isolation and confrontation with the West. Relations with the United States and NATO are celebrated as “qualitatively different” than in the years of the Cold War.3 In the future, however, Russia’s security relations with the United States and the European Union (EU) will be defined roughly equally by domestic developments in Russia and by Russia’s relations with countries in the former Soviet space. In some areas (e.g., the emergence of new security threats), Russia will have cooperative relations with both the United States and the EU. However, in the region that matters most to Moscow (i.e., the former Soviet space), relations could become highly competitive and even conflictual. Three developments will help to condition Russian actions: whether Russia remains essentially authoritarian, with its privatized economy closely regulated by the government bureaucracy; whether its civil society continues to be stifled and undeveloped; and whether its foreign policy strives not so much to integrate with the advanced industrialized parts of the world (i.e., Europe, Japan, and the United States), as to establish a power center of its own. In 2003, Russia narrowed its foreign policy focus to the former Soviet space: Russian peacekeepers quietly withdrew from the Balkans; Moscow lost the ability to mediate between Baghdad and Washington, as well as between the United States and the “rogue” states of Iran, Libya, and North Korea; and Russia’s role in the Middle East “quartet” remained purely notional. On the other hand, Russia has concentrated its efforts in the former Soviet space, where it maintains real interests—interests the Kremlin will defend. After September 11, 2001, the U.S. military presence in Central Asia and Georgia was tolerated, but always on the assumption that it would be temporary, unlike Russian influence, which was there to stay. The reintroduction of a token Russian military presence in Kyrgyzstan in 2003 not only reverses the post-1989 trend; it sends a message of resolve both to Russia’s closest neighbors and to the United States.
3
“On the Main Results of the Development of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in 2003,” report by Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, http://www.mil.ru/article4231.shtml.
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Russia will increasingly challenge the United States for position as the newest hegemon of Eurasia by attempting to gradually reduce U.S. influence in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and above all Ukraine. This could lead to a substantial cooling off period in U.S.-Russian relations, with alliance politics and arms control again playing an important role. This cooling need not be seen as the advent of a second Cold War. Russia, the United States, and the EU will continue to share certain major security interests. The profile of nuclear proliferation as a security issue has recently risen in Russia, although Moscow will resist U.S. attempts to drive it from the lucrative nuclear technology market. The Russian fight against Chechen separatism and Islamic militancy elsewhere in the CIS, and the U.S. fight against international terrorism, will occasionally intersect. The need to strengthen or, in some cases, restore regional stability may require joining forces for various kinds of peace operations. This will require a degree of interoperability and military and political coordination that is still a long way off. Having rejected the option of becoming a junior partner to the United States, and viewing the value of cooperation with NATO as fairly limited, Russia will probably concentrate on rebuilding a military force geared to both the defensive “standoff” mission in the West and East and the new “active-duty” mission in the South. Occasionally, the United States and the EU may be Russia’s partners; at other times, they will be perceived as competitors and rivals. For allies, however, Moscow will look to members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, thus reviving an important Warsaw Pact tradition.
Contributors ROY ALLISON is Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for International Studies at the University of Oxford. He is also Head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London. His principal areas of research are Russian/Eurasian foreign and security policies and the nature of the new regionalism. He directs projects on “Subregionalism and Foreign Policy Transformation: Russia and Iran in Central Asia” and “Prospects for Collaboration between Russia and the West in Responding to New Security Challenges since September 11.” Allison was Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center in January–March 2004. Allison is also working on a project on “Inclusion without Membership: Bringing Russia, Ukraine and Belarus Closer to Europe.” His recent books include Central Asian Security: The New International Context (co-edited, 2001); Security Dilemmas in Russia and Eurasia (co-edited, 1997); and Internal Factors in Russian Foreign Policy (co-author, 1996). He sits on the editorial board of several academic journals, including International Affairs. ALEXEI G. ARBATOV is Scholar in Residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center. He is a member of the Yobloko faction and served, until recently, as a member of the Russian Duma, where he was Deputy Chairman of the Defense Committee and Chairman of the Subcommittee for International Security and Arms Limitations. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. Before serving in the Duma, he worked as a senior researcher, leading specialist, sector head, and department head of the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow. PAVEL K. BAEV is Senior Researcher and Head of the Foreign and Security Policies Program at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). He also heads the Working Group on International Dimensions of Civil Wars at the Centre for the Study of Civil War at PRIO. He holds an M.A. in Political Geography from Moscow State University and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Institute of USA and Canada. Prior to joining PRIO, Baev worked in the USSR Ministry of Defense and in the Institute T H E R U S S I A N M I L I TA RY
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of Europe in Moscow. He has served as co-editor of Security Dialogue and held the NATO Democratic Institutions Fellowship. He is author of several books, including The Russian Army in a Time of Troubles (1996). His articles on Russia’s military posture, Russian-European relations, and peacekeeping and conflict management in Europe have appeared in Armed Forces & Society, European Security, International Peacekeeping, Jane’s Intelligence Review, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Security Dialogue, and The World Today. ALEKSANDR GOLTS is Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the new political magazine Yejenedelnyi journal (Weekly Journal). He holds an M.A. in Journalism from Moscow State Lomonosov University. Golts has been a leading columnist and commentator on Russian military affairs for more than two decades. He has served on the editorial board of the Russian military daily Krasnaya zvezda (Red Star), where he also published a weekly column and covered Russian foreign and domestic policy. He also served as Military Editor of Itogi, a premier Russian news magazine, until he and other members of the Itogi staff were locked out of their offices in April 2001. In addition, he is a contributor to Jane’s Defense Weekly. Golts is co-author of Russia: The New Security Parameters (1995) and has been working, most recently as a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Arms Control, on a book about military reform in Russia. ROSE GOTTEMOELLER is Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where she holds a joint appointment with the Russian and Eurasian Program and the Global Policy Program. Gottemoeller’s research at the Carnegie Endowment focuses on issues of nuclear security and stability, nonproliferation, and arms control. Before joining the Endowment in October 2000, she served as Deputy Undersecretary for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation in the U.S. Department of Energy. Previously, she served as Deputy Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London from 1993 to 1994, and before that she served on the National Security Council in the White House as Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia Affairs, with responsibility for denuclearization in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. Gottemoeller’s recent publications include “Arms Control in a New Era” Washington Quarterly (Spring 2002); “A Deal That Worked,” New York Times (April 26, 2003); “On Nukes, We Need to Talk,” Washington Post (April 2, 2002); and “U.S. Must Help Russia Diminish Nuclear Risk,” Los Angeles Times (November 12, 2001).
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STEVEN E. MILLER is Director of the International Security Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal International Security and co-editor of the BCSIA Studies in International Security book series (published by MIT Press). Previously, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and taught Defense and Arms Control Studies in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Miller is a member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Committee on International Studies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Advisory Committee of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and the Scientific Committee of the Landau Network Centro Volta (Italy). He is co-chair of the American Pugwash Committee and a member of the Council of International Pugwash. Within Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Miller serves on the steering committees of the Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe and of the Harvard Ukrainian Project. He is co-author of the recent monograph, Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy: Containing the Threat of Loose Russian Nuclear Weapons and Fissile Material, and of its predecessor, Soviet Nuclear Fission: Control of the Nuclear Arsenal in a Disintegrating Soviet Union (1991). Miller is editor or co-editor of some two dozen books, including, most recently, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict (1997), Debating the Democratic Peace (1996), and The Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International Security (1995). VITALY V. SHLYKOV is an Adviser to the President of United Heavy Machinery Corporation, Russia’s biggest engineering company and a significant weapons producer. A graduate of the Institute for International Relations and the Military Diplomatic Academy in Moscow, he also holds a Ph.D. from IMEMO. He served in the military intelligence of the Soviet General Staff from 1958 to 1988. He then served as Deputy Chairman of the State Committee on Defense of the Russian Federation with the rank of Deputy Minister in the Russian government, where his responsibilities included the defense industry and its budget from 1990 to 1992. Shlykov is a founding member of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a nongovernmental research organization.
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DMITRI V. TRENIN is a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Deputy Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. Before joining the Endowment in 1994, he served in the Soviet and Russian army. Colonel Trenin’s postings included Iraq (with the military assistance group, 1975–1976), Germany (liaison with the Western powers in Berlin, 1978–1983), and Switzerland (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces and Strategic Arms Reduction talks, 1985–1991). For several years, Trenin taught area studies at the Defense University in Moscow. He was also a Senior Fellow at NATO Defense College (1993) and, upon retirement from the military, Visiting Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (1993–1994). At the Endowment, Trenin co-chairs the Foreign and Security Policy Program. He is the author of several books, including Russia’s Restless Frontier (co-authored, forthcoming); The End of Eurasia: Russia on the Border between Geopolitics and Globalization (two printings, 2002 and 2001); A Strategy for Stable Peace: Toward a Euroatlantic Security Community (coauthored, 2002); Russia’s China Problem (1998); and Baltic Chance: The Baltic States, Russia, and the West in the Emerging Greater Europe (1997). Among the books Trenin has edited are Ambivalent Neighbors: The NATO and EU Enlargement and the Price of Membership (2003); Russia and the Main Security Institutions in Europe: Entering the 21st Century (2000); Kosovo: International Aspects (1999); and Commonwealth and Security in Eurasia (1998). Trenin is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and of the Russian International Studies Association. A frequent commentator for the world media, he serves on the editorial boards of International Politics, Pro et Contra, and Baltic Course.
Index “Chechen generals,” 60, 68
Bush, George H.W., 201
Abkhazia, 132, 135, 144
Bush, George W., policies of, 213. See also Nonproliferation Treaty
Afghan Transitional Authority, 151 Afghanistan, 121, 123, 124 n3, 140,146, 149–153; U.S. operations in, 150, 151, 152, 152–53; peacekeeping in, 152; as weapons market, 151 Aleshin, Boris, 213 Alksnis, Viktor, 84 Almaz-Antei holding, 175–75
Caspian Sea, 64; region, 142; “Sea of Peace” military exercises, 142 Chechen wars, 121, 122, 123; first, 17, 46, 51, 52, 127; second, 18, 27 31–32, 46, 57–58, 62, 69,88–89, 128, 148, 223; and Russian military doctrine, 124, 125–26, 128–29, 130, 130–31, 132, 143, 153
Alyoshin, Boris, 162, 171
Chechnya, 17, 61; terrorist hostage crisis (2002), 59, 92, 95, 103, 227
Andropov, Yuri, 206
Chernomyrdin, Viktor, 93
Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty (1972), 58, 91–92, 199; U.S. withdrawal from, 190
Chubais, Anatoly, 174
Armenia, 141
closed cities, 163
arms control agreements, 199–200; verification protocols, 200.
collective peacekeeping forces (CPF), 138, 139
Ashourbailey, Igor, 164, 171, 173, 174
Collective Security Treaty (1992), 138, 140–41, 149, 152
Aushev, Ruslan, 87, 88
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), 5, 121, 220
Azerbaijan, 142 Barrikady enterprise, 177 Baturin, Yuri, 53 n27 Belarus, 7, 141, 220 Black Sea Fleet, 220 Bosnia-Herzeovina, 147 brain-drain programs. See under Russian nuclear forces, cooperative threat reduction Budanov, Yuri, 80 Bulgaria, 147
Clinton administration, 203, 204
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, 211 conscription, universal, 51, 71, 74, 94; alternative civil service, 74–75; and desertion rates, 76–77; draftdodging, 162; student deferrals, 75, 224, 229 contract manpower system. See Russian military, composition of Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty and Treaty-Limited Equipment (TLE), 5, 6 Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program. See under Russian nuclear forces T H E R U S S I A N M I L I TA RY
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INDEX
Dolgolaptev, Anatoly, 177
Ilyukhin, Viktor, 83
DPA, 82, 84
Incombank, 172
Dvorkin, Vladimir, 190, 191
Initiatives for Proliferation Program, 208
Fahim, Mohammed, 151 federal border service, 102, 104, 139
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, 199
Federal Communication Agency (FAPSI), 49
internal security forces, 102
Federal Counterintelligence Service, 49 Federal Program for the Restructuring and Conversion of the Defense Industry in 1889–2000 (1997), 172 Federal Security Service (FSB), 59, 61, 66 n68, 103, 105; in Chechnya, 130
International Atomic Energy Agency, 214 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), 152 Iran, 142, 143, 214, 215 Iraq, 59, 65, 70, 107, 108, 148, 153–54 IROR/SFOR, 70, 145, 147
Fyodorov, Alexei, 172, 173
Ivanov, Sergei, 44, 61, 74, 80, 85, 86, 91, 92, 144, 150, 151, 227; and nuclear policy, 189–90, 196
Gareyev, Makhmut, 85
Ivanov, Viktor, 175
Georgia, 65, 104, 142, 143, 144
Karzai, Hamid, 151
Germany, 66, 67
Kasyanov, Mikhail, 166
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 4, 188, 201, 221, 222, 225; coup attempt, 45–46, 57
Kazakhstan, 7, 48, 142, 206
Filippov, Vladimir, 75
Gosplan, 165 Grachev, Pavel, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 86, 87
KFOR, 70, 145, 146 Khrushchev, Nikita, 165 Klebanov, Ilya, 167, 171 Klimov, Igor, 174, 176
Grozny, 51, 128
KnAAPO, 169, 172
Helms, Jesse, 204
Kodori Gorge, 144
Helsinki framework agreement (1997), 203, 204
Kokoshin, Andrei, 58, 54
Hungary, 147 Hussein, Saddam, 153 IAPO, 169, 172 Illarionov, Andrei, 181
Kolesnikov, Mikhail, 49 n18 Kondratyev, Georgiy, 55 n32 Kormiltsev, Nikolai, 60 Korzhakov, Aleksandr, 49, 52 Kosovo, 144–45
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Kousyk, Boris, 172–72
North Caucasus Military District, 130
Kravchenko, Viktor, 92
Northern Alliance, 149, 150
Kulikov, Anatoly, 130–31
Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI), 208, 212 n41
Kuroyedov, Vladimir, 90 Kursk, 44, 71–72, 90, 194 Kvashnin, Anatoly, 54, 61, 78, 81, 147; quarrel with Sergeev, 57, 91, 189 Kyrgyzstan, 140, 152
Nunn-Lugar program. See Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program Pankisi Gorge, 65, 143 Pankov, Nikolai, 77, 78, 80
Luzhkov, Yuri, 93
peacekeeping/peace enforcement, 122, 126–27, 132, 138; joint operations, 145, 147, 148; and military policy, 136, 136–37; as political instrument, 132–33, 135, 139; See also Pristina
Mamedov, Georgiy, 187
People’s Republic of China, 110
Military Industrial Commission (Soviet), 165
Permskiye motory, 169–70
Moldova-Transdnestria, 132, 135
Popov, Vyacheslav, 90
Moscow treaty. See Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty
Potanin, Vladimir, `72
Latvia, 50 Lebed, Aleksandr, 52, 87, 88 Lukashenko, Aleksandr, 141
Motsak, Mikhail, 90 Nagorno-Karabakh, 50, 141, 142
Pogosyan, Mikhail, 172
premodern warfare, 126, 132 presidential elections, 51
NAPO, 169, 172
presidential nuclear initiatives (PNIs), 201, 202
National Security Concept (1992), 15
Pristina, 146, 147
National Security Concept (1997), 15, 56
Putilin, Vladislav, 85
National Security Concept (2000), 15, 196–97 NATO, 5, 21, 70, 91, 92; joint military operations with, 70, 71, 72; as perceived threat, 22, 32–33, 52, 53, 54, 67, 90, 106, 227 Naval Doctrine (2001), 56 Nemtsov, Boris, 79, 85 Nonproliferation Treaty (1970), 212, 213
Putin, Vladimir, 27, 28, 29, 41, 45, 46, 56; and Chechnya, 61–62, 88; and defense industry reform, 166–67, 171; “managed democracy” of, 87; and military reform, 95; policies of, 44, 57, 58, 142, 189, 213; relations with military, 61, 79, 81, 82, 84, 89, 90; relations with West, 58, 59, 144, 232; and terrorism, 59, and threat assessments, 60 Rakhmonov, Emomali, 139
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RATEP, 175 Reagan, Ronald, 3, 205, 206 regionalism, trend toward, 55, 62 Rodionov, Igor, 52, 53 Rokhlin, Lev, 82–83, 88 Rokhlin, Lev, 87 Romania, 147 Ross, Dennis, 187 n4 Russian defense industrial complex, arms exports, 178, 180, 228; corruption in, 162, 174; criminal gangs and, 175–76; holdings program, 167, 170, 171, 177; illusory nature of, 173–74; inadequacy of, 99–191; intellectual property, 167, 168–70, 180; misapplication of military funds, 101–102; raw materials sector, 180; restructuring of, 165, 166–68 (See also Sukhoi); R&D sector, 160–61, 166; size of, 160, 161; spending for, 10–11, 21, 22, 53, 66, 112–13, 164; stockpiles and strategic reserves, 178–79, 226; state of, 161; strategic concepts and, 13–14 Russian military reform, efforts toward, 71, 114–15, 116; future of, 195; need for, 8–10, 15, 16–17, 18 n30, 19–26, 95; obstacles to, 19, 20, 20–35, 45, 56, 67, 81–82, 92, 97–99, 115, 221, 225; as political issue, 84–86; reserve force, 110–11; revolution in military affairs (RMA), 153; steps to, 68–72, 108, 110, 116–19, 232 Russian military, composition of, 102–103, 108–109; corruption in, 80–81; criminals in, 75–76; doctrine, 123–24, 196; history and traditions, 7–8, 16, 25, 31, 45 n5, 93, 106–107, 185–86, 219, 220;
mentality, 56, 57, 59, 65–66, 73, 89, 92, 106, 109, 132, 156, 223, 227–28; officers, 77, 78, 226; pay and housing, 78–79, 112, 230; post-Soviet distribution, 5, 7, 47–48, 220; professionalization of, 111–12, 113, 114, 115, 181, 192, 195; promotions in, 80; restructuring, 62–63, 64; security strategy, 231; and terrorism, 59, 69, 95, 107, 227, 230; threat perceptions of, 47, 54, 56, 58, 64, 105, 107–108, 109, 110, 145–46, 195, 197, 223, 227–28. See also conscription, universal; United Russia Party Russian nuclear forces, conventional forces and, 194, 228; cooperative technology projects, 204, 205, 209; Cooperative Threat Reduction, 200, 206, 207 209; limited nuclear response, 197; military doctrine and, 196, 198–99, 231; nonstrategic weapons, 196; nuclear risk reduction, 211; policies, 34, 146, 191–92, 193, 196, 197, 211, 214; proliferation, 214, 215; role in military reform, 188; strategic arsenal, 7, 48, 109, 191 192–93, 228; strategic rocket forces, 186, 195 Russian-Armenian Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance (1997), 141 Rutskoi, Aleksandr, 87 Savenkov, Aleksandr, 76 September 11, 2001, 58, 105–106 Serbia, 54 Sergeev, Igor, 53, 54, 57, 58, 91, 129, 188 Shamanov, Vladimir, 87, 88, 90 Shaposhnikov, Evgeny, 141–42
T H E R U S S I A N M I L I TA RY
Shchitko, Sergei, 175
Troshev, Gennady, 60 n51, 89, 90
Shpak, Georgii, 87
Turkey, 141, 142
Slatina Airport. See Pristina
Ukraine, 7, 48, 206
South Ossetia, 132
Uneximbank, 172
southern borders, 104
Union of Right Forces (SPS), 84, 85–86
Soviet Union, arms exports, 178; collapse of, 4–5, 165, 219, 220; defense industry, 11–12, 157, 165; military-industrial complex, 12, 160–61; military manpower, 6; military strength, 3–4, 73; nuclear no-first-use policy, 198; nuclear weapons in, 4–5, 7, 187, 188; overproduction, 158, 159; Second Five-Year Plan, 157; and START I, II, 187, 190; structurally militarized economy, 159 START I treaty, 187, 200, 202; verification protocols of, 200, 201 START II, 187, 188, 191, 193, 195; cancellation of, 190, 193, 199 Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (2002), 202 strategic rocket forces (SRF). See under Russian nuclear forces Sukhoi, 171 Tajikistan, 132, 137; and peacekeeping operations, 138–40; Russian military presence in, 140, 151 Taliban. See Afghanistan TANTK, 172–73 Tashkent Collective Security Treaty (CST), 5, 6 Theater Missile Defense (TMD) Demarcation agreement (1997), 203, 204, 205 Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions (2002), 58,
241
United Russia Party, 87. See also Russian military United States, 143; as perceived threat, 32, 106, 146, 197, 223, 227; and terrorism, 59–60, 152 UNPROFOR, 70 Uraltransmash, 177 Uzbekistan, 70, 140 Varennikov, Valentin, 84 Veselov, Evgeniy, 78 Warhead Safety and Security Exchange Agreement (WSSX), 209–10 Warsaw Treaty Organization, 9 Wolfowitz, Paul, 59 Yabloko, 84, 86 Yakubov, Yuri, 129 n16 Yazov, Dmitri, 45 n6 Yegorov, Vladimir, 87 Yeltsin, Boris 19, 27–28, 45, 46, 51, 55, 79, 82, 232; and privatization of defense industries, 172; and Soviet military, 83, 84, 93, 165, 221, 222; policies of, 46–47, 48, 53, 127, 147, 201, 204 Zapad-99 military exercise, 196, 197 Zhirinovsky, Vladimir, 87 Zyazikov, Murt, 87 Zyuganov, Gennady, 87
