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Russia's August
curse
By Stephen Blank
For
Russia in the past decade, August has been the cruelest
month. And this year proved to be no exception.
This time a second nuclear-powered submarine
went down with its crew of nine in the Barents Sea. The
K-159-class submarine tipped over and sank in the Arctic
waters as its floats broke loose while it was being
towed to a shipyard for decommissioning. Unlike the
first time such a disaster occurred, when the Kursk
nuclear-powered submarine sank in August 2000, this time
the authorities reacted promptly. President Vladimir
Putin called for a through investigation and Defense
Minister Sergei Ivanov denounced the Russian military's
lack of competence and reliance "on mere chance" to
overcome problems. And, of course, the search for
scapegoats has begun, as the captain of the ship towing
the submarine has evidently been arrested.
However, the problems far transcend the actions
of one unfortunate officer. Ivanov blames an
institutional culture, but he and Putin cannot get out
of it so easily. While the institutional culture of the
armed forces is undoubtedly at fault here, in fact both
the military leadership and its political leaders are to
blame for this and the many other cases of equipment
breakdown. In the past few years there have been
numerous helicopter and plane crashes of military
personnel, very likely due to aging equipment and
incompetence. And since the military insists on
maintaining a force larger than it needs in order to
perpetuate the old Russian custom of having the means to
mobilize the population under central control while the
government cannot afford to procure new weapons,
equipment is used until it collapses. This has happened
repeatedly, particularly in regard to the aging
helicopter fleet.
When one recalls that by all
accounts the caliber of men being drafted is far below
the Soviet standard (or anyone else's, for that matter),
and that the officer corps that has survived the Soviet
regime until the present is composed of a great many
self-seeking and corrupt officers, it is hardly
surprising that soldiers do not train, desert in droves,
are subjected, as the Russian press overtly states, to
increased brutality in the form of hazing, and are
liable to commit violence against one another and
innocent civilians. The reports from Chechnya provide
graphic evidence of the utter demoralization of the
armed forces there and of their officers, many of whom
have made and continue to make a tidy profit out of the
war. Likewise it is hardly surprising that technical
competence within the armed forces also seems to have
declined dramatically.
Moreover, the military
leadership has steadfastly refused to reform itself and
successfully stonewalled the government on a host of
issues. In an earlier article I referred to this
stonewalling regarding chemical and biological weapons
(see War chemicals, from Russia with
love, August 29). But this stonewalling is also
quite visible with regard to doctrine and strategy. It
is not for nothing that many of the accidents, crashes,
etc that have plagued the Russian military occur during
exercises.
Exercises reveal the qualities and
defects of the armed forces, and Russia is no exception
to that rule. Most of these exercises are costly, vast
undertakings designed first of all to impress the
political leadership and second to reaffirm the Russian
military's abiding belief that the United States is
enemy No 1. This is in spite of the explicit guidance
form Putin that the new national-security concept -
scheduled for this year - should emphasize the threat
from terrorism. Thus this year the Russian navy
conducted exercises with the Indian navy in the Indian
Ocean, the purpose of which was to attack US carrier
battle groups. The exercises in the Far East that took
place last month, and which involved the largest
agglomeration of Russian forces in years, were
ostensibly directed against terrorism. But more and more
these exercises look like a cover for the rehearsal of
operations intended to defend against a US or US-allied
amphibious landing in the Russian Far East.
The
refusal to transform the military into a force designed
to deal with current rather than ancient threats
reflects both a breakdown of institutional leadership
and a dogged refusal by the military leadership to
accept reality. Its comments on the Iraq war and the
US-led war in Afghanistan in 2001 give rise to serious
speculation that many of its leaders and leading
military commentators simply do not understand modern
warfare, or at least cannot conceive of the consequences
of the various revolutions in military and strategic
affairs of the past decade. And if that be the case, it
is clear they cannot lead troops into battle
effectively.
But it is not only the generals'
fault. Putin and, before him, Boris Yeltsin have refused
to surrender personal control of Russia's multiple
militaries to democratic institutions and processes and
have thus encouraged the continuing illegalities that
pervade the army, including internal violence and
hazing. But it is tolerated because as in any despotism,
there is insufficient accountability. This despotism
stands in the way of an effective reform that would give
the military popular support, firm democratic leadership
and the means to raise troops who possess both technical
competence and high morale. Whatever accountability
there is stems instead from police penetration of the
officer corps, one of Putin's first measures, and from
publicity when disasters occur.
The fact is that
nowhere does the lack of democracy entail greater
dangers for Russia than in regard to the military and
police forces who are similarly unconstrained by
legality and democratic controls. This is because the
lack of democratic control represents a standing
temptation to adventurism, as in Chechnya, and to
corruption, brutality and repression at home. The
absence of such controls is an essential precondition
for both domestic coups d'etat, of which there have been
several since 1991, and to wars that cannot be won
despite the promises of the generals. They also lead to
wars undertaken for cynical domestic purposes, not
strategic ones, wherein increased repression is
necessary to cover up the faulty decisions that led to
the crisis in the first place.
Therefore this
latest August crisis should again direct our attention
and that of the Russian government to the difficult
problem of defense reform, for without it Russia cannot
have security, prosperity, or democracy. Putin and
Ivanov may claim that there is no need for it any longer
because of their "successful" policies, but if they
maintain this posture, then it is clear that there will
be more such disasters, and probably not only in August
2004.
Stephen Blank is an analyst of
international security affairs residing in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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