Military Reform Works in Wondrous Ways

Pavel POPOVSKIKH, Col. Ret.

Former intelligence chief of the Russian Air-Borne Troops

Chairman of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee Andrei Nikolayev has blamed the General Staff of the Armed Forces for the failure of military reform and the declining capacity of the Armed Forces to guarantee Russia's military security. He not only criticizes, but also suggests his own, or to be more exact, a Duma-drafted plan for military reform.

War concepts of General Staff

In an interview with Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye¹, Andrei Nikolayev named just a few fundamental concepts, objectives and landmarks of the reform that may be discussed or accepted. However, in many respects, he is absolutely right: "The General Staff has not fulfilled its main task - it has not defined the nature of a possible future war." Without such a concept, it is very difficult to make decisions on the structure of the Armed Forces and on the schedule and contents of the Military Development Plan.

Article 15 of the Russian Military Doctrine names the following priorities in advancing the military organization of the state:

• to set up a single system of administering the military organization,

• to develop and advance strategic deterrence forces,

• to form and maintain a mobilization readiness system,

• to staff, supply and train general-purpose units and permanent-readiness formations for the tasks of ensuring deterrence and conducting operations in local wars and armed conflicts.

It is impossible to disagree with these priorities. However, two years after the adoption of the Doctrine, we must admit that a single system of administering the military organization still does not exist. There is only the one person who supervises it - the Russian President. Nikolayev quite accurately pointed to the discrepancy between the number of federal districts (7) and the number of military districts (6). In addition to federal and military districts, there are also territorial bodies that govern and supply (the very same districts') Interior Troops, the Federal Border Service, etc. For a long time there was talk of developing a single system of logistical, technical and maintenance supplies of the power agencies. However, the agencies have been resisting, and will continue resisting these intentions. The reason for the endless scuffles and the absence of government decisions on this old problem is that the General Staff - the main developer and coordinator of the project of forming this single system - remains undecided about its form, structure and functions.

However, the greatest danger to the country today is that the general-purpose forces named as a priority in the doctrine have proved unable to effectively settle even one domestic conflict in Chechnya, to say nothing of the declared tasks of waging limited wars and armed conflicts in the territory of the Russian Federation, on its borders and beyond them. Clearly, the structure, training objectives and the operational concept of the general-purpose forces devised by the General Staff, as well as their current state, are not on par with the present situation of threats to Russia's military security. Admittedly, the Military Doctrine contains a generally objective evaluation of the threats and the military-political situation. As for its military part proper, we have to agree with Nikolayev that it "does not stand up to criticism." General phrases that don't provide answers to questions about what war, against what adversary, when, and involving which forces, Russia should be preparing for. The General Staff is blamed for the fact that this country is "significantly lagging behind advanced nations, primarily the USA in defense, including military theory. We continue teaching our army and the top command what will probably not come handy in the future war (it turned out that it has not been handy even in a present one - author): operations in continental and ocean theaters, general mobilization etc. However, the era of such wars is over." Table 1 is composed solely on the basis of the text of the Military Doctrine and reflects the ideas of the General Staff about the nature of wars and armed conflicts, the forms and methods of warfare and forces and military groupings involved. The military-scientific ideas of the doctrine seem to have been borrowed from trite cold age formulas used in introductions to lectures delivered at the Academy of the General Staff 20 years ago.

In his earlier publications², Nikolayev claimed that the army also proved unprepared for the war in Chechnya. He reprimanded the General Staff for the inability of the Russian Armed Forces to form a 60,000 strong grouping in the North Caucasus. Units and formations not meant for such warfare were sent to battle: paratroopers, marines, home guards, to say nothing of police forces: SOBR, OMON and other police task units intended and trained for absolutely different operations. One may disagree with Nikolayev over paratroopers, but he is absolutely right: our armed forces lack troops for operations in limited international and domestic conflicts. But probably the most alarming thing is that neither the Military Doctrine nor the Military Development Plan even imply the formation of such a grouping.

A comparison with the operational concepts of the USA, NATO and some European countries with the ideas and plans of the Russian General Staff is clearly to the benefit of the former. It is not a matter of quantitative or qualitative correlation, nor the possibility of a hypothetical confrontation with our former "adversaries." The problem is that today the threats to the military security of Russia, the USA and NATO belong to the same category, are similar, or even identical. But the troops that are to resist these threats and the operational plans and concepts turn out to be absolutely different.

Our General Staff firmly stands with one foot in the bygone era of large-scale wars. It is trying to enter the next decade with the other by conducting military reform. Armed conflicts and threats of a different type, which the army is unprepared to resist, and not even planning to prepare for, hinder this step today and may hinder even more tomorrow. This conclusion follows from the Military Doctrine and the Plan, measures aimed at the much talked-of "streamlining of the structure of the Russian Armed Forces," taken by the General Staff that expects a large-scale war against a non-existent (in its own words) adversary.

New warfare methods

Today, large-scale armed clashes involving regular armies are not and cannot be an acceptable way of settling conflicts. Modern weapons, including conventional, at the disposal of regular armies are highly effective and have great destructive power. At the same time, the expensive infrastructure systems and economic, power engineering, life-support, governance and communication networks built in developed countries are quite vulnerable and fragile. Their inevitable destruction in a war can cause an economic, environmental, and consequently a social, disaster in any country. Such losses are unacceptable even for the potential winner.

Nevertheless, there remain contradictions, and states, nations, corporations and criminal communities are willing to settle them to their own benefit without exposing themselves to danger. In conditions of globalization, any internal, border or local conflict rapidly and inevitably spreads to the regional, international or global level with numerous players appearing who pursue their own (clan, corporate, criminal, regional, national or state) interests. And any means and ways are applied for the purpose, especially if the architect remains in the shadow.

Both during the cold-war era and in later periods, there appeared new warfare forms and methods that had not been used before, or had been used very rarely. They can be divided into four groups:

• Indirect actions: provoking domestic armed conflicts in adversary countries to further one's own interest – supporting guerilla movements, fanning low intensity border conflicts, forming and supporting parallel government bodies. Terrorist operations and acts belong to this group.

• Peacekeeping actions: military actions aimed at compelling peace, peacekeeping efforts to separate conflicting sides, military efforts to guarantee (protect) humanitarian actions, operations in support of national formations and parallel government bodies, anti-terrorist operations.

• Demonstrative actions. Showing military power and the determination to use it, demonstrational attacks on targets without the risk of adequate retaliation, the development of military instruments (army groupings) for specific purposes, military exercises in crisis-ridden regions, blockades.

• Propaganda, propaganda-psychological, psy­chological and misinformation warfare and acts of sabotage.

Often these methods are interconnected and applied comprehensively. The military-political leadership in leading countries consider them from the perspective of threat to their national interests also use them to protect these interests.

During the past decade, the world went through almost 120 armed conflicts in which some 6 million people died and 300 million became refugees. However, only those conflicts that threatened the interests or caused the expansion of the sphere of influence attracted the attention and prompted the interference of leading powers that used the or aforementioned methods (indirect, peacekeeping actions etc.).

US and NATO military institutions analyze potential conflicts in different parts of the world and update their attitudes. Headquarters and troops exercises are conducted according to scenarios developed on that basis, some of them involving the armed  forces,  and  performed  on

the territories, of former Soviet republics. Peacekeeping has a special role as the safest and most effective means of protecting national interests, retaining and expanding spheres of influence and military presence in crisis-ridden regions. The growing number and scale of conflicts that was previously restrained by the dangerous confrontation of two military alliances, today offers broad possibilities for peacekeeping operations given corresponding political and diplomatic preparations and handling of the public opinion. The US Defense Intelligence Agency forecasts that the next 10-15 years will be no less, if not more, stormy than the previous decade. So there remain more than enough pretexts and possibilities for using armed forces in such "modern" ways.

Even though Russia has started gaining experience in peacekeeping, we should admit that the Russian military-political leadership still lacks a full understanding of the character and objective nature of this form of warfare. The Military Doctrine proves that, when it expresses vague intentions to assign "specially appointed military formations and units" for participation in peacemaking and peacekeeping operations – which  means  the  Russian   army

does not have specially formed or trained troops but if need be, the General Staff will appoint them.

Peacekeeping efforts are quite specific and require special training. The replacement of paratroopers who have ten years of peacekeeping experience with land forces makes one think that, in the future, the Russian military is unlikely to hear their counterparts from other countries say: "It's a good thing we are not fighting against you!" That unanimous admission of the French, Canadian, Belgian, American soldiers and officers in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo was itself worth much to Russia. The replacement would have been understandable if the General Staff had been clearly determined to keep the Air-Borne Force in Russia as a reserve grouping for performing sudden-attack tasks, but no such determination is discernible.

Russian politicians and military leaders realized the danger of the new threats much earlier than Americans did. Such was the reality of terrorism, religious and ethnic intolerance, separatism and organized crime in the former Soviet Union - the key zone of Russia's national interests. Unlike the unhurried Russian General Staff, the US Defense Department immediately responded to such threats in the program of advancing its Armed Forces. It is not so much a question of conducting practical anti-terrorist operations against Al Qaeda or Taliban as a question of developing new approaches to warfare, plans of advancing the armed forces and setting up permanent military groupings and contingents to resist these threats.

Hardly had US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the main threat to America comes from various terrorist, extremist and criminal organizations united by a common objective, and not from regular armies of certain countries, the Defense Department started working out a new operational concept to effec­tively resist this threat by armed force. The new concept was named Network Centric Warfare (NCW). It is based on the global information network of the Defense Department and com­prises the entity of all sources of information, control systems and bodies, and executive units with the key roles played by mobile components of the Armed Forces and task units.

The fourth spiritual and virtual dimension of the battlefield appears in the concept of network warfare. The perception, willpower and mentality of the adversary become the target in this dimension, along with material targets that are hit by different weapons on battlegrounds. In addition to its own forces and means, the Defense Department is planning to involve civil society structures, including the mass media, in operations in the new dimension. The psychological warfare units of the US Special Operations Forces (SOF) have been effectively used for a long time at the operational and tactical level in this segment. At the strategic level the Pentagon has a strategic information bureau whose functions were supposed to be expanded to the scale of strategic influence unit, but the project was shelved.

Nothing of the kind is discernible in the intentions of the Russian Defense Ministry behind the talk of military reform, which amounts mainly to squabbles over the principles of staffing the Armed Forces. And this despite the fact that Russia has almost 15 years' worth of experience in local conflicts.

Phenomenon of rebel wars

The defeat of the American military in Vietnam, the USSR in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia in Croatia and Kosovo, and Russia in Chechnya in 1994-1996 was by no means caused by the weakness of their armed forces or the correlation between the armed forces and means of the conflicting sides. The Israeli army, the strongest in the Middle East, is also unable to stop the Palestinian intifada today. The failures of regular armies in these and other armed conflicts stem from the very nature of these conflicts, which can be described as rebellion. A Russian military analyst in emigration, Colonel Yevgeny Messner, warned about that danger back in the 1960s: "Psychological factors have become predominant in this era of national armed forces and fighting popular movements. In a rebel war, the psychology of the rebellious masses shifts weaponry to the background… and becomes the decisive factor of victory or defeat." In such a war, the main objective is not to seize territory, but to win the hearts of the fighting people while preserving "the morale of one's own troops and spirit of the people." Victory is attained by undermining the morale of the enemy nation, sowing panic and mistrust in its troops. The new US operational concept of network warfare has these objectives.

"Spiritual values" were the reason for the abso­lute majority of the 40 armed conflicts that were going on around the world in December 2000.  Most conflicts over "spiritual values" have the nature and form of an armed rebellion.  The wider the scale of the rebellion and the higher the psychological intensity, the more the conflict affects corporate, criminal and other overt or covert government interests of regional or international players in the conflict zone. Globalization rapidly brings these conflicts to an international level, involving not only broad sections of the local population but also the in­ternational community. Rebel conflicts have common distinctive features as the absence of clear confrontation lines (frontlines), fighting orders, traditional firing targets; they have de­centralized command, a broad scale and long duration. These circumstances hinder the appli­cation of regular army units, and at the same time encourage civilians and mercenaries from different countries formally not involved in the conflict to get involved in illegal armed formations.

Nationals of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon, Albania, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and other countries are operating in the Middle East, the Balkans, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Taliban and Al Qaeda groups and in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia. Public organizations and often special services in some Muslim and other countries support these rebel forces to some extent. The operations of this "International" are coordinated on a worldwide scale, if not organizationally then at least ideologically. International and national protest ideologies, historical grudges, revenge, hatred and despair, as well as corporate, clan, criminal and state interests make up the motivations of this International.

It seems that the globalization in all spheres of public life, which results in the active spread of Western values and lifestyle, has come into con­flict with the traditional values and lifestyle of the Muslim world. These contradictions have as­sumed a worldwide scale and often take the form of an armed rebellion. September 11, 2001, was a manifestation of this rebellion. One should not be mistaken about its nature or scale. The importance of these terrorist attacks should not be underestimated. Despite its su­perpower ambitions and radicalism, the US military-political leadership gave an accurate evaluation of the September 11 developments as the beginning of a war against America. This rebel war affects other countries of the Western world, not just the United States, and has been going on in Russia and in the areas of its na­tional interests for a long time, threatening to create new seats of tension and spread through­out the continent.

A rapid but incomplete victory of the US-led anti-terrorist coalition over the Taliban in Af­ghanistan does not mean that hostilities are over. The opposite is more likely - the war is only beginning, and its depth and scale are not clear yet.

Afghanistan used to be a kind of a leprosarium in the Muslim world, where the socially sick outcasts - from criminals to staunch and impa­tient ideologues - had been ousted. Therefore, the bombings of Afghanistan left official Mus­lim elites indifferent or even won their support. However, the majority of adepts of the protest ideology have not been destroyed. They are scattered around the world, mainly the Muslim world, which has a favorable attitude for this protest. It is quite possible that without notic­ing it the Western world is being involved into a stubborn long-term war against the population of the Muslim world, other poor nations of the planet, against the protest movements of its own anti-globalists, nationalists, Maoists, Trot­skyites and others. This war will inevitable take the form of a rebellion - these sections of the population have no other way of expressing their protest or resisting well-armed and organ­ized military organizations and structures of de­veloped Western countries. Thus Messner's prophesy - "A rebel war is the name of World War III" - is coming true.

Russian experience of rebel wars

In Russia, a rebel war is raging in Chechnya for the ninth year; separate flash points of rebel war flare up and smolder in many other hot spots throughout the former Soviet Union, in­cluding Abkhazia, Transdnestria, Karabakh, Ta­jikistan, Uzbekistan and Georgia. It is this war that threatens Russia's military security, na­tional interests and integrity as a state.

However, the Russian General Staff has fully withdrawn its influence and presence from the fourth segment of warfare in Chechnya. One gets the impression that only presidential spokesman for Chechnya Sergei Yastrzhembsky is fighting in this segment, despite the fact that, since Soviet times, the Russian Armed Forces have had units and formations designed for psychological warfare. Moreover, after the disbandment of the special propaganda department (GlavPUR) of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1992, this service and its divisions were subordinated to the General Staff.

The lack of understanding of the importance of the "spiritual segment" of warfare probably stems from the fact that the Russian political leadership has never given the army the ultimate objective of settling the conflict. The military were ordered to route rebel groups, seize the territories, towns and villages in it, to secure the operations of the Interior Ministry, the Federal Security Service, the Emergencies Ministry etc. The army carried out these tasks; its units and formations preserved and even enhanced their combat capability and gained combat experience. But the main objective - victory - has not been achieved.

It seems that the Russian General Staff still does not have a clear answer to the question about what is going on in Chechnya - a war or a special operation?  The term "special operation" entered the Russian Military Doctrine from "The fundamentals of organizing and conducting operations," composed in the late 1980s. The term was defined as "a joint operation with the Interior Ministry." The notion was never developed further. The Military Doctrine obliges the General Staff to coordinate operations and organize the interaction of the Armed Forces with other troops to carry out defense tasks. However, it still has not passed any directives on distributing control over such operation and providing a structure for subordination and responsibility at all levels; on decision-making procedures and procedures for planning interagency task-force actions; on the definition of their tasks and the organization of interaction; on combat, support and technical supplies. It is the primary and direct duty of the General Staff to draft and publish such a directive – and it has not.

The numerous changes in command over the grouping in Chechnya – from the Interior Ministry to the Defense Ministry to the Federal Security services – contributed to the lack of understanding of the essence of a rebel war, the nature of the military campaign and, evidently, also to the reluctance of the General Staff to take the responsibility for the course and outcome of the operation. Such transfers have been unnecessary and unjustified because they erode responsibility for the final result, interrupt continuity and interfere with control and supply systems.

Today there is no longer any sense in changing the existing algorithm of resolving the problem in Chechnya, which seems to have started producing results even though we are still a long way from its final solution. However, nobody can guarantee that a metastasis of the rebel war will not reappear in Russia, or somewhere near its borders, later and on a greater scale than in Chechnya. The necessary evaluation of the experience of this campaign, should also be a function of the General Staff. International and national experience has proved that only the armed forces are capable of comprehensively tackling the tasks of localizing and suppressing an armed rebellion. "Other forces" can only perform specific operational functions in such conflicts in concert with the armed forces.

There are several universal requirements that should be observed in the process of preparing and conducting an anti-terrorist operation. These requirements are related to winning over "the soul" of the population.

• An operation should be launched only after forces and structures have been formed or are already present in rebel territory that are capable of restoring law and order in cooperation with the local population.

• The commands of the Interior Ministry, the Federal Security Service, the Emergencies Ministry and other forces involved in the operation should be stationed separately at headquarters of army groupings and units (in keeping with their rank and zone of responsibility) and be subordinate to their military chiefs, while at the same time retaining their own subordination, using their own means of communication and operating under a single plan.

• Local militarized formations and structures supportive of federal forces should be used whenever possible and as widely as possible.

• The role of psychological warfare should be enhanced. Propaganda and psychological operations should be mapped out and implemented under a separate plan coordinated with the general plan of the anti-terrorist effort.

• The level of intelligence support for all units and formations involved in the operation must be radically raised; new organizational and technical approaches must be applied.

Need for Rapid Reaction Force

In a rebel war, hostilities between regular armies are not likely, but not impossible, and may occur as a result of the aggravation and expansion of a rebel conflict. Therefore, it is the prime task and function of the Armed Forces today to localize and stop such conflicts. Since any conflict, especially a rebel conflict, spreads very fast, it is easier to localize and extinguish it at the very beginning. To this end, the Russian Armed Forces need not only a mobile rapid-reaction component, but also a mobile operational grouping that would be multifunctional, flexible, combat-capable, and always very well prepared for transfer, deployment and operations in any area away from its regular base or place of permanent deployment. Such a grouping is necessary not only for Russia's national security interests, but also for the benefit of the world community, of all members of the current anti-terrorist coalition opposed to the spread of rebel wars throughout the world or to the involvement of regular armies in these wars.

The United States formed the Rapid Deployment Force on the basis of the 18th airborne corps in the late 1980s. Most countries in Europe and Asia have such forces. Even poor Georgia is developing its rapid reaction force with American help.

However, it follows from the Russian Military Doctrine that, in local and international conflicts, the General Staff is planning to use some groupings of troops (forces) nonexistent in peaceful times "deployed in the conflict area…, reinforced through the transfer of troops (forces) from other directions." (See Table 1). Units and formations of permanent readiness are evidently seen to be such groupings (forces). However, the Russian Armed Forces can not have such groupings without conducting at least partial mobilization, since:

• These units and formations do not comprise operational formations (groupings) in peaceful times, either by structure or by organization.

• While these units and formations only called "units of permanent readiness" but, in peaceful times they are not prepared for combat or to action outside the areas of their permanent deployment.

• No fewer than two weeks are necessary to bring these units and formations from permanent to full combat readiness.

• Even if fully combat-ready, these units and formations are not adapted for rapid transfer to a conflict area.

Considering Russia's vast expanses and the fact that its national interests span its entire 22,000-kilometer borderline, a rapid deployment operational formation (grouping) is necessary within the Armed Forces. In addition to strategic-deterrence forces that determine Russia's superpower status internationally, Russia as a regional power should have another instrument of deterrence that would fit the nature and scale of threats. The Airborne Troops was always such an instrument in the USSR, and later in Russia. There is no other mobile component in the structure of the Russian Armed Forces and there won't be one in the next 10-15 years, despite all efforts at streamlining. 

However, the attempt made in 1993 to form an airborne attack division by combining the 106th airborne division with a certain low-mobility grouping of the land forces led to the rejection of the idea of a mobile force, and in 1994-1995 in Chechnya such combined groupings of the land forces and paratroopers demonstrated low effectiveness.

The General Staff ascribes the plans to cut the Airborne Troops to shortage of military transport aircraft – not enough to airlift even a single airborne division. However, not even the omnipotent US Air Force can lift and transfer an airborne division with one flight – nevertheless, the US keeps and effectively uses a rapid reaction force that is transferred in several flights. In addition, if need be, transport and passenger aircraft of other government agencies and even private airlines may be used. Troops can also be transferred in combined ways – by water, railway, ground transport or in their own vehicles, as well as by air. Whatever the form of transfer, the mobility of an airborne division (brigade, regiment) is a full level higher than of a land force division (brigade, regiment).

According to Zwbignew Brzezinski, inability to transfer troops across big distances and impose their political will, as well as the fact that they lag behind America technologically, keep Russia and China from having the means to exert constant political influence throughout the world… By destroying the Airborne Troops, the General Staff is stripping Russia of its only available means of political influence even in the closest regions of interest to it.

Reform of the Airborne Troops is undoubtedly necessary and inevitable – but not through reduction, destruction or subordination to some nonexistent groupings. The very ability of the Russian Armed Forces to form a mobile rapid reaction force will disappear together with Airborne Troops in the next 10-15 years. The Airborne Troops should be at the foundation of a reserve force for the Supreme-Commander-in-Chief. Only the office of the Airborne Troops commander needs to be reformed:  It needs to be able to independently exercise operational control over units and formations of the mobile grouping in a conflict zone as well as the supporting forces and facilities of the Air Force. Maybe not all commanders of the Airborne Troops will agree with such a proposal because the responsibility is too great, but such reorganization is necessary.

The experience of the anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan has also demonstrated that the centralized use of special operations forces, including commando, psychological warfare and propaganda units in interaction with the Air Force and mobile contingents of the rapid deployment force offers the possibility of rapidly, flexibly and successfully responding to threats of varying nature, scale and location. Russian present special forces today operate mainly on their own. In Chechnya, the special forces – represented by just two or three mixed units – operate quite successfully and professionally as do the paratroopers. The equipment, the principles of their operational and combat training, and use of the special forces of the Main Intelligence Department are quite similar to those of certain Airborne Troops units. Today it would be expedient to include them in a mobile operational grouping of the Airborne Troops. This would make the grouping more multifunctional and flexible, more commensurate to the existing threats.

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In conclusion, it should be said that today's Russian leadership is politically and diplomatically active in its search for Russia's role and place in the changing world; it makes choices regarding allies and adversaries and it shapes the national security system. A new international military security structure involving Russia is evolving. This architecture is unthinkable without a modern multifunctional mobile component of the Russian Armed Forces. But today, our Armed Forces do not have the operational capability to be present in critical regions and take part in peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations along with rapid reaction forces of NATO, the United States and other countries. Without it, we will only watch our present and future allies perform our tasks instead of us - and without us - in the territories of our national interests.

¹ Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye, No. 4, 2002.

² Andrei Nikolayev. "Voyennaya reforma buksuyet," Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye, No. 23, 2000.