Russian Navy aircraft carrier Kuznetsov Image source: Dongfang. com
The global financial crisis is spreading. At the critical moment when the new round of nuclear disarmament negotiations between the United States and Russia is about to begin, Russia has thrown out a military reform plan that is said to be "unprecedented", aiming at building a world-class army through streamlining reforms. This reform plan involves many aspects, such as the reduction of middle and senior officers, the reform of the establishment system, and the renewal of weapons and equipment, and proposes to complete the disarmament reform goal within three to four years.
The Russian military’s military reform plan this time reflects the tough attitude of the new president Medvedev towards military reform, and its intensity is indeed unprecedented. However, the author believes that the Russian military reform is bound to be affected by the world financial crisis and other factors, and will face many difficulties. There are still many variables in whether its reform goals can be achieved as scheduled.
The new and old presidents relay disarmament to promote the reform of the Russian army, and the "Mapo combination" and "strong alliance" are conducive to the development of the Russian army
In 2000, when Putin took over the presidency from Yeltsin, he was faced with the great challenge of revitalizing the Russian economy and reducing the Russian army. After eight years in office, President Putin, known as the strongman of Russia, showed his strong ruling style with all his strength and boldly reformed the economy, so that the Russian economy gradually stepped out of the trough and its international status rose day by day.
At the same time, he also attached great importance to Russia’s national defense construction, especially the military reform, advocated reducing the redundant establishment of various powerful departments, and put forward the idea that the quality of army building and army building should be adapted to the country’s economic capacity, and the military strength of the Ministry of National Defense and other powerful departments should be developed in a balanced way. In fact, during his presidency, Putin put forward the goal of reducing Russian troops from 1.2 million to 1 million. However, due to various reasons, the goal of army reduction was finally not achieved.
After taking office as president, Medvedev continued the "Putin line", still defended Russia’s national interests as strongly as Putin, took building a stronger Russia as his own responsibility, and appeared in front of the world in a tougher posture, "inheriting" Putin’s thoughts on issues involving the fundamental interests of Russia, such as political diplomacy, economic development and national defense construction. For example, in terms of national security strategy, it is still necessary to rely on strong military strength to prevent and contain various threats to Russia, requiring the Russian army to always maintain a high degree of combat readiness and ensure strategic containment of any potential enemy, especially strategic nuclear containment to deal with possible invasion; In national defense construction, we will persist in building a "more efficient and modern" army and "build an army that conforms to the country’s economic strength and can reliably guarantee national security." In particular, it is very important for Russia’s political stability and inheritance to let former President Putin become the prime minister of the government and form a "strong alliance" political situation.
Although there have been many new speculations in the western media about the relationship between the "Mapp combination" in the past year, the two men are politically consistent, especially in their understanding of the goal of military reform. Although Putin became prime minister, he still paid attention to the army and supported its reform. Last year, when the Russian army clashed with the Georgian army, Putin personally flew to North Ossetia for inspection. The introduction of the plan to reduce the army to 1 million is not only the continuation of President Medvedev’s "disarmament line" to former President Putin, but also the consensus reached by President Mei and Prime Minister Pu on the future reform and development of the Russian army.
One is a strong president and the other is a strong prime minister. This politically highly consistent "strong alliance" and "Mapp combination" will be conducive to the realization of the Russian military reform goal. However, the reform of the Russian army will still face pressure from many sides, even opposition and blame.
The contradiction between rebuilding an economic power and building a military power is prominent, and it is difficult to have both fish and bear’s paw at the same time.
Since Putin took office as federal president, he has regarded the development of military forces as an important part of Russian national development. With the Russian economy gradually coming out of the trough, the Russian government has gradually increased its investment in national defense, showing a trend of substantial increase year by year. During Putin’s eight years as president, Russia’s military expenditure increased by about 27% every year. In order to carry out the new "realistic containment" military strategy and further demonstrate its military strength, since 2008, Russia has dispatched navies and air forces to all the oceans in the world, as far away as Venezuela, Cuba, Somalia and other regions and sea areas, and even envisaged the establishment of military bases in Yemen, Cuba, Venezuela and Syria, which seems to make people feel that Russia has become an economic and military power that can compete with the United States.
However, this is not the case. Russia is still far from the goal of "building an army that conforms to the country’s economic strength and can reliably guarantee national security." Judging from the current situation of the Russian army, although it has been disarmed several times, the army is still plagued by the problem of redundant staff. The Russian army has about 1.2 million regular troops, but the proportion of its officers is as high as 30% (the proportion of officers in the western developed countries is 7.5% ~ 15%). In addition, there are more than 2.1 million paramilitary forces in Russia, which add up to about 3.3 million people. The Russian Ministry of Defence has publicly admitted that over the years, as much as 70% of the Russian military’s military expenditure has been used for salaries. As a result, we can’t squeeze enough money to buy new weapons and equipment, strengthen the development of new weapons and upgrade the existing weapons.
It can be seen that although the Russian economy has gone out of the trough, there is still a gap between its strength and status as an economic power, and it is still inadequate to build a world-class army in a short period of time. Only when the country is rich can the army be strengthened. Without the development of the national economy, it is impossible to develop the army building. Only when the army building develops in harmony with the national economic construction is the most reasonable development. Russian military construction will also follow this development path, and it may take longer.
US-Russian nuclear disarmament affects Russian military reform plan.
After the new US President Barack Obama took office, in order to promise the concept of "pursuing a world without nuclear weapons" put forward during the election campaign, he advocated to start negotiations with Russia as soon as possible to reduce their respective nuclear weapons reserves by 80%, that is, to keep 1,000 nuclear warheads in the United States and Russia. On the one hand, the United States wants to deploy anti-missile systems in eastern Europe, and on the other hand, it wants Russia to reduce its nuclear weapons in large numbers, which has caused strong opposition in Russia:
Russian military experts first raised strong opposition to this, warning that Russia’s nuclear weapons will not be able to deal with the US anti-missile system after reduction, and warned that by 2015, the US nuclear forces will be able to destroy all Russian nuclear weapons at one time, and Russia should be prepared for this.
In fact, there are still substantive differences of position between Russia and the United States on some principled issues of signing the new treaty. The Russian side believes that "the number of nuclear warheads in the arsenal should be clearly defined and documented in legal form, which is transparent and clear to people." The United States wants to be limited to nuclear warheads deployed on delivery vehicles, so that the nuclear warheads in stock and strategic delivery vehicles will not be within the scope of the treaty. Russia believes that nuclear disarmament negotiations should not only include the reduction of strategic nuclear weapons, but also extend to all aspects of this issue, such as the deployment of missile defense systems by the United States in Eastern Europe.
Russia has always been dissatisfied with the deployment of the missile defense system by the United States in Eastern Europe, and NATO has been expanding eastward, even setting up missile early warning systems and anti-missile bases in Poland and other countries, which makes Russia very angry. Russia warned that if the United States insists on deploying a missile defense system in Europe, the planned base will become the target of Russian attack.
Under the severe situation of American strategic squeeze and NATO’s eastward expansion, whether Russia’s existing military strength can effectively deal with the surrounding security threats is the most worrying thing for Russia. Only by "retaining a considerable number of nuclear forces" as a deterrent force can Russia ensure the reasonable scale of conventional forces and compete with the United States and NATO, which will directly affect Russia’s reform and development of the military.
The military reform plan is ambitious, and it is difficult to push forward the reform.
At the end of 2005, the Russian military proposed a new reform plan to reduce the total number of Russian troops from 1.2 million to 1 million. According to the idea, the existing organizational system of services and arms will be abolished, and the corresponding command institutions will be dissolved, replaced by six headquarters, the military region will be abolished, and the functions of the Ministry of National Defense and the General Staff will be divided into two lines according to government decrees and military orders. But a few years later, the slogan of disarmament is still "thunder is loud, little rain". Obviously, the Russian military’s disarmament has encountered great resistance. From the analysis, there are three major difficulties:
One is political pressure. The Russian Communist Party recently openly opposed the military reform carried out by Russia, calling it destructive. Serdyukov, the Russian defense minister, was asked to resign. In a recent statement issued by the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party and the Duma Party Group of the party, it was pointed out: "This reform may be the most destructive since Peter the Great founded the Russian army in the 3rd century. If our army moves from the most difficult Great Patriotic War to a strong one, it may lose its ability to defend Russia in general because of serdyukov’s’ reform’ in peacetime. "
Some military experts also said that in the face of NATO’s eastward expansion and the pressing policy of the United States to deploy anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe, once Russia is disarmed to 1 million people, it will be difficult to cope with conventional military actions, and the terrorist forces are even more important.
In addition, it is still unknown whether the uncertain factors in India-Pakistan border, Israel-Pakistan conflict, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, the DPRK and the ROK can give Russia a "peaceful environment" to make its army calm down and carry out reforms.
Second, it comes from economic difficulties. Affected by the world financial crisis, it is also unknown whether the Russian government can guarantee the funds needed to realize the reform goal of "making the army more efficient and modern and making the life of Russian soldiers more comfortable" in the next three to four years.
The third is the resistance from senior officers. The war made the Russian army realize the inevitability and urgency of military reform, but the military layoffs also made the officers realize the cruelty and helplessness of giving up their interests. The number of Russian military disarmament this time is not large, but the layoffs are mainly officers. By 2012, the number of Russian military officers will be reduced from 355,000 to 150,000. In particular, the reduction focuses on middle and senior officers, of whom the number of generals has been reduced from the current 1,107 to 877. Some of these officers may retire directly, and some may face the situation of no fixed place, unemployment and long-term inability to find a job. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand the strong resistance from military officers, especially senior officers, to military reform. However, the reform will be inevitable, and where the disarmament plan goes will ultimately depend on whether President Medvedev’s disarmament determination is firm enough.
The financial crisis has spread all over the world, and the reform and development of the Russian army will certainly face greater challenges.
According to reports, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that from 2009 to the end of 2011, Russia will spend 4 trillion rubles (about 140 billion US dollars) on the upgrading plan of military weapons and equipment. In 2009, the Russian government will provide 1 trillion rubles to the Ministry of National Defense, which is mainly used to purchase new weapons technology and equipment.
According to previous reports, Russian military procurement in 2009 increased by 30% year-on-year, which will set a new record of 1.3 trillion rubles, while in 2010 and 2011, it will increase by 30 billion rubles and 70 billion rubles respectively. It seems that Russia’s plan to develop its army in recent years has been finalized and will soon enter the implementation stage.
However, the financial crisis is spreading around the world, which will directly turn into an economic crisis. Russia’s economic growth has begun to slow down. Since last year, Russia’s oil revenue has been greatly reduced, and the government’s fiscal revenue has decreased. The Russian ruble has depreciated by 35% against the US dollar. Last year, Russia’s stock market fell by 70%. There are indications that Russia’s economic situation this year is not optimistic.
The financial crisis has greatly affected Russia’s fiscal revenue, which has restricted the realization of Russia’s military budget from the macro-economic level and will definitely affect the realization of Russia’s military development plan. In addition, due to the impact of the international financial crisis, the military departments and military industries of all countries in the world have been severely impacted, lacking funds, laying off employees and turbulent raw material markets. Therefore, Russia’s military production will be seriously affected, which will further affect the realization of the planned development goals of the Russian army. The crisis is still spreading, and it seems that it has not bottomed out. The reform and development of the Russian army will certainly face greater challenges brought about by the financial crisis.
In short, the direction of Russian military reform and development is in line with the requirements of the times, and the practice of saving financial resources and improving capabilities through "downsizing" of the military is also in line with Russia’s actual situation. However, due to the global financial crisis, international politics, domestic economic development and social environment, its reform and development will not be smooth sailing.
Editor: Li Yongchao
