Sergei ROGOV,

director of the Institute of USA and Canada, consultant to the President's national security adviser

Krasnaya Zvezda, October 23, 1996

Speaking at the recent conference of the Russian military leaders, Defence Minister Igor Rodionov scathingly criticised the current practice of looking at the situation through rose-tinted glasses. He said that "the Armed Forces of Russia have approached a limit beyond which lies continued reduction of their combat capability and readiness, fraught with unpredictable and catastrophic consequences."

There are two ways out of this situation. The first is to reduce the army, and the second is to increase the GDP.

It is clear that Russia's geo-political situation precludes the reduction of its armed forces down to 300,000-400,000 servicemen. On the other hand, our economic difficulties prevent us from maintaining a comprehensive military party with the USA, whose military budget exceeds 270 billion dollars, which is nearly a half of Russia's GDP. A comparison to NATO is even more unfavourable, as the bloc spends over 450 billion dollars on defence. A new round of the arms race would be destructive for the Russian Federation.

The adversaries of the military reform claim that it will cost too much, while Russia has no money to spare. But the thing is that we must carry out the reform exactly because we have no money to maintain a current expensive but ineffective army. No reforms are necessary when the means and resources are balanced. We should learn to live on our budget.

The dramatic changes in the national economy and political system and the renunciation of the ideological dogmas call for a prompt launching of the military reform. It should be designed to gear Russia's military capabilities to the interests of security, on the one hand, and to the economic possibilities, on the other hand.

We will have to restructure and slash down the army and the navy. The strength and the composition of the armed forces should be adjusted to the economic base and the possibilities of the federal budget. Our defence expenses cannot exceed 5% of the GDP. On the other hand, given this ceiling, allocations should be made regularly in order to restore and maintain the requisite combat readiness of the national armed forces.

The military reform must put an end to the creation of duplicate armies, which are nearly as large and certainly as expensive as the national armed forces. We should also invest into the conversion of the defence industries and change the proportions of the Defence Ministry budget to ascend from mere survival to the qualitative improvement of the armed forces.

Presidential Decree No. 722 sets the task of creating a professional army by the year 2000, and this should be reflected in the budget and the structure of the armed forces.

However, to maintain a professional army of 1.7 million servicemen and ensure the same proportions of the military budget as in the USA, Britain and many other countries, which have professional armies, Russia will have to spend on defence at least 500-700 trillion roubles in current prices, which is more than the entire federal budget and is equal to 30-35% of the current GDP. In other words, we cannot have a professional army in the current economic situation.

If we effect the planned changes, Russia will have the second largest, after the USA, professional army. Russia has enough weapons today to supply the reformed armed forces with more or less modern hardware of the third and fourth generation.

Yet we must admit that it is impossible to simultaneously try to create a professional army, resolve social problems, improve the combat readiness and provide the army with the latest weapons.

President Yeltsin stressed in May this year that "the military reform and military development are a federal task." The main aims, directions and stages of the military policy should be determined by the top leaders of the country, rather than the Defence Ministry, which can carry out a military reform only inasmuch as it concerns its sphere of operation. Besides, the ministry cannot handle other key issues, above all those related to the restructuring of the military-economic and military- technical basis.

In the past five year we failed to determine the external challenges which can endanger our security in the short, medium and long term, the required strength of the army and the navy, their deployment sites, the arms and services to be developed as a priority, the optimal size and proportions of the military budget, or the amount of state orders for the defence industries. Regrettably, neither the political elite, nor society as a whole understand that a military reform is as important, as the economic and political ones. Moreover, Russia cannot overcome the protracted crisis without ensuring radical changes in the military sphere.

The failure to resolve these key problems of national security will eventually result in the complete disintegration of the Russian army and navy already in the next decade, at a time when external threat an grow considerably.

In this situation we must immediately address the long overripe problems of the military reform and the reform of the armed forces. The army and the navy can be saved only if we launch a large-scale military reform without delay. Otherwise Russia will not have fully manned and well-trained armed forces equipped with the latest military hardware.

I believe that the reform of the armed forces should proceed in several stages, with the priority tasks clearly determined for each of them.

At the first stage (to last until the year 2000) we should tackle the tasks related to the reduction of the army and the navy. In this situation we can hardly expect to purchases large-scale batches of new-generation weapons. We simply have no money for this. However, we can buy moderate amounts of new intercontinental ballistic missiles and aircraft technology, and communications and combat control systems.

On the other hand, we must not allow the final degradation of the national military-technical capabilities. This means that the financing of research and development, especially research into the creation of new-generation weapons, should become a priority at this stage. At the same time, we should handle the problems of conversion, with the spotlight on the creation of dual-purpose technologies.

The reduction of the armed forces calls for the elaboration of a federal programme for the settlement and professional retraining of retired servicemen. Since we have a very modest military budget, these expenses should be financed on the basis of a federal programme, possibly within the framework of a federal department set up for the purpose. But we must not allow this problem to be tackled by semi-criminal "public" organisations.

At the second stage (in 2001-2005), after the restructuring of the armed forces is complete, we could go over to tackling the problems of quality. This concerns above all expenses on combat training. We should also complete the creation of a professional army, which should be professional both as regards remuneration and combat training.

We will probably have a possibility to start buying more weapons and hardware. Anyway, we should initiate programmes designed for a long term, and, provided economic growth become stable, increase the share of investment items in the military budget to 30-35%.

At the third stage (after 2005), we should provide the army and the navy with the latest weaponry on a large scale. The share of purchases should reach 40% of the military budget. The military hardware created and produced during the Soviet rule should be replaced with the fifth- and sixth-generation weapons. Our ability to do so will be ensured by Russia's revived economic might and our return to the ranks of the world's most industrialised countries. This will give us a chance to take a befitting place in the multipolar system of international relations and to have reliable partners and allies.

We should make difficult and very painful decisions. But we can no longer postpone them, or else we will not just fail to reform our armed forces, but will also lose the status of a great military power, undermine the remains of our economic might, destabilise the state and make Russia vulnerable to external threats at the beginning of the next century.

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David Johnson

Research Director

Center for Defense Information

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