Nezavisimaya Gazeta

May 23, 1997

DOESN'T RUSSIA NEED AN ARMY?

Military budget cuts can destroy Russia's defence potential

By Lev ROKHLIN, Chairman of the Duma Defence Committee

The Russian armed forces are in a critical situation. The national mobilisation reserve system and its basis, has been destroyed, and mobilisation training sessions have not been held since 1990.

Such armed services as the air force and the air defence cannot fulfil their strategic tasks in the sphere of national defence. The navy is falling apart with frightening speed. Owing to the shortage of funds warships which could have served for another 10 years at least are rusting. The number of nuclear submarines ready for scrapping has topped a hundred.

The strategic nuclear deterrence forces are in a fix. The warranty service and storage life of a vast number of nuclear warheads and their delivery vehicles will expire in 2003-2005. At the same time, nothing is being done to introduce novel nuclear deterrence weapons. The implementation of the Topol-M programme is lagging three years behind the schedule.

Maybe Russia does not need an army?

It goes without saying that mutually beneficial and neighbourly relations with neighbouring and more distant countries should underlie national defence and security. But history shows that partners respect the interests of only those countries which have a deterrence factor - a sufficient military potential. One example is the relations between the Soviet Union (with its giant military machine, the Warsaw Treaty Organisation) and Western countries. Not a single important question was settled without consultations with the Soviet Union.

But when Russia lost its military potential, the West started looking down on it and did not even deem it necessary to consult it before making the decision on NATO's eastward enlargement.

The existence of a powerful military factor is the essential condition. Regrettably, the attitude of the current Russian executive leaders to the maintenance of the defence ability and safety at the required level proves that they have no notion of the significance of this supreme national problem.

We do not have an effective agency to guide the power ministries and departments, which would concentrate forces, without additional allocations, in the main directions and ensure the fulfilment of these departments' tasks.

The shortage of funds has resulted in an unprecedented crisis in the army and the navy, while the budgetary expense reductions will kill it off. The 1997 allocations to the armed forces after the budgetary expense reductions will be 2.5 times smaller than in 1996, a most difficult year for the army, when only 130 trillion roubles were spent on defence.

The 83 trillion roubles of military allocations in 1996 lasted only until July, after which wages to the personnel were sometimes delayed for up to 3-4 months. In fact, defence allocations were spent on salaries and meagre food rations.

To keep the army above water until the end of the year, the Russian Government gave it an additional 20-odd trillion roubles. The army's debts in communal fees, foods, military hardware and other property and transportation topped 25 trillion. If we add this up, we will see that the armed forces cost Russia more than 130 trillion roubles last year.

So, the fulfilment of such plans spells complete destruction of the national defence potential. A major state institution will cease to exist.

It is planned to approve a tax code, which will deprive our beggar servicemen of those privileges which help them to make two ends meet.

We cannot understand the position of the Supreme Commander to this problem. Does Russia have an integrated concept of the development of all power structures?

The military reform overlooked the problems of social protection of servicemen and retired servicemen, and the preservation of the combat-ready core of the army made up of fully manned and highly trained mobile units, whose combat potential would serve as the basis for a future army. We cannot understand the leadership's policy with regard to the strategic nuclear deterrence forces. And the preservation of military science and defence industries is another challenging task.

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Johnson's Russia List

23 May 1997

djohnson@cdi.org