The Plight of the Russian Military: Shallow Identity and Self-defeating Culture

摘要

Every major military organization in the world starts the new century faced with a massive challenge of adjusting its structures and capabilities to the new risks of asymmetrical and unconventional warfare. In the U.S., the process of redesigning strategies and forces has been sharply accelerated by the pressing requirements of conducting a global antiterrorist campaign. The U.S. allies are foced to look seriously at the purpose and functions of alliance structures and at the scale of their own efforts. Russia offers a sharply contrasting example in this regard: it rushed into the new century not on 11 September 2001 but on 21 August 1991, when the defeat of the military putsch in Moscow signaled the demise of the USSR. The Russian Armed Forces, therefore, are already in the second decade of counter-terrorist operations. Nevertheless, in August 2001, as they contemplated further downsizing, they were preoccupied with fighting in Chechnya and raising the Kursk. They had perhaps their worst decade in 300 years, suffered from neglect and abuse, and saw more devastation than in any past war (except for the collapse of the Western front in late 1917). The need for comprehensive reform of the military organization inherited from the USSR was obvious; there were numerous blueprints and several false starts; the end result, however, was a total failure.