31 January 2004 19:16
Russian defence minister set to reform General Staff - paper
The position of Russian CGS Anatoliy Kvashnin is in the spotlight following Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov's
call for reform of the General Staff, the Russian Strana.Ru web site has said. Ivanov told the Academy of Military
Sciences on 24 January that the General Staff spent too much time on administration and not enough on meeting the
challenges of future warfare. There are a number of likely candidates tipped to take over the post of CGS, the report
said, including the commanders of military districts. Minister of Defence Sergey Ivanov called for serious reform of the
Russian Armed Forces General Staff at the session of the Academy of Military Sciences on Saturday [24 January]. He said
the need for this had been brought about by the serious changes that have taken place in both the domestic and foreign
political situation. In the opinion of experts, that reform will begin in the very near future: Anatoliy Kvashnin, the
current chief of the General Staff, will have to go.
Future warfare
The place chosen for this announcement was not accidental. The Academy of Military Sciences is a structure that
brings together the former military chiefs of the Soviet and Russian armies who have retired to the reserves, but who
still want to serve in the business of ensuring Russia's security. It is here that the most urgent issues relating
to building the armed forces and the state's security system as a whole are developed and scientifically
substantiated. They also study and analyse all of the wars and military conflicts of the present. Speaking to those
present, the defence minister first touched on the theoretical aspect of the problem - he spoke about how the command
and control structure should look and how the state's military organization should function. And, in his opinion,
"far from everything has been done to understand and, if you will, predict the character of future warfare.
Unacceptably little study is being devoted to the conflicts and wars of the present - the Soviet and American experience
in Afghanistan, the NATO operation in Yugoslavia, and the two wars in Iraq."
"For some reason we have gradually begun formulating our view on conflicts of the future through the prism of
the counterterrorist operation in Chechnya," said Ivanov. "Our thinking has become focused on the tactical
level. But we must not forget that the operational and strategic levels still exist, and the work on those levels
requires a colossal amount of knowledge and skills - that is the area in which a General Staff officer must be
strong."
Superfluous administration
But then, having begun from afar, Ivanov suddenly turned the conversation sharply towards revealing the concrete
reasons for this problem: "Today, the main problem boils down to the fact that the General Staff officer - the
brain of the army - is spending an extreme amount of time dealing with superfluous administrative activities and issues
relating to the on-going command and control of the troops to the detriment of his primary mission - analysing the
situation and developing plans for the employment of troops in combat." For the General Staff, the head of the
military department believes, this would include working out solutions, approving them and getting them to the troops,
while monitoring to see that they are carried out without fail, with the use of state-of-the-art communications
equipment, including satellites. And this system must be built in such a way that, even in the event of a nuclear strike
being conducted against Russia, command and control of troops would be preserved all the way down to the platoon level.
But the General Staff, Sergey Ivanov stated, is not exactly engaged in what is expected of it. "This objectively
decreases the effectiveness of its work," the [defence] minister believes. "It leads to the point that
wonderful ideas quite often do not yield the best results."
[Passage omitted: Kvashnin personally oversees missions on site, which can be risky. Former Defence Minister Igor
Sergeyev had planned to create Joint Main Command of the Strategic Deterrence Forces, which would have removed nuclear
weapons from General Staff control, but Kvashnin countered this by breaking up Strategic Missile Troops into three
separate armed forces and other restructuring. Ivanov started to tackle need for separation of command and control
functions in the 2003 report on armed forces development]
Optimists vs. sceptics
Optimists believe that, since the [defence] minister has publicly expressed his desire to remain the head of the
country's military department even after the presidential elections, all of his actions directed towards seeing
military reforms through, which now will be called the "military building phase", are logical and
understandable. In the opinion of experts, this would actually explain his "manhandling" of the General Staff
and Anatoliy Kvashnin personally. It is impossible to build or form up a new structure in a situation where for all
intents and purposes there exists an administrative diarchy. The sceptics believe that Ivanov will leave the Defence
Ministry for the prime minister's position or deputy prime minister for the militarized bloc, and therefore his
"anti-General Staff" attack is nothing more than an attempt to enhance his own reputation on the eve of a
cabinet change in connection with the presidential elections.
Potential candidates
Nevertheless, one thing is clear. No matter how the situation unfolds from here on, Ivanov has indicated one of the
most important moments of the impending military building - the reforming of the General Staff. However, this will
happen - and practically every high-level military chief acknowledges this - without Anatoliy Kvashnin. They are even
naming his successors. So far there are four people on the list of potential candidates. Three of them are active-duty
generals. They are the commanders of the North Caucasus Military District, Army Gen Vladimir Boldyrev; of the Far East
Military District, Army Gen Yuriy Yakubov; and of the Volga-Urals Military District, Col-Gen Aleksandr Baranov. Each of
them has experience in leading large military formations, conducting combat operations in Chechnya and Tajikistan. In
2003, each one of them was able to demonstrate to Sergey Ivanov his leadership qualities in the course of large-scale
exercises conducted across practically the entire territory of Russia.
There is even a "civilian" candidate - also an active-duty colonel-general, who in the past served as chief
of the Organization and Mobilization Directorate of the General Staff, the current deputy minister of economic
development, Vladislav Putilin. In circles close to the military they are also tipping Andrey Nikolayev for the post of
chief of the General Staff. Their argument for this is the fact that he gave up all of his positions in the Duma
"without a fight". This usually means one is preparing for the next phase in one's career growth.
[Passage omitted: If Sergey Ivanov moves up, prime candidate for defence minister post is Kvashnin himself, but the
problem of diarchy must be resolved first]
[Strana.Ru web site] |
RUSSIA IN FACTS
