Siloviks & Scoundrels

I don’t think anyone would call Dmitry Medvedev a warlord.

He was the commander-in-chief who invaded Georgia in 2008 and he’s done his fair share of saber-rattling, sending missiles into Kaliningrad and ordering reinforcement of the Kuril Islands. But it never seems to have conviction. Like the toughguy leather jacket he sometimes wears in the style of a Gilbert and Sullivan major-general’s uniform, these feel like a temporary public relations prop, gratefully abandoned once out of camera range.

The contrast with his predecessor and likely successor could not be more striking. Putin can hardly walk past a tank or aircraft without leaping in for a photo opportunity, and he retains a substantial level of support amongst the uniformed elite.

It is thus quite an irony that after years of failed projects and empty declarations, it is this relatively meek president who has managed to introduce the most substantial reforms of the armed forces yet. Although it is too soon to declare the process a success, simply to start it represents a genuine triumph.

The program, launched in late 2008, has seen the military cut to 1 million troops and paper divisions (only 17 percent were fully manned and operationally ready) converted into smaller but more flexible brigades. In 2012, not only are new ships, aircraft and weapons to come into service, but a range of measures are promised to tackle the brutality of army life, along with pay rises of up to 30 percent.

© RIA Novosti. / Sergey Guneev

The fact that Medvedev was able to begin reforms is in itself a triumph

How did Medvedev achieve this? He realized he needed a new defense minister, an outsider, and chose hardnosed former tax police chief Anatoly Serdyukov. He let Serdyukov pack the ministry with his own, civilian appointees (only two deputy ministers are still generals), but knew that he would need a uniformed enforcer to keep the brass in line, a job that went to Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Makarov.

There needed to be some symbol of the extent to which the status quo was no longer an option. Medvedev found this in the 2008 Georgian war. The issue is not that Russia won, but that they did not win more quickly, more cheaply and more decisively. This gave Serdyukov and Makarov justification to press ahead.

There is a great deal still to be done. In his December TV questionand- answer session, Putin was challenged about the failure to provide decent apartments for officers. The massive price tag on thorough military rearmament – 19.4 trillion rubles ($688 billion) through 2020 – will be a burden on the state’s finances for the next decade. Besides, where is the next generation of soldiers to come from?

With a 12-month national service cycle, the army needs 600,000 draftees a year but only around 400,000 are actually available. The Institute of Contemporary Development, a think tank whose board of trustees is headed by Medvedev, even advocated scrapping the draft altogether and having a professional army of 500,000 soldiers. Yet we are a long way from such dramatic steps.

Medvedev may have initiated these reforms, but he could not have done so without Putin’s support and so they are likely to continue. After all, Putin wants a modern, usable military, one able to be deployed outside Russia’s borders if need be. Serdyukov describes his goal as creating a modern, efficient military “ready to participate in three regional and local conflicts, at a minimum.” That would be quite an achievement, and if Putin inherits this war-fighting capacity, it will be Medvedev he’ll have to thank. 

Mark Galeotti is Clinical Professor of Global Affairs at New York University’s SCPS Center for Global Affairs. His blog, “In Moscow’s Shadows,” can be read at: http://inmoscowsshadows. wordpress.com. The views expressed here are the author’s own.