#5
The Russia Journal
October 26-November 1, 2001
No more confrontation
But Putin’s U.S. stance faces opposition
By OTTO LATSIS
Russia’s military districts are getting bigger. The Urals and Volga military districts, for example, which were both large in their own right, have merged to form a single district – the Volga-Urals military district.
Looking at this process the other way, you could also say the number of military districts is declining.
A military district is usually commanded by a three- or four-star general. Under him are several lower-ranking generals, not to mention plenty of colonels, majors and captains.
But if a military district gets the chop, so do the officers who run it. Many will be asked to leave the armed forces, and some will join the ranks of homeless retired officers – which already number 160,000 families – because the state is unable to fulfill its obligation of offering an apartment to every officer who retires from the armed forces. Civilian businesses in regional cities will also lose out as towns lose their status as military-district centers.
But as the state reduces the defense burden, it will have to deal with problems more serious than welfare and housing. President Vladimir Putin’s greatest difficulty will be of a political nature.
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ran up against the same hurdles in his own time and ended up withdrawing his support for the 500 days’ economic-reform program in 1990. The program proposed rapid demilitarization of the economy and was met by vigorous opposition from the military-industrial complex.
Gorbachev’s retreat didn’t save him from the August coup in 1991, in which generals and military-industrial-complex bosses played a leading role.
The coup plotters did not want to face the fact that the Soviet Union, which produced 5 percent of the world’s GDP, could not keep up defense parity with the Western bloc, which produced 50 percent.
In the end, the immense burden of this defense spending was what pushed the Soviet Union toward collapse. Post-Soviet Russia was forced to face this fact. Former President Boris Yeltsin took steps to reduce defense spending, but his attempts in this direction were inconsistent and insufficient.
Now it is clear that a political choice has been made. Russia’s decision to liquidate its old Soviet military bases in Cuba and Vietnam, its milder position regarding NATO expansion, an increasing willingness to seek compromise on the ABM Treaty and a close cooperation with the United States during the anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan are all evidence that the policy of confrontation with the United States is coming to an end in deeds and not just in words.
Russian politicians, first Gorbachev and then Yeltsin, have talked about ending confrontation for the last 15 years. The military never took this seriously and for a good reason. How could there be any serious talk about partnership with America when Russia still had an electronic intelligence-gathering base on Cuba, was trying to maintain nuclear parity with America and was building phenomenally expensive atomic submarines that served no purpose other than to create a strategic threat for the United States?
Putin does not make statements about abandoning this policy. He simply takes the practical steps that make it impossible to continue following it. But the speed and radical nature of these decisions also raise a number of questions.
Is Putin acting according to his own will in this case, or is he acting under the pressure of circumstances?
The patriotic and pro-army rhetoric so often heard from Putin ever since his first appearance on the political scene suggests that pragmatic considerations are the decisive factor, taking precedence over his personal inclinations.
Of course, it is a good thing that a politician is able to learn and adapt to circumstances, but is it a good thing for the country to change so fast, and will the authorities be able to keep in check all the dangers that these changes will create?
Putin is already coming under fire for being too quick to hand over to his Western partners all of Russia’s political trump cards. The Communist mouthpiece, Sovietskaya Rossiya, is particularly zealous in denouncing Putin, but this time it is not alone. For it is not yet clear just what still-poor Russia will get in exchange for letting America get the strategic upper hand.
An even greater doubt is whether Putin will prove able to keep in line his own generals, many of whom have been made extremely unhappy by the news of recent weeks.
