Last year, Russia's armed forces were undergoing a mild revitalization after years of Kremlin neglect. The flood of petrodollars gave Moscow the opportunity to undertake some modernization of forces that had remained static or declined since the end of the Cold War. The number of personnel in uniform mildly increased to about 1.1 million, from a post-Cold War low of 900,000. Then came the war with Georgia, and the global financial crisis.
Although Russia won the war, the conduct revealed some serious deficiencies in Russian military capability. Russia continued to operate on what amounts to an industrial model of war, rather than the information-centric model adopted by Israel and the United States. Of course, quantity has a quality all its own, and Russian forces were probably still more capable than their Georgian counterparts on a unit-by-unit basis, but the comparison of the execution of the Georgia campaign (which is different than comparing the outcome), demonstrated that the Russian military could benefit from reform, restructure, and reduction. Shortly after the South Ossetia War, the price of oil collapsed and the Russian economy went into a tailspin. This gave even more of an impetus to reduce the size of the Russian armed forces.
An article in last Friday's New York Times detailed what this has meant for former members of Russia's armed forces. Russia plans to cut its officer corps from about 360,000 to 150,000, and senior officers, some of whom served in Afghanistan, are being hit hard. From both a military and a budget standpoint this makes sense, but the failure of the Russian state to make good on its promises to veterans has created considerable hardship. Retired senior officers are being refused pensions, and refused traditional rights to occupation of apartments. This has created disquiet, and some of these former officers have begun to protest. As the number of demobilized officers increases, the protests are likely to get louder.
This doesn't necessarily mean that the Kremlin will listen, although Prime Minister Putin does like to display his flair for dramatic populism. One reason that the Kremlin probably isn't too worried is that this demographic (married men in their 40s and 50s) is one of the least likely to engage in any serious violence or terrorism. I suspect, however, that private military companies (PMCs) will see the Russian military downsizing as a boon for recruitment. Experienced, capable officers are coming onto the job market, and PMCs are some of the only entities that can take full advantage of their skills. A substantial expansion of PMCs could have unpredictable effects on how states manage relations between themselves and their citizens and could affect U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in unpredictable ways.
--Robert Farley
