#9
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
April 17, 2002
A YANKEE AT KING HUSSEIN'S COURT
Will the war in Iraq have any impact on Russia's military reforms?
Author: Maksim Glikin
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

AS FAR BACK AS THE 1980S, ALL REASONABLE PEOPLE WERE AWARE THAT AN ARMY BASED ON COMPULSORY CONSCRIPTION DID NOT MEET THE DEMANDS OF THE MODERN WORLD. NOW RUSSIAN GENERALS HAVE OBSERVED HOW A 21ST CENTURY MILITARY MACHINE PERFORMS AGAINST A MID-20TH CENTURY ARMY. WHAT CONCLUSIONS WILL THEY DRAW?

(About the author: Maksim Aleksandrovich Glikin is the Nezavisimaya Gazeta politics editor.)

Chief of the General Staff Anatoly Kvashnin claimed yesterday that his agency was studying lessons of the war on Iraq. However, yesterday's report that after the defense minister's meeting with the centrists they decided to discuss the military reform at a certain nationwide conference of sergeants is not too encouraging. However, even greater perplexity is roused by the comments Ivanov's and Kvashnin's inferiors with lots of stars gave on the Persian Gulf events.

American soldiers who took over Iraq during 20 days convinced the entire world of their professionalism - but not our military experts. Scornful smiles never left the faces of national experts in warlike profession. They only had different subject for mockery. On the first days of war it grated on our strategists that actions of the allies were uncoordinated in the most outrageous way, aptly called "disorder among American troops" (by General Deinekin). This gave them the full authority to make sure forecasts about a protracted military campaign of many months. At the next stage, there was a mass of talks of all sorts concerning enormous casualties in the allied armed forces and insolent lies of the command denying hundreds of corpses. When Baghdad was surprisingly easily and quickly taken over, a new version was distributed - about a certain behind-the-scenes plot between Hussein and Bush. The dictator and the president had agreed on everything - they just had not wished to make Moscow aware of that. But not trick can be played on us!

An even fresher interpretation appeared the other day. Guerilla warfare began after all, but took the form of looting. Saddam's guards launched the most secret plan - they changed into looters and began to destroy the country. In order for the Yankees to get stuck like the French in Moscow in 1812. Alas for the Pentagon - it did not learn European history!

After all, all interpretations will do, but not to admit that that Hussein's overthrow is due to American and British forces. This approach is sound to a certain extent too. No matter how hard Yankee soldiers would fight at each particular moment of this campaign, its outcome had been predetermined all the same. When armed representative of Planet USA land on Planet Iraq, it is not that important how the natives are going to greet them: either with hatred as aggressors or with deference as liberators. The future of the natives does not depend on them any longer. This is the opposition between two countries belonging to civilizations of different levels. In Chechnya the fight took place between two parts of one army. In Iraq it was an unequal war from the very start, with a military machine of the 21st Century on the one side and troops of the mid-20th Century on the other. It is not clear how those who warned Americans about hardships and miseries in this war could not see all that?

What will Russian military leaders infer from all this? Will they finally start establishing a modern, sound and efficient army? The answers are not comforting so far. We could hear only two clearly articulated statements over the past week. These were to increase funding of the defense industry, cancel conscription exemptions, and increase the number of conscripts. These are all the conclusions.

Everyone has been talking about the rearmament of the Russian military forces. Generals claim that if they had weapons of the new generation they would also turn the world upside down. But a question arises: Generals, to whom are you going to entrust those smart bombs?

The generals cannot believe that America has won the war not because of advanced electronic gadgets, but due to the adequate (to the present time and objectives) state of mind of their soldiers.

In the 1980s, all reasonable people were aware that an army based on compulsory conscription did not meet the demands of the modern world.

It goes without saying that there will be enough lobbying to postpone the reform for quite a long time, playing cat-and-mouse with the young people. But it does not take a sophisticated military expert to see who will finally win the game: energetic and smart young men, or elderly and flabby officials who are terrified to see them losing potential conscripts.

(Translated by Peter Pikhnovsky and Sergei Kolosov)

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