9 - RW 277
TITLE: PRESS CONFERENCE ON MILITARY REFORM WITH SERGEI
KARAGANOV, ANDREI KOKOSHIN, NIKOLAI MIKHAILOV AND VITALY
SHLYKOV
[RIA NOVOSTI, 12:00, OCTOBER 6, 2003]
SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE (http://www.fednews.ru/)

Moderator: Good afternoon, colleagues. Let us start in. The new
military doctrine of Russia has been published. After studying and
analyzing the document, we think it would be a good idea to provide
a competent assessment and to share thoughts on the substance of the
problem.

Karaganov: Good day.

Moderator: So, the military reform now features a new idea. I
introduce our guests, the main panelists: Sergei Karaganov, deputy
director of the Academy of Science's Europe Institute, chairman of
the presidium of the Foreign and Defense Policy Council, chairman of
the editorial board of the journal Russia in Global Affairs,
president of the Foreign and Defense Policy Institute and since 2001
adviser to the deputy head of the Russian President's Staff on
Foreign Policy. Andrei Kokoshin, Chairman of the State Duma
Committee for CIS Affairs and Links with Fellow Countrymen, member
of the Duma Commission for Federal Budget Spending on Defense and
State Security, director of the Institute of International Security
Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Previously secretary of
the Security Council of Russia and first deputy Defense Minister of
Russia. Nikolai Mikhailov, member of the Board of Directors of the
joint stock financial corporation Sistema, State Counselor of Russia
First Class, member of the presidium of the Foreign and Defense
Policy Council, previously State Secretary and first deputy Defense
Minister of Russia, deputy secretary of the Security Council of
Russia and director general of the scientific and production
association Vympel. And the last participant is Vitaly Shlykov,
adviser to the director general of the joint stock company
Obyedinennye Mashinostroitelnye Zavody (Uralmash-Izhora group), one
of the founders of the Foreign and Defense Policy Council,
previously deputy chairman of the State Committee for Defense
Issues. He served with the Main Reconnaissance Directorate of the
General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR.

With your permission I will give the floor to Sergei
Alexandrovich Karaganov.

Karaganov: Good day, dear friends. We will try to be brief to
allow time for your questions and our answers. All the four
panelists present have for the past 12 years worked shoulder to
shoulder in various non-governmental and governmental positions, but
always under the aegis of Foreign and Defense Policy Council to
impose on our society a reasonable concept of reforming the armed
forces and restructuring the military machine.

We have prepared another document on the subject and it is
already posted on our sites. In coincides in many ways, much to our
pleasure, with the one that has now been presented to you. And we
will now look not only at this document, but at two speeches made by
Defense Minister Sergei Borisovich Ivanov when unveiling this
document. And our President and Commander-in-Chief Vladimir
Vladimirovich Putin made some extremely interesting remarks on this
subject.

These two speeches greatly deepen and broaden the framework of
the document presented to you.

I would just like to say a few words about the document leaving
it to my colleagues to speak about various aspects of the document
and the remarks made by the President and the Defense Minister.
Well, thanks are due to the drafters of this document for simply
completing it. Because we have many defense-related organizations,
but in practice intellectual work on reforming the military machine
of the state is conducted only by the top leadership of the armed
forces. That is my first point.

Secondly, like any such paper, it has an interim character. It
is a stage in the development of our military thought, and, formally
speaking, it is not a doctrine, it is just a set of views of the
Defense Ministry on military development. The doctrine will
apparently be formed later, part of it will be published and another
will be classified. We are talking only about the open document.

Finally, let me note substantial elements, positive elements of
the document. First, a realistic assessment of threats. At long
last, the threat of an attack by NATO and the United States is no
longer treated as probable and realistic and at long last the
numerous and diverse conflicts of different levels, mainly in the
south, have been given priority. Finally, it has been stressed that
the growing unpredictability of the world political situation,
including military political situation, is becoming almost the main
challenge to Russian security.

The document contains some heartening statements. First, it
puts paid to the discussion about the role of nuclear deterrent
forces in our defense policy and stresses that the role of nuclear
deterrence remains and as you know, the speeches that have
accompanied this document and implicitly the document itself,
contemplate the possibility of a first and even preemptive use of
nuclear weapons if there is an overt threat to the strategic
interests of the Russian Federation.

Thank God, we are turning the page of our anti-nuclear campaign
which began, thank God, in the times of the Soviet Union when we
were building up our nuclear potential at a rapid pace and called
for an immediate nuclear disarmament. At the same time the document
urges the need to modernize and, naturally, reduce the strategic
deterrent.

Finally, the document sets definite and much harsher deadlines
than in the previous years for switching part of our armed forces to
the voluntary recruitment system. The document, for the first time
in recent years, contains the theoretical premise that unfortunately
the role of military force in the modern world is rapidly
increasing.

There was a period roughly from the late 1970s until the early
1990s when it seemed that the role of military force in
international affairs is diminishing. This was a spin-off of the
easing of the confrontation between Communism and the West, and then
the collapse of that confrontation and then the fact that for a
while it seemed that economic factors would be overwhelmingly the
determining factors in international relations.

Now it is quite obvious that for many reasons and due to many
factors the world has entered a much less stable phase in its
development where a different kind of armed forces is needed, other
methods of using them and where states will command respect,
including in economic, political and other fields, partly based on
their ability to use armed forces.

Let me remind you that although we often criticize our armed
forces, and rightly so, for the condition to which they have been
reduced in the past decade, even in far richer countries the
situation is no better or only slightly better. A wealthy Europe
with a million-strong army to whose numerical strength we are now
descending, will have difficulty fielding about 30-40 thousand armed
people, equipped and prepared to wage an armed struggle at the
modern level. This brochure sets the following task: within 3-4
years to get a much bigger, numerically much larger group of forces
of permanent readiness and highly mobile. I hope this will come
about. I hope that this paper will indeed provide a plan, in the
first place, to the extent that it is a plan and, secondly, that it
will serve to sharply activate the debate in society and support in
society for restructuring the military organization of the state,
not only military reform.

And now I will give the floor to my colleagues.

Moderator: Andrei Afanasyevich, you have the floor.

Kokoshin: Dear colleagues, I think that today we indeed deal
with exclusively important documents, and I have in mind the
President's statement at the meeting at the Defense Ministry, the
intervention by Defense Minister, and the written report which,
probably, many of you have, disseminated during the meeting at the
Defense Ministry.

Honestly, I deal with these issues for quite a long time, as
many of you remember, I wouldn't remember in my memory, having such
a detailed and multifaceted document on military and political
matters, starting from questions of world politics and ending with
the specific issues of military development.

The very appearance of this document is already something
remarkable. And it is also very important that the leadership of the
Ministry of Defense has invited society, -- including State Duma
deputies, -- and after that meeting we also held a detailed
conversation with the leaders of the Ministry of Defense and the
General Staff -- to engage in active dialogue on problems spelled
out in this document. And we have, of course, embarked on this
dialogue and our meeting today is fresh proof of the active dialogue
that has begun. So, it is not some single time activity, not some
single impulse, although very important, -- it is indeed the
beginning of a serious discussion of key doctrinal issues. Without a
doubt, this will spill out into a concept of national security and
military doctrine of the Russian Federation, and I think that even
into a foreign policy concept because that document, and the
intervention by the Defense Minister and the international by
President touched on issues related to all the three basic documents
of the Russian foreign and defense policy and the policy of national
security as a whole.

This is what I would like to draw your attention to. This
document is indeed the result of a lengthy and very serious work
done by the Ministry of Defense, with the help of experts from
different research centers and also the result of close interaction
with some State Duma deputies, a number of committees and public
organizations, including the Commission, which I head, on issues of
national security of the United Russia Party.

We have held a long and serious discussion. Some of us now
present here attended those discussions, some of which were pursued
in such an open regime with the participation of public, the press
while other discussions, of course, were held in a different mode.
So, I wish to say that the document we are discussing today is a
very important document that marks a stage in the activity. This is
not yet the final document, it is not a document that can be
approved by the President and it becomes a directive for the armed
forces and other power structures. It is a very important guiding
document. It is, of course, already reflected in a number of
components, in the international documents of the Ministry of
Defense, and you must understand it, and it is reflected not only
in the documents of the Ministry of Defense, but in different notes
and different orders. But it is, of course, open for discussion, for
debate, for additions and adjustments. And this is precisely what we
are doing today, including within the framework of the Foreign and
Defense Policy Council.

As chair of the Committee for the Affairs of the CIS and
Relations with Compatriots, I cannot fail to point out with profound
satisfaction that the thesis about the priority of post-Soviet space
for Russia and CIS countries, has found its military and political
embodiment in that document. It already looks like operationally, I
would say, and a very important next step has been made in
implementing the thesis.

I wish to remind all that President Putin in his message to the
Federal Assembly on May 16 this year, said, firstly, that the CIS is
out No. 1 priority in foreign policy, and, secondly, he said that
the CIS countries are an area of our strategic interests, in the
same vein as Russia is an area of strategic interests of CIS
countries. And one must say that it is not simply a declaration
because firstly, this was preceded and this was followed by the
very high activity of the President himself and other top officials
of the state precisely in the direction of the CIS; this assumed a
new quality, and a new quality was gained by such an organization as
the Collective Security Treaty Organization; and a new impulse has
been received in the activity of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization and in a number of other areas of our bilateral
relations with the leading CIS countries in the economic sphere and
in the sphere of safeguarding security.

There is the thesis in this document that spells out the
threats that may come from this direction, and the problems that we
see here, as well as our efforts in that sphere -- is presented
broadly and substantially, developing what was contained in the
preceding documents of similar level and class.

I would also like to point out that such organizations as the
CSTO and the Shanghai cooperation Organization are regarded as being
in the same category with our relations with NATO and our relations
with the USA. I would ask you to bear this in mind.

As regards our relations with the United States, you can see
that they are very carefully and painstakingly weighted and spelled
out in detail -- and this is true of our relations with NATO where
nothing is said about some confrontation with the United States or
NATO, and where they speak about the foundations of relations
spelled out I the Rome Declaration but an important reservation is
made to the effect that if NATO remains as a military alliance in
the offensive military doctrine that exists today, this will require
a drastic restructuring of the Russian military planning and the
principles of building the Russian armed forces, including a change
in the Russian nuclear strategy.

The question of the nuclear factor is an important point also
in the report of the Minister of Defense and in the document that
has been distributed. Sergei Alexandrovich already said something
that has already dotted some of the I's but here a special section
is devoted to the possibility of nuclear weapons regaining some of
its properties as the real military instrument. This indeed is a
dangerous trend, to be regretted, and it is a tendency that to some
extent restores but in other parameters, something that existed in
1950s-1960s when nuclear weapons were indeed regarded as a means to
pursue armed struggle. Through a series of complex crises, some
times put us on the edge of nuclear catastrophe, we have together
with the United States produced a system of mutual understanding, a
system of strategic balance a system of strategic stability and, at
least politically, nuclear weapons ceased to be seen as a means of
warfare in Soviet-American and later Russian-American relations and
came to be seen exclusively as a deterrent.

And now, in the last year and a half or two years we see
nuclear weapons being reinstated as potentially a means of warfare,
although of course, on a totally different scale and in different
forms than, say, in the 1950s and 1960s. Russia is expressing
serious concern. And I think Russia has taken a very responsible
stand, with no concrete steps on our part to lower the nuclear
threshold, but with very serious warnings being issued. These
warnings are based not only on our own assessments, they are based
on the assessments of many of our partners in Western Europe and our
Chinese partners. They are based on the assessments of many experts
and many prominent American politicians.

Once again, on the whole, I think it is a very important
document and I recommend all of you to work on it thoroughly, and
indeed I see many of our leading specialists and journalists who
write on military political matters. The document goes beyond purely
military matters.

I think that what happened at this meeting at the Defense
Ministry, the speech by President Vladimir Putin and the speech by
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov are important contributions to
building a modern democratic state which is unthinkable without a
worthy military force, including the nuclear dimension.

Moderator: Thank you, Andrei Afanasyevich. Nikolai Vasilyevich,
I turn it over to you.

Mikhailov: I am not inclined to idealize the materials that
have been published and I will tell you why at the end of my
remarks. But I would like to congratulate my former colleagues,
chief of the General Staff Anatoly Vasilyevich Kvashnin, his deputy
Yuri Nikolayevich Baluyevsky, and Smirnov Vasily Vasilyevich, deputy
to Rukshin Alexander Sergeyevich. They managed to complete a very
important job on time.

As the published work is studied, many of our colleagues who
previously assumed a somewhat mocking tone in covering the issues of
military development, will have reason to change to a businesslike
tone. There are grounds for this.

If I were to put in a nutshell the substance of the material
that is being discussed and that has been published, I think it
boils down to four principles. First principle: a sustained and
irreversible character of reform. Obviously, the reform of the Armed
Forces did not begin today and moreover the most painful stage when
troop strength was cut by more than half is, luckily, behind us. At
this stage we managed to solve an extremely important task that lays
the ground work for future success.

Financed on a shoestring the armed forces have for a number of
years managed to remain comparatively governable, to preserve their
officers corps and the main institutions of the Armed Forces.
Thereby the important task of survival has been fulfilled. And today
there is a real possibility of passing on from the strategy of
survival to the strategy of military development. This is very
important.

The second principle implemented in these materials is what I
would describe as adaptivity to the change of the internal
environment and the external environment. If you look attentively at
the materials, you will find that all the military development
priorities are linked to the changes in the character of combat
actions, the character of potential threats and all the measures it
proposes are aimed at making sure that changes match at the
requirements of the state's national security.

The third principle which in a general way is present in these
materials is overcoming the "confined space" complex. It is an
important part of the materials. For the first time a new system is
offered on a qualitatively new level of military political relations
both with the allied countries and with other countries, including
NATO countries.

And note that this principle is implemented not because that's
what the General Staff wants, but in view of the evident and growing
understanding worldwide that Russia must have strong armed forces as
a factor of geopolitical stability.

This is a very welcome element reflected in the materials and
it cannot but be heartening because it obviously represents the
development of intellectual thought in the military field and I hope
it won't pass unnoticed.

And finally, the fourth and basic principle is the coherence
and systematic character of the steps that must be taken in the
military field. It demonstrates definitively, for those who have
attentively read these materials, that the effectiveness of the
reform of military organization may be nullified or greatly
diminished if it is not accompanied by reform in other ministries
and agencies that have military forces. Make a note of it.

These provisions and the way they are presented in the
materials cannot but be heartening, they really have a coherent
character and give a clear idea of the direction in which military
reform will move. But there are some provisions that prevent me from
calling this document ideal.

Let me just name two of them. While a colossal amount of work
has been carried out in the last few years by the Armed Forces to
plan the reform of the Armed Forces, the same unfortunately cannot
be said about other military and security agencies. And if these
processes are not synchronized, reform will become highly
problematic.

And the second circumstance that gives little cause for
optimism. One can repeat a thousand times that the presence of a
developed system of intelligence, of the processing of information
by intelligence centers, systems of getting that information to
decision-makers, systems which guarantee the protection and
duplication of managing the troops and weapons are vital for an
effective defense system. But if nothing of this kind is done during
ten years, then words will remain words, intentions will remain
intentions and business business.

The result is that we are losing scientific schools and we
still continue to lose the basic defense technologies. Regrettably,
today there exists an illusion that by taking an active position in
the market of military-technical equipment and arms, we will
substantially preserve the defense technologies and may be even
increase them.

It is good that the market today is at a decent level in regard
to our indeed effective arms and military equipment. But there is
one serious threat: three or four years from now, it looks as if we
will begin to get the bitter fruits of aiming only on maintaining
military and technological cooperation because we have been pushed
out fundamentally and irreversibly from the external market while
the remaining market, consisting 80 percent of the market of China
and India, will doubtless be saturated within 3 or 4 years and then
serious problems would arise.

Neglecting these points is inadmissible. Neglecting the need of
dovetailing the programs of military development with federal
programs of reforming the defense industry complex and with programs
of developing arms and military equipment -- is becoming simply
dangerous.

Nevertheless, what has become our heritage for study in the
form of published materials is serious military and methodological
support and I would even say it is also organizational support of
the efforts being undertaken by the leadership of the state and the
armed forces today so as to make reforming the system of military
organization possibly effective. Thank you.

Moderator: Thank you, Nikolai Vasilyevich. Vitaly Vasilyevich,
you have the floor.

Shlykov: As Sergei Karaganov said, everyone is looking in a
document something that he likes most of all. I have been profoundly
impressed by the opening speech of the President at that meeting.
Without claiming to be able to read his thoughts and knowing his
concept, I will try to present my vision of what the President had
in mind.

In quite a delicate form he raised rather stringent tasks
before armed forces in two areas. If you saw it, there is some
terminological diversity that he has. On the one hand, he speaks of
modernizing the armed forces and the defense structure saying that
it must be a nation-wide task, and not only that of the state. On
the other hand, he says that we are passing over from a radical
reform to transforming the armed forces and establishing
qualitatively new armed forces.

You will agree that these generally are different things. And
although the President did not trace a line between them, the
boundary exists and it is clear-cut. If you wish to delve deep into
it, the boundary is traced in the theses of the foreign and defense
policy council, drafted several months before that.

The fact is that modernization and transformation are, of
course, different things. To translate it into a simpler language
easier to understand, I will cite one example from my personal
experience. In December last year Moscow was visited by chairman of
the US joint chiefs of staff General Richard Mayers and I had a
chance of meeting with him and I asked him this question: General, I
say, your boss Donald Rumsfeld wrote an article in the Foreign
Affairs journal. -- Before that I translated it together with my
colleague Alexander Belkin and it was published in Otechestvennye
Zapiski. The article was called Transforming the Armed Forces and in
it, I told the general, I counted the use of "transforming the armed
forces" 22 times and I did not even once come across the use of the
word "reform". How would you explain to me this approach? Well, you
see, said the general, a reform, as I see it, is when something bad
gets corrected while transforming, and the President uses the word
"preobrazovaniye" and at the same time it is a transition toward
something of different quality and in line with the new tasks.

And if you read the theses of the Council, there is not a
single word "reform" used. There is the word "modernization" and
"transformation". So, it is the same timeframe that is given in the
document and in the report of the defense minister -- 1925s and even
1930s -- this, of course, was a period of transforming the armed
forces, creating qualitatively new ones. And the nation-wide task of
modernizing the armed forces is a burning problem of today. The
question is only what the word "modernization" means.

Here is the thesis of the "Council" in regard to modernization.
It is that, above all, it is necessary to take the Russian armed
forces to a modern level by a number of parameters. I do not speak
about the technical equipment where we have always been at a modern
level. But by a number of parameters our armed forces, to put it
mildly, differ strongly from the armed forces of the majority of the
developed countries. Take the simplest example, it is the same
sergeants that they began to talk about. For already 13 years I
write to say that in the Soviet times there was the book "The Army
and Society" that was released and a section of the book was devoted
to the fact that it is the only country, and the army in the world
that has no career sergeants. It is nonsense, it is just cannot be.

Now this task has been put forward by the President and by the
Defense Minister and you will see in the report that the goal is to
have by 2007 the number of sergeants under contract reaching 50.7
percent of the overall numerical strength. Incidentally, the Council
is proposing a somewhat different approach and says that in line
with the President's instruction in his appeal to the Assembly, the
sergeants of our armed forces must be rapidly put on a professional
basis. It is a contentious issue and I think that the military are
deliberately bypassing the thesis. The fostering of sergeants must
precede the establishment of contract units otherwise one will have
to rectify this later in any case. But I won't pursue that topic any
further, you can find a lot on this topic.

There are about 15-20 comparatively simple parameters on which
our Armed Forces, shall I say, do not fit the world trends. This is
modernization. It can be done comparatively quickly by decisive
organizational measures and the issue of sergeants should not be put
off indefinitely, until some date beyond 2010.

I think this thesis merits very profound study. I am not sure
that even the military have quite grasped the President's thesis
because he put it in a very delicate form, saying that it is
necessary to do both, to urgently modernize the Armed Forces as a
national task and at the same time pursue radical transformation of
the Armed Forces, that is, create a qualitatively new army.

By the way, the theses of the Council devote much space to
creating and developing a new, a radically new Russian army. But as
you understand, this is not an issue on which the press can reproach
the Defense Ministry or discuss in a light-hearted way, I think the
media should also take a deeper approach when covering the problems
of modernization and transformation of the armed forces. The issues
of hazing in the army and of too many generals in the Russian army
are no longer on the agenda and so, there remains little to write
about.

So, the journalists, because of the lack of a single
translation on military development in the West in the last ten
years have had to carry this burden themselves. The burden of
coverage, analysis and even research. But now one can see signs of a
new depth, at least the Defense Ministry report is a harbinger.

Moderator: Thank you, Vitaly Vasilyevich. If you have no
objections, I can open it up for questions. I think the journalists
can't wait to put questions.

Q: Viktor Litovkin. How do you account for the contradictions
in this pamphlet: on the one hand we speak about partnership
relations with the United States and NATO with the reservation that
has been mentioned by Andrei Afanasyevich, and yet describe in
detail the conduct of strategic operations in the Western theater?
Obviously these operations are not directed against the Taliban or
anyone else, they are directed against NATO countries. The reason I
am asking about this contradiction is that there have already been
suggestions in the West that Russia is threatening NATO. Do we or do
we not threaten NATO?

Karaganov: First of all, this document is not the military
doctrine of Russia, this document contains the reflections of the
Defense Ministry how it sees the doctrinal problems of armed forces
development. There may be contradictions, one can find several in
the body of the text. But the text makes it clear that we no longer
consider the United States and NATO to be our potential enemies and
will prepare our armed forces mainly for other types of conflicts.

But there are certainly hangovers of the former doctrine.
First, because they are certainly in the heads of the people who
write these papers. And secondly, the system of deterrence still
exists, and will continue to exist in the foreseeable future, so, it
has to be maintained at least verbally.

I think such statements constitute a verbal or rhetorical form
of deterrence so as not to give the impression that we are not
prepared to do anything in certain areas. But on the face of it,
logically, there is a kind of discrepancy, as indeed in the
statement that the Russian armed forces must be ready to fight two
large scale wars simultaneously, not to speak of peacemaking
operations. Our American colleagues who have forces superior to ours
in terms of troop strength and quality also are reluctant to abandon
such formulas. Yet it is obvious that they are unable to manage such
conflicts.

I believe, the document is work in progress and is partly
intended to be criticized. Thank God, a document exists and there is
something to discuss. I would remind you that for a whole decade we
have not had any serious information on the part of the military
establishment, including international military community flowing
into society. And the discussion moved little by little in two
different areas, with echoes of a discussion in society and some
secret discussions in the military agencies.

Now the discussion is coming to the surface not only due to
this document, but even more so, I repeat, through the statements of
the Defense Minister and the Commander-in-Chief which contain
proposals that elaborate on the doctrine but in some ways contradict
this paper.

Kokoshin: I'll be brief. Once at a parliamentary forum in
Europe the conversation drifted to the areas of military
development, the military doctrine of the US, the European Union and
Russia, and some European MPs have suggested that the leading
military powers should renounce the conduct of and preparation for
major wars, because these preparations are really a hangover from
the Cold War.

But this met with a strong resistance on the part of the
British and of course the Americans who said that an army should
always be prepared for a large war, for military-space operations
and in general any peacekeeping operation or any operation of
coercing into peace is only possible when you have behind you armed
forces ready for a large-scale war.

So, I think that Viktor Litovkin has asked a very important
question there. This is, in fact, the topic that we raised in the
1980s, namely, mutual renunciation of large-scale offensive
operations. At the time we did it with reference to Central Europe
and in fact the military doctrine of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw
Treaty was substantially modified. Indeed, even the character of
military groupings began to change, at least the issue was raised of
the forces facing each other in Central Europe, but then somehow the
topic disappeared into sand. And now we observe that the United
States of course has the possibility of waging large-scale offensive
activities but Western Europe is dreaming of it, it does not have
the possibility but it is dreaming.

Indeed, I know some quite interesting figures who dream of it.
China is potentially preparing to enter the era although for decades
it possessed only the ability to pursue strategic defensive actions
and quite a number of states are already trying to get closer to
this potential, and they are looking. So, indeed, it is a very big
topic indeed, and the fact that it is present in this document is
perfectly understandable. It can be explained at least by the fact
that indeed there is a kind of a dichotomy between the political
relations we have with the United States and those that we have with
the NATO countries. On the one hand, there is the giant inertia of
the military machine which our Western partners do not give up,
despite all the changes that have occurred.

We have given up many things back in the past by virtue of the
fact that the Soviet Union collapsed and in those dire economic
conditions that Nikolai Vasilyevich described -- the 1990s. But now
we can see that this period was not used by our Western partners in
order to indeed seriously revamp the military machine. This also
forces us to think about quite a number of elements of the
development of the armed forces that would ensure a certain military-
strategic balance that in turn, I believe is very much conducive to
good and friendly relations in the political sphere.

Mikhailov: Yes, I would like to follow up on the topic raised
by Mr. Litovkin. It is concerning Die Welt's anxiety over the
possible direction of Russia's military-space potential. The fact is
that it is inadmissible to confuse the two points -- the military-
technical aspect and the political aspect.

The military-space systems and means from the outset,
organically always have a universal directedness, and questions of
priorities are a matter of politics.

Moderator: Any more questions?

Q: Mikhail Pogorelov, the Center for War and Peace Journalism.
It is not a question, it is a request. But as to who I ask
specifically, it is probably Mr. Kokoshin and may be Mr. Karaganov.
I would request a comment of a provision of the paper under
discussion that says that the current generation of the Russians is
lost for implementing the tasks imposed or examined by the authors
of the document as the most topical ones.

This is to say that, on the one hand, we can see that the
Messrs. agree to monopolize, agree to believe that they are
patriots, that they love their country and they can demonstrate that
and that the young people nowadays cannot and this has to be
rectified. On the other hand, a reasonable man understands that UR-
100 or UR-1000 or any other system would not perform by itself.

And if we have a whole generation of Russians not capable of
carrying out the task, one probably needs to reform and modernize
not only the armed forces or the "hardware" but also the things with
which we have to work. So, it is not a question, it is a request to
comment on this situation.

Kokoshin: I think that my colleagues and comrades from the
Defense Ministry justifiably expressed concern over the current
state of mind and the situation in regard to the military-patriotic
education of the young.

In the past two or three years there occurred a number of
positive changes, but of course, the situation is far from what we
would like to have. I think that, firstly, the old system is
completely lost while the new system has yet to come into being. And
thus the appearance of this document, and I think it is a very
important and stimulating element of restoring the process. And why?
No military-patriotic work among the young in society will be
pursued if society does not have a clear understanding of why the
armed forces are necessary. I believe that the document is an
important attempt to make society understand why it needs powerful
armed forces in the present-day conditions. The fact is that up till
now many do not understand it. We seem to be living in a situation
when there are no special threats, no war is threatening us. Here
they give a sufficiently clear picture which explains why the armed
forces are necessary. And we must all work for this. In this case we
will pursue the appropriate military-patriotic work.

But I think that this generation has not been lost. I teach,
for instance, in several higher education establishments. Recently I
became the dean of a department in Moscow State University. I know
our students and young people sufficiently well and I may assure you
that there are quite many patriots among them who are prepared, if
necessary, to serve under our military banners.

Karaganov: I will add only once circumstance which is very
important for understanding the situation. Not only in the past
decade but the decade before that, which means during the 1980s, a
discussion was pursued about the need to have professional armed
forces, that a peasant army de facto not only fails to meet the
challenges that the Soviet Union and Russia will be facing in the
world but it does not accord with the structure of the population
and the level of its education. And in that situation the so-called
anti-army sentiment had its roots also in the refusal to carry out a
deep transformation of the army in the course of 20 years. I think
that as soon as we embark on modernizing the armed forces, and do it
at a much faster pace than the document says, then segments and
people will appear within the society who will see some sense in
serving the Fatherland, who will see that by sending their children
into the armed forces, they do some useful thing for the children
and the country. Now in most cases we know that parents and children
are not always confident that they are doing something useful.

Q: The question is as follows. One can take different views of
a glass: either it is half full or half empty. The document is
written in a way that liberally minded people may find many pleasant
things for themselves such as -- partnership with the United States,
a sober analysis of a future war; in this way the conservatively
minded people will find out that after the description of the idea
of am aerial operation they write to say that the need for powerful
land forces remains. And another line down the text, it says that in
general a very great dependence on the air force restricts the
possibilities of a land force. So, the document presents at least
two views or sometimes three or four. The question is about what
your optimism relies on if in the further construction of the armed
forces they take out the guiding liberal provisions rather than
conservative.

Karaganov: I will try to begin answering the question. Let us
begin by saying that optimism has to do with the fact that we had a
quarter glass and when you know you have a quarter, then the filling
of the glass up to the half, should at least be thanks to ideas more
modernist and progressive. That's first.

Secondly, and even greater optimism is produced by reading the
statement of the president and the report of the defense minister.
... That is why we urge all of you to act in this direction. But
this does not mean that we are programmed to see all the progressive
ideas contained here translated into life. Unless we struggle every
day for these ideas to be implemented -- the military community and
the civilian community of experts on these issues, things will begin
backsliding again.

Moderator: Who else would like to talk on this topic?

Mikhailov: But the good news, I think, partly is that the most
difficult period is behind us. And another source of optimism is
that for the first time we are talking not so much about the reform
of everything that is connected with the army and the armed forces,
but about the transformation of the entire military organization of
the country. This is a very serious approach, it calls for
mobilizing all the intellectual potential, and not only in the armed
forces. But this is precisely a source of optimism.

Q: I have a question. What are the economic grounds for
announcing such an ambitious program? Has anyone calculated the
possible cost? Just off the bat, as you said, the whole GDP would
not be enough.

Kokoshin: It's a very good question. And I think that the next
stage of the work on this document should develop into certain
budget projections. There is an old principle -- though it does not
always work -- that in a war there is never too much of anything.
So, naturally, every agency and military department tries to stake
as big a claim as possible, more than it can realistically hope to
get in interaction with the Ministry of the Economy and the Ministry
of Finance. So, finding an optimum balance between the needs of the
military organization and the economic potential is one of the most
difficult processes. I have found it out myself working with the
Defense Ministry and then with the Security Council and now at the
State Duma. These are very difficult questions.

And I think the question was rightly raised here about the
balance of different armed services. It, too, has not been finally
solved. I think a lot of joint work lies ahead together with the
Defense Ministry and the General Staff. But we already see a
movement in a certain direction. What we have so vigorously
campaigned for -- the ideology of the defense spending structure --
seems to be materializing.

I remember that when in 1996-1997 -- the journalists present
here and my colleagues remember -- we argued that it is necessary to
increase spending on combat training, on equipping every soldier and
providing him with more resources, that appeared to be rather far-
fetched and somewhat obscure. The process has begun and it has been
going on for several years and even growing.

And you probably know -- I am not sure that it has been
published, but the Minister cited some numbers orally, and many
journalists were present, the sums earmarked for improving combat
training under the budget for the following year. The President said
in his remarks that of course we will tailor everything to the
potential of our economy and there will be a difficult and
occasionally painful process of squaring the ideas that we see here,
the ideas of my colleagues and comrades from the Defense Ministry
and the economic potential that society will make available even if
it manages to double the gross domestic product.

Q: And could I put the same question to Vitaly Vasilyevich now?

Shlykov: He probably remembers that the Council of which I was
a member was doing some calculations five or six years ago to see
the possible military expenditure requirements if the quantity of
materiel and personnel remained as it was at the time. Of course,
given the financial resources allocated, the tasks that are set in
the report are unrealistic.

The Americans have an army of the same troop strength and
approximately the same weapons -- one can argue about quality and so
on -- but the military hardware is also sophisticated and just as
costly in the Russian army -- and the Americans spend 400 billion
dollars while we spend 400 billion rubles. Miracles don't happen.

On the other hand, we have made calculations to see what kind
of army Russia could support given its present resources as compared
to other countries. And we got perfectly absurd figures compared to
the American army, Russia could have 80 or 100 thousand; compared to
the British, it was 120 thousand; compared to the German -- 200
thousand; compared to the Turkish -- 600 thousand and so on. But
this cannot be the subject of discussion.

The question was partly answered by Andrei Afanasyevich and in
part the President said: It is time to pass over to the program-
targeted planning and this would immediately reveal the requirements
of the armed forces. Now all requirements are dictated by the
existing numerical strength. Now that the limit is put at one
million, there are two ways that remain -- to sharply increase
military spending or to cut down on military training or to postpone
reequipment which is apparently somewhat reasonable and you can read
it in this document.

Well, for the sake of simplicity and again taking an example
from my old service, in the early 1960s, the Americans had about the
same military budget in structure and expenditure as we did. They
requested the types of armed forces that they needed and Congress
would allocate the funds until McNamara came and in all the
subdivisions of the Defense Department he put his clever young
people with mathematical ability, aged 20-25 who would ask the
generals and others such questions as why? Why so much? And how much
will it take? And this gradually brought about the program-targeted
planning where each component was calculated down to the finest
detail.

We don't have this here, it is a remote perspective but the
task has been set by the President and there is no getting away from
it.

Moderator: Any more questions? The press conference is over. I
thank you all.