Russian Military Reform: A Failed Exercise in Defence Decision Making

En spite of claims emanating from Russia´s political leadership for about fifteen years that it was conducting a military reform, some of the main challenges remain such as the problem of manning the military organization, reforming the military-industrial complex and establishing new civil-military relations. The main reason for this is that the political leadership has lacked the necessary will, military know-how and institutional framework for moving the military reform process forward. Instead, it limited itself to reducing the defence budget while leaving it to the military sphere to formulate the goals of reform and to implement these. True, significant reforms within the Armed Forces have taken place and these have became stronger and more efficient than they were in the mid-1990s. Considerable reductions were carried out as well as restructuring.The role of the minister of defence within the Ministry of Defence was strenghtened at the expense of the General Staff. These changes of the Armed Forces and its command structure were initiated already in the late 1990s when the political leadership displayed an interest in military reform. Since Vladimir Putin brcame president and Sergei Ivanov minister of defence, many of the decisions taken earlier were carried out within the Armed Forces. However, the political leadership falled to co-ordinate reform and to make sure that it was implemented throughout the military organization, which encompasses a number of so called power ministries and the military-industrial complex. Putin´s power vertical, moreover, has proven not to be an efficient defence decision machinery capable of implementing and controlling military reform.