The speech of the Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov (on 2 October 2003) at a conference devoted, to the development and modernization of the RF Armed Forces reveals the discrepancies of military and political plans and the technical aspects of the military reform. Such an opinion was expressed by Deputy Chairman for the State Duma Defence Committee and Deputy Chairman of the YABLOKO party Alexei Arbatov. "Anyone who follows these issues closely will see at once that the three components are not closely inter-related and in some aspects even contradict each other," noted Arbatov. According to Arbatov, these three components are the political, military-political and technical parts of military policies.

Arbatov also said that the political component voiced in President Putin's speech, which does not restrict military policy to the decision of a narrow circle of specialists, meets current requirements. Arbatov also highlighted on a positive note that the public represented by parliament, the press, specialist and academic institutes was involved in the discussion of such important issues.

The report of Minister Ivanov on the main military-political issues 's also reflected some ideas that had previously been proposed by YABLOKO. Arbatov also referred to the conclusions of Ivanov's report that for the time being Russia's security was not threatened by any military powers or military alliances and that the role and priority of Russia's opposition to the US and its allies had been significantly reduced. Earlier Arbatov had reiterated that the Russian Armed Forces, together with other troops and services, would have to deal with a new type of local anti-partisan counter terrorist operations.

However, Arbatov noted that the purely military component Ivanov's report had obviously been prepared by the General Staff and contradicted the rest of the text: "Here we have to listen to what we already heard ten or twenty years ago. Even though the main enemy is not named, it is obvious that the USA and NATO are still considered the main enemies. The forecast wars - a nuclear war and global war - envisage large-scale military operations, but with new types of weapons, electronic and high precision devices."

Such positions, according to Arbatov, are clearly contradictory: "If we prepare for a war with NATO, we will require one type of Armed Forces. If we want to rely on a nuclear deterrent and create Armed Forces to parry new threats - this will be something. It would appear that these three integral components were simply glued together and that nobody was concerned about the evident discrepancies."

The discrepancies with the political goals that have to provide guidance for the military policy, military-political concepts that are a link between the foreign policy and national security policy and military construction policy seriously belie the statements of the General Staff that military reform has been progressing and that there is nothing to discuss any more and that now we need only to further develop the Armed Forces. According to Arbatov, a lot still needs to be done: "We have taken only the first steps in military reform, the steps have been inconsistent and half-hearted. And we have a very long way to go down this road."

See also: