I read two stories today that claim Russia's conquest of Crimea demonstrates the capabilities of Russia's military. I think Russia is casting a giant shadow.
Here's one:
The last time the Russian military machine was on public display in Europe, its performance did not impress. But this is no longer the force that NATO observed blundering its way through a brief but messy war with its tiny neighbor, Georgia, back in 2008.
A new, leaner and meaner Russian Army has been on display in Crimea and war-gaming on the Ukrainian border over the past month or so. Its vanguard is now made up of just a few elite divisions of highly-motivated, well trained, and fully equipped volunteer soldiers, capable of deploying swiftly anywhere in the former Soviet Union on the Kremlin's command.
And that fact is raising alarms about the potential for wider Kremlin aggression that haven't been heard in the West since the end of the cold war.
People are catching up with Russia's poor performance in 2008. But tone established in this beginning is misleading.
The article even notes that Russia's better trained troops are few in number. No more than 100,000, according to Strategypage. The article quotes someone as putting the total at 50,000 to 80,000.
And exercising within Russia's borders shouldn't be the sign of an elite military.
As for the Crimea operation, while it was impressive it was not a military operation. It consisted of flying in or driving in 20,000 troops to Crimea over several weeks while Spetsnaz special forces simulated a popular revolt by leading 10,000 local militias (and in future years I'll be curious to know how many were actually imported from Russia). Without kinetics, it isn't warfighting that was on display. Impressive, yes. Evidence for a reborn army? Hardly.
To the author's credit, despite the rattling of NATO and the first three paragraphs of the story (and the title) lauding Russian military improvements, the article ultimately notes that Russia's military really isn't a threat to march very far west.
The other article lacks that saving grace, and reports facts that don't fit with the conclusion drawn that Russia's military is back:
Across Crimea in the past several weeks, a sleek new vanguard of the Russian military has been on display, with forces whose mobility, equipment and behavior were sharply different from those of the Russian forces seen in the brief war in Georgia in 2008 or throughout the North Caucasus over nearly two decades of conflict with Muslim separatists.
Past Russian military actions have often showcased an army suffering from a poor state of discipline and supply, its ranks filled mostly with the conscripts who had not managed to buy deferments or otherwise evade military service. Public drunkenness was common, as were tactical indecisiveness and soldiers who often looked as if they could not run a mile, much less swiftly.
Not so in Crimea. After a Kremlin campaign to overhaul the military, including improvements in training and equipment and, notably, large increases in pay, the results could be seen in the field. They were evident not only in the demeanor of the Russian soldiers but also in the speed with which they overwhelmed Crimea with minimal violence.
Comparing past military campaigns of conscripts with the Crimea Spetsnaz-led takeover is nonsense. Russia's Spetsnaz have long been good troops. When the Soviet Union fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s, I read that the only troops the rebels respected were the Spetsnaz.
So the ability of Russia's elite says nothing about the majority of the Russian army--or even the relatively small portion that is counted on for war--or its ability to carry out major combat operations as opposed to moving about within Russia itself.
They both rely for their positive spin on Russia's military on talking to the same independent military analyst in Moscow, Alexander Golts, so maybe that explains the evidence-conclusion haziness or disconnect that bolsters Putin's boast.
I won't say that Golts isn't trustworthy. I'm not familiar with his work. I will say that during the Cold War the Soviets planted authors here to write "insider" accounts of the Russian military that could either inflate Soviet military strength or portray it as a hollow force. I wish I still had those books. It always struck me as just an effort to muddy the waters and confuse our analysis. I would be shocked if Russia didn't continue this tradition.
As I've noted many times, Russia can carry out a small war--or use their military to backstop what was essentially a coup in Crimea. Russia has the advantage of having small powers along their western border like Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia, where Russia can quickly mass power before the target nation can respond or before NATO could react in time to stop a quick grab of territory.
Or they can nuke us. They can't do much in between without suffering heavy losses and significant embarrassment in extended conventional combat. Speaking of nukes:
As the United States condemned a referendum on the future of the Crimean peninsula staged by pro-Russian separatists on Sunday, one of Russia’s most influential television hosts appeared on the evening news in Moscow, before a huge mushroom cloud graphic, to remind viewers that Russia is still “the only country in the world capable of turning the U.S.A. into radioactive dust.”
That was a couple weeks ago.
But I will say that either I'm right and Russia's military is not back and Crimea does not prove it is back--or Golts is right in essentially backing Putin's position.
I'll go with me. Not that an aggressive Russia with nukes and sufficient conventional power to conduct short, sharp conquests isn't a threat to us. But Russia has a long way to go on a path I'm not so sure Putin can maintain before it can be called "back."
