The Future of Russia and the Russian Navy. Report of Discussions in Moscow November 2-6, 2003
Abstract
As part of CNAC s continuing project on the future of U.S.-Russian naval cooperation, Drs. Gaffney and Gorenburg paid a short visit to Moscow to discuss the future of the Russian Federation Navy (RFN). Mindful of the discretion required because of the Igor Sutyagin case (Sutyagin worked closely with us at CNAC in past years, but under the auspices of Dr. Sergey Rogov and the Institute for USA and Canada Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences), we took an informal, unofficial, and top-down approach to discussing this subject, not pressing for any details about the RFN. The top-down approach is to ask first where Russia is going in its governance, politics, economy, and in constructing a social contract to replace that of Soviet times. Then, the question becomes what kind of budget and budget restraints the government may be under, what that may leave for the regular military establishment (they refer to it as the Army ), and finally, what would be left of that for the Navy. This approach is in contrast to what some consider a standard approach: what are the national interests, what are the threats to those national interests, what strategy is appropriate to cope with the threats in defense of the interests, what forces then are required for the strategy, and then to wallow in despair because there s never enough money to satisfy the requirements, especially if your country has a market economy and a government budget dependent on tax revenues. Russians including some we talked to have done a lot of work in accordance with this latter approach and it has essentially yielded much paper and little else mostly because the Russian economy has been in such bad shape that there s no money. Besides, the two wars in Chechnya have been a large drain in both resources and the Russian psyche. In any event, Russian armed forces, including the navy, continue practically unreformed (from Cold War days) and are still in decline.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA594198
Entities
People
- Dmitry P. Gorenburg
- Henry H. Gaffney
Organizations
- Center for Naval Analyses