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Article
Transformation of Russian Military Enterprise in the Geopolitical During Putin Era
Author(s)
WU Fei
Full-Text PDF XML 565 Views
DOI:10.17265/2328-2134/2020.08.001
Affiliation(s)
Jinan University, Guangzhou, China
Charhar Institute, Beijing, China
ABSTRACT
The quotation, from
Vladimir Putin’s annual address as president in 2006, neatly summaries the
reason why Russia had to press forward with long-overdue reforms of its armed
forces. Two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia was still left
with an oversized military organization built for large-scale mobilization and
the demands of the Cold War, but highly ineffective for the type of
conventional military conflicts that Russia was most likely to become involved
in. The rationale behind Russia’s reforms of the armed forces were thus clear
long before the war in Georgia, which has often been pointed to as the reason
why the reforms were launched in October 2008. President Vladimir Putin’s
current period runs out in 2024, when he is due to step down, according to the
Constitution. Given the fact that the current political system has been
carefully crafted for almost 20 years, it is evident that there is uncertainty
about its future. First, it no longer produces wealth for the population. For
five years in a row, the real disposable income has been decreasing. Second,
the legitimacy of the system could be questioned, since Putin’s popularity
figures are going down, and the surge from 2014-2015 has been
eradicated. War as well (indeed, the Soviet Union helped fuel conflict and
instability), the communist ideology and groups that professed it lost their
main backer with the fall of the Soviet Union. Some African states weakened as
the result, and coupled with an influx of arms on the global market, it was
easy for disparate individuals and groups to carve out areas of influence under
the barrel of a gun. In the U.S., private military companies (PMCs) emerged as
“a function of decades of decisions underscored by both the strategic
requirement for resources and neoliberal thinking. The desired result to recue
costs, gain efficiencies, and create economies of scale”.
KEYWORDS
Vladimir Putin, PMC, defense military enterprise, Eurasians
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