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Abstract
The use of force in asymmetrical warfare, and in counterinsurgency operations in particular, has been written off as strategically dangerous and politically irrational. The goal of the article is to examine the role of force in a modern military context and determine if victory through its application is theoretically feasible. This hypothesis will be tested against the backdrop of the conflict in Chechnya. The work will examine the Russian military and public policy as a subordinate subject to the overall inquiry of the article in an attempt to show that force was one of the major factors behind Russian military success in 2001.
Key Words:
Acknowledgements
I thank Dr. Alex Statiev, my supervisor at the University of Waterloo, and my comrades-in-arms Bryan Lovasz and Hayley Orton for their kind comments on the manuscript.
Notes
The armature of the ideas found in this article was presented at the 19th Military History Colloquium, sponsored by the Wilfrid Laurier University Center for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, 2 May 2008. The views presented in this work do not reflect the official stance of the Russian Government, Russian Army or their counterinsurgency policies. The opinions expressed here belong to the author alone.
1David H. Petraeus and James F. Amos, The US Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2007), xlvi. This, of course, is a very simplified depiction of the US approach to counterinsurgency. The first chapter of the manual provides a very good, schematic overview of insurgency challenges and the US counterinsurgency responses. Another concise summary is found in Robert M. Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International 2006), 99–126, and in the first two chapters of Donald W. Hamilton's The Art of Insurgency (Westport, CT: Praeger 1998), 1–38. The theoretical approach to and retrospective analysis of US counterinsurgency operations can be found in D. Michael Shafer's classic study Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of the US Counterinsurgency Policy (Princeton UP 1988). His analysis of the US COIN doctrine and its failures in Greece, the Philippines and in Vietnam is especially penetrating.
2For the intellectual origins and the importance of this concept see Michael Fitzsimmons, ‘Hard Hearts and Open Minds? Governance, Identity and the Intellectual Foundations of Counterinsurgency Strategy’, Journal of Strategic Studies 31/3 (June 2008), 337–65; esp. 347–52.
3Petraeus and Amos, The US Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, 294.
4Robert Bruce Ware, ‘A Multitude of Evils: Mythology and Political Failure in Chechnya’, in Richard Sakwa (ed.), Chechnya: From Past to Future (London: Anthem Press 2005), 88.
5Pavel K. Baev, ‘Chechnya and the Russian Military: A War Too Far?’, in Sakwa, Chechnya, 29.
6Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven: Yale UP 1998), 2.
7Tracey C. German, Russia's Chechen War (New York: RoutledgeCurzon 2003), 1.
8Matthew Evangelista, The Chechen Wars: Will Russia go the Way of the Soviet Union (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press 2002), 8. This article tends to disagree with Evangelista's thesis and generally stays true to the ‘domino-theory’ arguments.
9Tony Wood, Chechnya: The Case for Independence (London: Verso 2007).
10Anne Nivat, Chienne de Guerre: A Woman Reporter behind the Lines of the War in Chechnya (New York: PublicAffairs 2001), vii.
11Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (New York UP 1998), 366.
12The weakness of the historicist argument is outlined by Robert Bruce Ware in Sakwa, Chechnya, 88–90.
13Anna Politovskaya, A Dirty War (London: The Harvill Press 2001).
14Nikolai Grodienskii, Pervaya Chechenskaya (Minsk: FUAinform 2007), 311.
15Lajos F. Szászdi, Russian Civil-Military Relations and the Origins of the Second Chechen War (Lanham, MD: UP of America 2008).
16See for example the articles by Thomas de Waal, ‘A Journalist Reflects on the Two Wars in Chechnya,’ Central Asian Survey 22/4 (2003), 465–8 and Fiona Hill, Anatol Lieven, and Thomas De Waal, A Spreading Danger: Time for a New Policy Toward Chechnya (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2005). Lieven also published a retrospective piece in 2000 where he underlines the differences between the two wars and warned against Russophobia in Western media. Anatol Lieven, ‘Through a Distorted Lens: Chechnya and the Western Media’, Current History 99 (Oct. 2000), 321–8. See also Lieven's ‘Against Russophobia’, Peace Research Abstracts 39/ 1 (2002), 3–152.
17The best comparative study of the two wars so far is the very short and overtly tactical work by Olga Oliker from RAND, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000: Lessons from Urban Combat (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 2001). James Hughes' book Chechnya: From Nationalism from Jihad (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2007) also gives a good comparison of the two wars from a political perspective.
18Richard H. Shultz Jr and Andrea J. Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: Warriors of Contemporary Combat (New York: Columbia UP 2006), 104.
19Ian F. W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies: Guerrilla and their Operations since 1750 (New York: Routledge 2001), 217.
20Michael C. Flower, Amateur Soldiers, Global Wars (London: Praeger Security International 2005), 66.
21Wyn Q. Bowen, ‘The Dimensions of Asymmetric Warfare’, in Andrew Dorman et al. (eds), The Changing Face of Military Power: Joint Warfare in an Expeditionary Era (New York: Palgrave 2002), 15.
22Gall and de Waal, Chechnya, 37.
23See, for instance, Chapter 3 in Ivan Arreguin-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict (New York: Cambridge UP 2005). In the Murid conflict that stretched for more than a quarter of the century, forces of the Imperial Russia have actually prevailed over the insurgency in 1859. For more background to this early Russian counterinsurgency success see, V.G. Gadzhiev, ‘Social'no-politicheskie prichini, dvizhushie sil'y i kharakter’ dvizhenia gortsev Severo-Vostochnogo Kavkaza v 1829–1859 gg.’, in B.G. Aliev et al. (eds), Narodno-osvobodite'noe dvizhenie gorzev Dagestana i Chechni v 20–50h godah XIX v. (Mahachkala: Dagestanskii Nauchnii Centr’ RAN 1994), 18–29. Even though the volume covers the proceedings of the conference concerned with the liberation movements in the Caucasus in the 1920s and 1950s, it provides sufficient background to the conflict. A good background of Russian relations with Chechnya and the Caucasus is contained in the recent Aleksandr Lahovskii, Zacharovannie Svobodoi (Moskva: DetektivPress 2006), 7–118; especially the chapters about the three Imans – the Muslim spiritual leaders. For the general history of the Chechen people and Chechnya see the recent and very readable Moshe Gammer's The Lone Wolf and The Bear: Three Centuries of Chechen Defiance of Russian Rule (University of Pittsburgh Press 2006).
24Christopher Panico, Conflicts in the Caucasus: Russia's War in Chechnya (London: The Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism 1995), 3.
25Panico, Conflicts in the Caucasus: Russia's War in Chechnya, 4.
26As Lieven writes, Yeltsin would have probably accepted a political settlement similar to that made by Tatarstan. Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power, 84.
27David R. Stone, Military History of Russia: From Ivan the Terrible to the War in Chechnya (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International 2006), 244.
28John B. Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1998), 209.
29Cited in German, Russia's Chechen War, 129.
30Shultz and Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias, 122–3.
31Pontus Siren, ‘The Battle for Grozny: The Russian Invasion of Chechnia, December 1994–December 1996’, in Ben Fowkes (ed.), Russia and Chechnia: The Permament Crisis. Essays on Russo-Chechen Relations (London: Macmillan 1998), 110. Even though Grachev fervently denies this, his remarks have been well documented by both Russian and Western sources. For instance see Stone, Military History of Russia, 244 and Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 9.
32Lester W. Grau, ‘Changing Russian Urban Tactics: The Aftermath of the Battle for Grozny’, US Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, July 1995, <www.army.mil/fmso/documents/grozny.htm>.
33Ibid.
34Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 9. Even General Troshev admits of simplistic strategic thinking by the higher echelons of the Russian Army in his highly politicized memoirs. Genadii Troshev, Moya Voina (Moskva: Vagrius 2004), 13.
35Lahovskii, Zacharovannie Svabodoi, 309.
36Quentin E. Hodgson, ‘Is the Russian Bear Learning? An Operational and Tactical Analysis of the Second Chechen War, 1999–2002’, Journal of Strategic Studies 26/2 (June 2003), 80.
37Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 72–3.
38The neatly-designed but ultimately flawed, three-staged assault plan on Grozny is described by Grodienskii, Pervaya Chechenskaya, 294–5. According to Grachev, the whole Grozny operation, including the pacification of the civilian population and stabilizing the political situation, should not have taken more than 24 days!
39Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power, 111.
40Grodienskii, Pervaya Chechenskaya, 413.
41Bruce Nelan, ‘Why it all went so very wrong’, Time.com, 16 Jan. 1995, <www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,982351,00.html>.
42Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror, 63.
43Grodienskii, Pervaya Chechenskaya, 313.
44Cited in Grodienskii, Pervaya Chechenskaya, 417.
45Svante E. Cornell, ‘International Reactions to Massive Human Rights Violations: The Case of Chechnya’, Europe-Asia Studies 51/1 (Jan. 1999), 87–8.
46Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 22.
47Sebastian Smith, Allah's Mountains: The Battle for Chechnya (London: I.B. Tauris 2001), 176.
48Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 34.
49Pavel K. Baev, ‘The Trajectory of the Russian Military: Downsizing, Degeneration, and Defeat’, in Seven E. Miller and Dmitri V. Trenin (eds), The Russian Military: Power and Policy (Cambridge: American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2004), 53.
50Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 34–5.
51Cornell, ‘International Reactions to Massive Human Rights Violations: The Case of Chechnya’, 86.
52Nelan, ‘Why it all went so very wrong’.
53Pavel K. Baev, ‘The Russian Army and Chechnya: Victory Instead of Reform?’, in Stephen J. Cimbala (ed.), The Russian Military into the Twenty-First Century (London: Frank Cass 2001), 76.
54German, Russia's Chechen War, 152.
55Szászdi, Russian Civil-Military Relations and the Origins of the Second Chechen War, 64.
56Ingmar Oldberg, The War on Terrorism in Russian Foreign Policy (Stockholm: Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut (FOI) 2006), 8.
57Anatol Lieven, ‘Nightmare in the Caucasus’, Washington Quarterly 23/1 (1999), 158–9.
58For an excerpt of Victor Chernomyrdin's message that indicated Russian government's willingness to meet the demands of the Chechen fighters, see German, Russia's Chechen War, 140.
59It was this incident that betrayed the coolly composed exterior of the Russian leader and gave a hint that the second war in Chechnya would be different from the first. Using the lingo reminiscent of the Russian underworld, Putin pledged to ‘wipe them [Chechens] out in the shithouse’ (mochit’ ih v sortire). Tony Wood, Chechnya: The Case for Independence, 97.
60There is still no concrete evidence that Chechen terrorists were responsible for the explosions. Speculations have given rise to conspiracies about the Russian security forces planting the bombs, but this too is unlikely. Robert Bruce Ware, ‘A Multitude of Evils: Mythology and Political Failure in Chechnya’, in Sakwa, Chechnya: From Past to Future, 90–6, gives a good description and an interesting analysis of the Sept. 1999 bombings in Russia. An investigative account is also provided by Evangelista, 80–4 and by Szászdi, Russian Civil-Military Relations and the Origins of the Second Chechen War, 309–14.
61Wood, Chechnya: The Case for Independence, 99–100.
62Szászdi, Russian Civil-Military Relations and the Origins of the Second Chechen War, 156.
63Politovskaya, A Dirty War, 196–7.
64Ramzan Kadyrov has succeeded his father as the president of Chechnya. He maintains a 10,000-strong personal army and continues his father's pro-Moscow policies. See for instance Claire Bigg, ‘Chechnya: Is Kadyrov Maintaining Hold On Power?’, RFE/RL Newsline, 27 April 2008, <www.rferl.org/content/Article/1109638.html>.
65 Zachistki refer to cleansing operations or raids often conducted by special forces. Maria Bondarenko and Andrei Riskin ‘Body Guards of Kadyrov are worse than Russian zachistki’ (in Russian) ng.ru, 31 March 2003, <www.ng.ru/regions/2003-03-31/9_kadyrov.html>.
66Wood, Chechnya: The Case for Independence, 104–5.
67Brett C. Jenkinson, ‘Tactical Observations from the Grozny Combat Experience’ (MA Thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College 2002), 59.
68E. Pain and R. R. Love, ‘The Second Chechen War: the Information Component’, Military Review 80/4 (2000), 54.
69Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 63.
70Graeme P. Herd, ‘The “Counter-Terrorist Operation” in Chechnya: “Information Warfare” Aspects’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies 13/4 (Dec. 2000), 63.
71‘USA calls back the journalists from Chechnya’ (in Russian) Lenta.ru, 31 Dec. 1999. <http://lenta.ru/vojna/1999/12/31/reporters/>.
72Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 63.
73Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 63.
74Stone, Military History of Russia, 243.
75For this remark I am thankful to Dr Alex Statiev, who pointed out that, since mercenaries did not belong to the regular conscript army, the Russian public did not care much about kontraktniki, and their deaths could be conveniently written off.
76Theodore P. Gerber, and Sarah E. Mendelson, ‘Casualty Sensitivity in a Post-Soviet Context: Russian Views of the Second Chechen War, 2001–2004’, Political Science Quarterly 123/1 (2008), 66.
77‘Chechnya is ready to give asylum to Bin Laden’, (in Russian) Lenta.ru, 5 Nov. 1999, <http://lenta.ru/russia/1999/11/05/chechnya/laden.htm>.
78Mark A. Smith, ‘The Second Chechen War: Foreign Relations and Russian Counter-Reaction’, in Anne Aldis (ed.), The Second Chechen War (Shrivenham, UK: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute in Association with Conflict Studies Research Centre 2000), 128.
79Hodgson, ‘Is the Russian Bear Learning? An Operational and Tactical Analysis of the Second Chechen War, 1999–2002’, 76.
80Baev, ‘Chechnya and the Russian Military: A War Too Far?’, in Sakwa, Chechnya, 77.
81Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 38. For more information about Russian combat tactics see for instance the article by Michael Orr, ‘Better or Just Not So Bad? An Evaluation of Russian Combat Effectiveness in the Second Chechen War’, in Aldis, The Second Chechen War, 82–100.
82This observation was initially made by Quentin E. Hodgson in his article ‘Is the Russian Bear Learning? An Operational and Tactical Analysis of the Second Chechen War, 1999–2002’, Strategic Studies Research Seminar, SIAS, which was subsequently published in the Journal of Strategic Studies.
83Ivan Arreguin-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict, 31.
84Anthony James Joes, Urban Guerrilla Warfare (Lexington: The UP of Kentucky 2007), 141.
85Hodgson, ‘Is the Russian Bear Learning? An Operational and Tactical Analysis of the Second Chechen War, 1999–2002’, 72.
86See for instance the comment about the massive use of air power and artillery in C.W. Blandy, Chechnya, Two Federal Interventions: An Interim Comparison and Assessment (Camberley, UK: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst 2000), 46.
87Dmitri V. Trenin et al., Russia's Restless Frontier: The Chechnya Factor in post-Soviet Russia (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2004), 136.
88‘Putin: Chechen boeviks bereft of external support’ (in Russian) Lenta.ru., 26 Oct. 2000, <http://lenta.ru/vojna/2000/10/26/putin/>. Everything emitting from the Kremlin, and especially from the lips of its officials, has to be taken with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, there must have been some truth to Putin's statements to the French newsarticle La Figaro that fall. In their assessment, Oliker and others, hint at Chechen civilians' weariness with the war. Also see the article by de Waal. Usually critical of Moscow, he also admits that ‘War-weariness has taken hold. Much of Chechnya is peaceful, and work is finally being done to reconstruct the city of Grozny.’ Thomas de Waal, ‘The Chechen silence,’ The Guardian, 12 Oct. 2006, <www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/oct/12/comment.chechnya>.
89Mark Kramer, ‘The Perils of Counterinsurgency: Russia's War in Chechnya’, International Security 29/ 3 (Winter 2004/2005), 11.
90Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 46.
91Ibid., 47.
92Hodgson, ‘Is the Russian Bear Learning? An Operational and Tactical Analysis of the Second Chechen War, 1999–2002’, 72.
93Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 44.
94Ibid., 73–4.
95Some researchers tend to suggest that it is ‘implausible’ that the guerrillas left Grozny ‘because they were losing the battle for the city’ (Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 74). This line of analysis, however, begs the obvious question: if Basaiev and his men did not think the city was lost, why did they try to leave it in the first place? The inconsistencies in the above argument become immediately apparent. As Grozny was reduced to ruins by constant bombardment by Uragan and Grad missile systems and the city faced the real risk of Stalingrad-like siege, boeviks sensed that victory within the urban center was no longer feasible.
96Ibid., 74.
97Troshev, Moya Voina, 335.
98Troshev, Moya Voina, 334 and Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 77.
99Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 1994–2000, 78.
100Robert Garwood, ‘The Russo-Chechen War: The Second Russo-Chechen Conflict (1999 to Date): A Modern Military Operation?’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies 15/3 (Sept. 2002), 71.
101Troshev, Moya Voina, 337.
102Troshev, Moya Voina, 344.
103Vladimir Muhin, ‘Why did they fire General Troshev’ (in Russian) ng.ru, 20 Dec. 2002, <www.ng.ru/politics/2002-12-20/3_troshev.html>.
104Politovskaya, A Dirty War, 170.
105Andrei Korbut, ‘The army changes tactics’ (in Russian) ng.ru., 7 March 2000, <www.ng.ru/politics/2000-03-07/1_change.html>.
106‘Bands of boeviks in Chechnya are almost totally liquidated’ (in Russian) Izbestia.ru, 21 Jan. 2002, <www.izvestia.ru/news/news8301>.
107Anatol Lieven, ‘Chechnya and the Laws of War’, in Trenin et al., Russia's Restless Frontier, 209.
108Mike Bowker, ‘Western Views of the Chechen Conflict’, in Sakwa, Chechnya, 223. See also Evangelista, The Chechen Wars: Will Russia go the Way of the Soviet Union, 180.
109Philip Sabin, ‘Western Strategy in the New Era: the Apotheosis of Air Power?’, in Andrew Dorman et al. (eds) The Changing Face of Military Power: Joint Warfare in an Expeditionary Era (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2002) 95.
110Brian Glyn Williams, ‘From “Secessionist Rebels” to “Al-Qaeda Shock Brigades”: Assessing Russia's Efforts to Extend the Post-September 11th War on Terror to Chechnya’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24/1 (2004) 200. For the US–Russian cooperation see Emil T. Petruncio, U.S.–Russian Cooperation in the War against International Terrorism (Washington DC: National Defense University, National War College 2002).
111Hughes, Chechnya: From Nationalism to Jihad, 113.
112For an interesting analysis of the war in Chechnya and Russian democracy see Thomas Sherlock, ‘The Wars in Chechnya and the Decay of Russian Democratization’, in James J. F. Forested (ed.) Countering Terrorism and Insurgency in the 21st Century, Vol. III (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International 2007), 334–51.
113Roger W. Barnett, Asymmetrical Warfare: Today's Challenges to US Military Power (Washington DC: Brassey's Inc. 2003), 83.
114Hodgson, ‘Is the Russian Bear Learning? An Operational and Tactical Analysis of the Second Chechen War, 1999–2002’, 85.
115This is not to say that less democratic countries are barred from pursuing the Russian COIN strategy.
116Zahar Vinogradov, ‘The second Chechen campaign: the victory year’ (in Russian) ng.ru., 6 Oct. 2000, <www.ng.ru/regions/2000-10-06/4_campania.html>. Some Western scholars disagree. For example, in his evaluation of counterinsurgency success, Cassidy does not include the Second Chechen War.
117Trenin et al., Russia's Restless Frontier, 76.
118Alexander Cherkasov and Dmitry Grushkin, ‘The Chechen Wars and Human Rights in Russian’, in Sakwa, Chechnya, 132. That the war had reached new heights of barbarity was illustrated by President Putin himself, who at Christmas 2000 personally presented ‘hunting knives to Russian troops serving in Chechnya’. Hughes, Chechnya: From Nationalism to Jihad, 112. The symbolism needs no explanation.
119S.A. Tyushkevich, ‘Shaping military ideology’, Military Thought, Oct.–Dec. 2004, <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JAP/is_4_13/ai_n15627757>.
120Alister Horne's A Savage War of Peace (London: Macmillan 1977) has become a standard read about the French military-diplomatic efforts against the breakaway colony of Algeria. For the bloody battle of Algiers that the French forces had eventually won by suppressing the insurgency by brutal force see Horne, 183–207. See also the Russian news article by Evgenii Krutikov, ‘Alien war: military experience in Algiers is still relevant’ (in Russian) Izvestia.ru, 29 June 2001, <www.izvestia.ru/russia/article1877/>.
121Millions of dollars aimed at the reconstruction of Chechen republic and its cities have been misappropriated and ‘lost’. At one instance over two billion had ‘vanished without a trace’. See for instance Trenin et al., Russia's Restless Frontier, 37–8.