Civil–Military Relations in Russia: Conscript vs. Contract Army, or How Ideas Prevail Against Functional Demands

Abstract

The personnel structure and recruitment of armed forces represent major elements of civil-military relations and civilian control. Particularly crucial is the moment of shift from one type of recruitment to another and the factors that facilitate or impede it. The focus of this paper is the case of the Russian Federation during the Medvedev presidency, when renewed efforts were made to cut back conscription in favor of a professional contract-based force. Despite crucial incidents, such as the 2008 Russian-Georgian War that spelled out once more the prevailing inertia of the Russian conscript-based army, military elites have been opposed to a change of the status quo. By analyzing exemplary ideational discourses based on the discursive institutional approach, factors will be elaborated that explain what continues to impede the shift to contract-based recruitment in Russia. In the light of the latest hostilities between Russia and NATO, the prospect of this shift has receded even further into the distance.

Notes

¹ See, for example, Avant (2000), who analyzes the transformation and change from European aristocratic mercenary armies to large-scale 19th century citizen armies. She bases her analysis on a framework that can also serve to explain contemporary changes in military organizations.

² Ideational factors rely on ideas in terms of driving forces for (political) action. One can differentiate between cognitive contents (that elucidate what is) and normative (what is good or what is bad and what should be done about it). In this sense, ideas can be regarded as independent variables that have the potential to demonstrate that no other structural factors can account for change (or continuity) in interests, paths, or norms (cf. Schmidt, 2008, pp. 306–309).

³ Path dependencies can represent an obstacle to institutional change. This can occur in form of resistance by those elites who benefit from existing institutional orders.

⁴ Military isomorphism, according to Pretorius (2008, p. 99), ‘is the phenomenon that weapons and military strategy begin to look the same across the world’. It is argued here that isomorphism might as well occur in terms of recruitment strategies and military personnel organization.

⁵ Modernization is understood here as the process of bringing existing institutions, technologies, or practices into correspondence with those institutions, technologies, and practices that are widely distributed. Generally these are regarded as better or superior to existing alternatives (see also Resende-Santos, 1996, p. 200, fn.18). It must be noted, however, that the shift from conscript to contract force (professionalization) shall not be put on one level with modernization, since the question of which form of recruitment suits which societal or political system remains a contested one in the literature.

⁶ Resende-Santos, by taking the example of South American states that imitated the military systems of France and Germany in the 19th century, explains not only how states in a neorealist sense secured their survival but also how emulation in the field of military security determined the emergence and change of state institutions.

⁷ While 11 out of 16 NATO members maintained conscription in 1990, only 5 out of 28 members today are holding on to compulsory military service (Biehl et al., 2011, p. 32).

⁸ This is also called ‘alliance effect’. It allows a country to benefit from security assurances and makes it adhere to standards of military organization predominant within the alliance.

⁹ In the context of peacekeeping and peace-enforcement missions, the deployment of conscripts is not common anymore.

¹⁰ It needs to be underlined that the question of military professionalization in Russia does not only concern the replacement of a mass-mobilization army with smaller all-volunteer force. Also the reformation of the system of strategic command and control, abolition of hierarchical command chains, elimination of certain officer categories (warrant officers), as well as an increase of the numbers of non-commissioned officers and related to this the transformation of the officer training system are relevant.

¹¹ The victory came at the expense of 64 casualties, several hundred wounded, and a disproportionate amount of destroyed equipment, notably aircraft, on the Russian side. The talk is of the last war of a territorial mass-mobilization army in the 21st century (see the entry on Wikipedia: ‘Russia-Georgia war’).

¹² ‘Ideational discourses’ are not to be understood here as being the opposite of ‘real discourses’, but rather as a type of communicational act that is based on a history of ideas and norms.

¹³ The Ministry of Defence’s Public Council is an institution that was created by the President in 2006 as part of a major attempt to institutionalize civil society activities. Public councils were created at almost all ministries and other national and regional institutions. The official task of the council is to ensure better communication and integration of civil society in questions of security and defense.

¹⁴ Elaborating on the looming effect of existential threats, Sheffer and Barak have argued that so-called CETs (continuous existential threats) are an important factor for countries to preserve compulsory military service and prevent the transformation to an all-volunteer force (Sheffer & Barak, 2010, p. 92).

¹⁵ Civil society representatives, for example, were content that they had their say when the government at last acknowledged the necessity of the shift to a contractual form of military service by gradually reducing the draft call from year to year (interview with activist of Citizen and Army, Moscow, October 2012).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nadja Douglas

Nadja Douglas is a doctoral researcher at the Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences (Humboldt University), focusing in her dissertation project on questions of civilian control of armed forces. She holds a master’s degree in International Affairs and Security Studies from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Paris.