The Plight of the Russian Military: Shallow Identity and Self-defeating Culture

Abstract

With the arrival of President Putin, the Russian military appeared to overcome the deep structural crisis that had lasted for most of the 1990s. Their identity of a "presidential" institution was reinforced and the contradictory traits in the new military culture were harmonized. That harmony, however, had an unstable foundation of inflated expectations and postponed choices. Putin has produced new blueprints for military reform but the military's bureaucratic self-preservation instinct that had determined the failure of previous efforts is again driving the resistance. The price of failure may be unacceptably high, but Chechnya continues to be a factor that works against downsizing and modernizing the army.