Steps towards the professional military in Kazakhstan and Russia

Bektas Baktybayev
https://tengrinews.kz/kazakhstan_news/chislo-voennoslujaschih-po-kontraktu-rastet-v-kazahstane-268671/

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_49598.htm

http://unipath-magazine.com/kazakhstan-pursues-peacekeeping/

http://www.time.kz/articles/territory/2016/10/04/voennaja-trevoga

http://www.kazpravda.kz/news/obshchestvo/chislo-kontraktnikov-v-kazahstanskoi-armii-ozvuchilo-minoboroni/

http://militaryarms.ru/armii-mira/sluzhba-po-kontraktu/

http://politrussia.com/vooruzhennye-sily/kak-zashchishchat-rodinu-239/

http://www.zakonia.ru/theme/otmena-prizyva-v-armiju-uzhe-skoro-ili-nikogda-14-07-2016

https://sarbaz.kz/ru/analytics/za-i-protiv-chto-dast-uvelichenie-sroka-srochnoy-slugby-v-armii-kazahstana-162921548/

https://books.google.kz/books?hl=en&lr=&id=VPtzf6i6U6sC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=desch+civilian+control+of+the+military&ots=xVhy6HenzD&sig=iojnCSc8kE83rM4FuSa__3ohcPs&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=desch%20civilian%20control%20of%20the%20military&f=false

Kazakhstan and Russia are fraternal and friendly states in the Post-Soviet region. Both states are close partners in the spheres of economy, politics and military-technical cooperation. At the beginning of the twenty first century both states have aimed to professionalize their militaries.  It would be interesting to compare what Kazakhstan and Russia have achieved so far in the process of professionalization.

The contract system of manning the Armed Forces was imposed in 2002 in Kazakhstan. It was because of necessity of having a small, highly mobile and professional army. Since there is no direct threat to the national security, the prior task for Kazakhstan is to gather a professional army which is capable of handling the low intensity and medium intensity conflicts. NATO has played a major role in the process of professionalization of Kazakhstani army as a part of practical cooperation between Kazakhstan and NATO.

Initially, Kazakhstan set a goal to fully professionalize the military by 2013. However, there are still conscripts in Kazakhstani army. According to the last statistics, 15000 conscripts are inducted each year. To be fair it is worth mentioning that Kazakhstan made a significant progress in the professionalization of the army. For example, the proportion of the professionals to the total army increased from 40 % in 2002 to 80 % in 2016. This growth can be explained by the social and material support from the state to contract-based soldiers. There are also other reasons for the creation of the professional army, such as expense reduction due to the decrease in the number of conscripts and the necessity to be adapted to diverse security environment.

Russia is different in its process of professionalization of the army compared to Kazakhstan. Russian first president Yeltsin wanted to professionalize the military after the First Chechen war, where Russian military suffered heavy losses among the conscripts. Contract based soldiers demonstrated high military training and high fighting capacity in the First Chechen war compared to the conscripts. Russia had no opportunities to professionalize and reform their military till the beginning of the 2000’s because of economic difficulties as well as other reasons provided by the Desch. He argued that the Yeltsin’s aim was to reform the military by reducing its size, rooting out corruption, depoliticizing it, modernizing it by putting it on a professional, volunteer basis, and high technology. However, the military has consistently resisted most of these reforms.

As the result of the professionalization process the number of conscripts decreased  twice from 2000’s to 2016. At present, Russia has a mixed principle of manning the Armed Forces compared to Kazakh counterpart, where the number of professionals is much higher than the number of the soldiers. According to the statistics of 2015, the number of contract-based soldiers and conscripts in Russia are 300,000 and 270,000 respectively.

The first steps in the professionalization of the Russian military was unsuccessful during Ivanov’s rule in MOD. Government did not provide enough material and financial support to the contract-based soldiers. The situation started to change during the rule of Shoygu. According to the estimated data, half a million contract based soldiers will serve in the military by 2020 and the number of conscripts will keep decreasing.

To conclude, we can notice the growing proportion of professionals to the total army force in the militaries of Kazakhstan and Russia. However, the governments of both states are not going to fully professionalize their military in the near future. This is due to the fact that there is no consensus among officials regarding the professionalization of the army.

Posters in Pakistan Urge a General to Take Control of the Government

Gulnaz Takauova

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/16/world/asia/pakistan-raheel-sharif-nawaz-sharif.html?_r=0

http://www.dawn.com/news/1270214

Huntington, Samuel P. 1957. The Soldier and the State the Theory and Politics of Civil-

Military Relations. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

      On July 15th, 2016, 13 major cities of Pakistan were filled with banners urging the Pakistani Army chief, General Raheel Sharif to overthrow the current inefficient government and take control over the country. The photograph of the General Sharif with the text “For God’s sake, take over” below his picture were featured by the political party “Move On Pakistan”.

      The campaign organiser Ali Hashmi together with supporters of this idea begged the General Sharif to establish the martial law regime and supervise the country himself. In response it was said that the Pakistani Army doesn’t have anything to do with this activity. This is not the first case of such posters being featured in Pakistani streets. On February after the General’s announcement of his plans to retire by the end of the year, such posters begging him to prolong his military service, appeared in major cities of Pakistan.

      These posters immediately resulted in rumors about the military attempting a coup. However, it is not a new issue in Pakistan since it had experienced 4 military coups since its establishment. These coups were largely the result of the civilian disdain of the inefficient government. Also the Prime Minister, Nawaz Shariff who has served for the 3rd time is becoming increasingly unpopular because of the corruption allegations on his side.

      As we have seen the Pakistani Army Chief Raheel Shariff is a very popular person around which the cult of personality is built. He is seen as the only person able to bring peace and stability to Pakistan, whereas on the other side people are highly distrustful of the civilian leadership.

     Coup d’etat- seizure of power by military is the main concern in works about civil-military relations. Many authors of CMR emphasize the idea that the military entity created to protect the state has sufficient powers to become a major threat to that state. Therefore there is a big concern on how to ensure that the military agent is doing the civilian bidding. However, recent cases show that Pakistani people actually trust more in military’s ability to effectively lead the country rather than the civilian leadership’s ability. Comparing to other countries, the military in Pakistan enjoys substantial powers and is known as "the state within a state". In this case, if the civilian leadership is unable to govern the state effectively should the military step in and take control of everything? And is the theory of objective control of the military by Samuel Huntington – depoliticizing the military and making it voluntarily subordinate to the civilian control applicable to the Pakistani case?

Ministry of Defense in India does not Manage to Deal with Military Procurement

Viktoriya Malikova

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/create-unit-outside-defence-ministry-to-fast-track-defence-deals-panel-to-tell-govt-4505063/

According to Giraldo, bureaucracy is one of the factors that first comes to mind when the theme of the Ministry of Defense is raised. Girardo cites Weber and mentions that one the advantages of bureaucracy is its aim at high effectiveness and its “technical superiority” (Giraldo 2008, 72). At the same time, however, he mentions that bureaucracy in military sphere is more complex than it may seem; and that all MODs are different. Another problem with this approach may be found in the case of India. One of the greatest and most important problems of bureaucracy is known to be time periods necessary to obtain a desired object through its system. To be as effective as Weber described it, bureaucracy needs to be like a very precise machine, each part of which works perfectly coherently and smoothly. It is, however, not the case in the reality. For many reasons, including the human factor, bureaucracy often becomes something contrary to the Weberian ideal and contributes to decrease in efficiency. This happens even when we talk about military sector, which may seem to be strange as defense is state’s priority and if it does not work effectively, the state may be in a danger. But India’s case is an example of it.

The main problem that Indian military sector is facing is delays in procurements. After regular and multiple repetitions of this problem, it was proposed to create a special committee in India in addition to the ministry of defense, which would deal exclusively with the defense procurement. This organization is also aimed at dealing with the problem of corruption which is flourishing during process of tender competitions.

This is planned to be an organization which would be independent from the MOD. In this case an interesting question to ask would be whether this organization will include acting members of the military and if yes, it would undermine the civil control. In any case, this will be a widening of the bureaucracy and it is questionable whether indeed it could contribute to the increase in efficiency of military procurement.

Nevertheless, this would mean further division of power and it supports Giraldo’s claim about complexity of institutions exercising the civil control over military. The point is that the division between civilian and military is not as simple as it may seem to be because there are various divisions inside of both military and civilian sectors. For example, the civilian control is exercised by legislative and executive branches which do not always agree with each other. Moreover, Indian case shows that sometimes executive branch, in particular, the MODs may be ineffective to the extent that they require an additional independent organization to deal with certain issues, in this case the procurement.

_____________
References:
Giraldo J. K.  “Legislatures and National Defense: Global Comparisons” In Who Guards the Guardians and How:Democratic Civil-Military Relations. Editors: Bruneau, Thomas C., and Scott D. Tollefson. 2008. University of Texas Press.

Military courts in Lebanon

By: Viktoriya Malikova, Associate Editor

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/lebanons-protesters-arrested-civilian-rallies-tried-military-courts-995284779
http://www.dawn.com/news/1307715
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/26/lebanon-civilians-tried-military-courts

In his book, Huntington emphasizes importance of objective civilian control of the military, claiming that military is professional in management of violence, but not in the management of the state. So, the military may have a right to make certain decisions concerning army or, at least argue, that those decisions are indeed necessary and would be useful for society. But in any case it should not interfere in the politics. This balance, however, is difficult to achieve as the demands and suggestions of military often intersect with the other policies of the state. It was also highlighted by Posen in his discussion of the military doctrine, that grand strategy is about survival of the state and it covers military, social and economic aspects. However, drawing borders among these aspects can be very difficult. For example, during distribution of the budget it may be challenging to find a balanced way of distributing budgets among social care, investments into economics and satisfaction of military needs as each sector would consider itself to be the most important and will demand a bigger share.
Thus, the civilian control is not easy as it demands finding balance for many factors. However, one example of why the civilian control is so necessary and important can be Lebanon case, where the military courts were given a right to try the civilians who are suspected in terrorism or other type of threat to the state (participation in protests, for example). Military courts, trying military people is fitting into Huntington theory of objective control.  However, when the military officers start to determine sentence of civilians, it is a clear example of violation of the civilian control. This is a case of military interfering into the politics and of a sharp increase in political power of the military.
The example of Lebanon shows that this expansion of military power leads to multiple abuses of human rights, such as use of torture during the interrogations. The law allows even children being sent to the military court. It results in vagueness and blurring the line between the cases that are under the management of the civilian courts and the cases under the management of the military. So, potentially, any suspect may be sent to the military court. Moreover, these trials are conducted behind the closed door, so there is not even a hint at transparency in this situation. Due to all this, the idea of military courts trying civilians rose high international condemnation, in particular of the Human Rights Watch organization.
This initiative at the beginning was put into practice for the period of two years and this period has expired in the January this year. The main political parties now debate with the government and argue in favor for taking away the right to try civilians from the military courts.
This case is an example of how the military control can be dangerous. The protection of state sometimes needs drastic measures. This solution of Lebanon’s government two years ago to allow military court try civilians was aimed at providing more security. At that time there was a serious threat of terrorism as it was right after the terrorist attack in 2015. However, the experience shows that decrease of the civilian control undermines protection of human rights and leads to abuse of power by military.

____________
References:

Huntington, S. (1957). The soldier and the state (1st ed.). Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Posen, Barry R. 1986. Chapter I In The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars. Cornell University Press.

Bring out the big guns

Zhandos Bolatbek

The current President of Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, announced that he would put forward an executive order which will deploy army troops in combating illicit drug industry. This is the latest development in Duterte’s ongoing war on drugs, his signature campaign pledge. Supposedly, Duterte started to bring in the “heavy artillery” not because the of the escalation of the war on drugs, but because he claims he does not trust the police, as he believes the police enforcement structure is riddled with corruption. Therefore he ordered that all police units cease to operate in the war on drugs. No confirmation has been made of the exact number of troops which will be deployed in the war on drugs as of now.

The employment of military in the domestic civilian issues runs counter to the Huntington’s idea of “professionalization of the army” (Huntington, 1957). As is usually the case with mixing military into the obligations of police enforcement, they are usually associated with extra-judicial killingsand summary executions, that is, the military shoots suspects to kill on sight regardless of the possible evidence of their guilt. Thus, while police usually have some form of accountability towards the civilians, military usually have very little accountability towards citizens, as they strictly follow the chain of command. And in this case, if the President of the country drafts them into the matters of civilians, there is likely to be a lot of cases of military abusing their right to kill. That is exactly the concern of the watchdog Human Rights Watch which disapproved of the President’s executive order due to martial extra-judicial killings, especially in the fight against Communist rebels. Reportedly, 7,600 people have already been terminated in the course of time since Duterte came to power. The death rate is likely to increase since the army is not used to exercising caution in urban locales during the battles and there are likely to be more innocent civilian casualties caught in the crossfire during the shootouts.

Retaining the professionalization of the army means keeping military out of domestic issues and focusing them solely on external protection, the very essence of the existence of the military. With bringing in the army, Duterte is a small step close to declaring a martial law, the option he ruled out. With the current developments in Philippines, the rate of professionalization of the army is likely to wane while the Rodrigo Duterte stays in power, who much like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, opportunistically hypes the domestic threats and take advantage of tampering with the military and democratic order in their respective states.

Reference:

1.      Huntington, Samuel P. 1957. The Soldier and the State the Theory and Politics of Civil- Military Relations. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

2.      http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/philippines-president-rodrigo-duterte-war-on-drugs-military-support-executive-order-afp-illegal-kill-a7558596.html

Secretary Problem

Dauren Koptleuov

Recent Donald Trump’s signing of the executive order designed to restrict access of seven Middle East countries to the United States sparkled a massive debate around it. According to The Guardian (Siddiqui, 2017) this executive order applies to the refugees and immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia. Besides common public concern about the future of refugees and discrimination of Muslim states, there are also considerations amongst the military men. As NY Times (Cooper, 2017) states, Pentagon is not quite comfortable with Trump’s decision. For example, military officials consider Iraq an ally after overturn of Hussein’s regime; and a considerable amount of efforts and money are spent on military campaigns fighting terrorism and autocracy.

Quite an interesting role in this situation is devoted to the newly appointed Secretary of Defence, James Mattis. On the one hand, his appointment is one of uncommon decisions of Mr. Trump. On the other hand, according to NY Times (2017), Mattis is quite concerned about the current situation:

“This kind of thing is causing us great damage right now, and it’s sending shock waves through the international system”.

This, however, is not an end to dilemma that stands before the Secretary: Politico (Wright et al., 2017) states that democrats as well as some republicans from the Senate decided to grant permission to Mattis to hold position of Secretary with hope that he would be “reining in a president-elect who has unorthodox views on matters of war and peace”. Mad Dog seems to be caught in the middle: officials as well as rallying civilians appear to be highly dissatisfied because of immigration ban, while Mr. President certainly relies on support of his colleagues, especially those who were personally chosen by him. This situation is intensified by the fact that Trump fires US general attorney in several hours after she was reluctant to approve his executive order about immigration ban (Smith et al., 2017).

Eventually, let us shift to the brief discussion of how the case appointment of Mr. Mattis can be significant in the context of the civil-military relations. Generally, it challenges fundamental theory of Samuel Huntington (1957), general principle of which is: military stays out of politics. In other words, in order to preserve objective civilian control, Secretary of Defense should not be military person, because it potentially may cause a conflict between civilians and military, so the latter should completely obey. What is more interesting is that both the President and the Senate, technically speaking, made a decision to appoint Mattis with different purposes and both rely on Secretary’s support. Such setting may cause tensions not only between military and civilian sector, but also within the government itself. Therefore, it can be said that James Mattis becomes one of the key figures of the United States straightforwardly after appointment. Internal security of the state (possibility of armed protests, insurgencies, and coups) as well as civil-military relations seem to depend considerably on the rightfulness of his choice whether to oppose, agree or give a “frank advice” to Mr. Trump’s in the light of recent events.

References:

Cooper, H. (2017). Trump’s Signing of Immigrant Ban Puts Pentagon in Uncomfortable Light. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 28 January 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/politics/trump-immigration-ban-muslims-military.html?_r=0

Huntington, S. (1957). The soldier and the state (1st ed.). Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Siddiqui, S. (2017). Trump signs 'extreme vetting' executive order for people entering the US. the Guardian. Retrieved 28 January 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/27/donald-trump-muslim-refugee-ban-executive-action

Smith, D., Ackerman, S., & Jacobs, B. (2017). Sally Yates fired by Trump after acting US attorney general defied travel ban. the Guardian. Retrieved 30 January 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/30/justice-department-trump-immigration-acting-attorney-general-sally-yates

Wright, A., Herb, J., Bender, B., Schor, E., & Griffiths, B. (2017). Democrats’ role for Mattis: The anti-Trump. POLITICO. Retrieved 25 January 2017, from http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/james-mattis-confirmation-hearing-takeaways-233550

Trump to increase the US military spending

Gulnaz Takauova

Links: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/01/27/draft-executive-order-shows-how-trump-wants-to-grow-the-u-s-military-significantly/?utm_term=.48ec62087b15

http://www.defensenews.com/articles/report-draft-executive-order-would-give-pentagon-short-term-funding-boost

http://www.republicanviews.org/republican-views-on-military-spending/

Fordham, Benjamin. 2001. "Military Interests and Civilian Politics: The influence of the civil-military "Gap" on peacetime military policy." In Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security, by Richard H.Kohn Peter D.Feaver. MIT press.

On Friday, January 27, President Donald Trump, have signed an executive draft order what he called “The great rebuilding of the Armed Forces” aiming to sufficiently increase the military army size it’s and funding.

The executive draft charged the Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis to conduct what is called a “Readiness Review”.  For 30 days the Defense Secretary is required to re-examine the US national strategy and provide a plan to bolster the military. This includes the plan for the future training of soldiers, modernization of weaponry, equipment and infrastructure. In addition, the order was mandating the increased military funding and increased amount of troops in the Army. According to the Washington Post, these are the necessary steps to prepare the United States for the war against the ISIS.

According to the various speeches during his presidential campaign, Trump aims to increase the number of soldiers to 540,000, Navy fleet to 350 ships, Air Force fighters to 1,200 and also the number of Marine Corps infantry battalions to 36. In contrast, during the Barack Obama’s leadership, the Army shrunk to the smallest number since before the World War II.  At the end of November 2013 the Army number reached 470,465 soldiers and Obama wanted to continue this trend until the Army would reach 450,000 soldiers in 2018.

However, this is not the first case when the US military spending had been fluctuating under the leadership of different Presidents. The military spending is one aspect of the US budget that has been changing throughout all of its history. It rose under Presidents Raegan and Bush but has been substantially cut under Presidents Clinton and Obama. And now the military spending again is being raised by the President Donald Trump. What can be accounted for these changes?

According to the Feaver and Kohn, authors of the book “Soldiers and the State”, the partisanship and ideology play a crucial role in shaping the preferences on military spending. The authors argue that since 1960s Republicans became highly supportive of military spending   while the Democrats’ opinion towards the defense spending generally tend to unite into opposition. This trend is seen nowadays as under the Democrat President Barack Obama the US defense spending was substantially cut and under Republican President Donald Trump it was dramatically increased. 

Failure or Success? Mystery around the Trident missile.

Aidana Sapuan

Links: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/23/theresa-may-briefed-trident-missile-test-allegedly-misfired2/

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/22/missile-failure-off-florida-british-leader-wont-say.html

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/23/how-did-the-trident-test-fail-and-what-did-theresa-may-know

On January 23, Defense Secretary Michael Fallon refused to answer the question about the test on Trident nuclear missile system, which has fueled a huge debate at the UK’s House of Commons. The last Trident test-fire, which has been said to be failed, took place on June 2016 near the Florida coast. US officials claim, that unarmed Trident missile “had to be diverted into the ocean to self-destruct” because of an “anomaly”.

            The important question here is not about the safety of the Trident nuclear missile system, which is used by UK since the year of 1994². After all, the purpose of testing machines with such capabilities is to identify the failure and fix it in the future. Neither the test involved any major potential risks, since the missile was unarmed.          The point of interest in this situation is what are the implications of government’s reluctance to be open for UK’s civil-military relations (CMR). 

            Up to this point, the Defense Secretary Michael Fallon and the Prime-Minister Theresa May adopted the tactic of leaving the questions raised by Members of Parliament (MPs) about the missile unanswered. Namely, Fallon repeatedly paraphrases his own words by saying: “The capability and effectiveness of the UK's independent nuclear deterrent is not in doubt and we do not comment on the detail of submarine operations, since it's important to maintain the secrecy of our deterrent”. Though Prime-Minister did not comment on the Trident issue by herself, her official spokeswoman asserts that May was informed about the test, without specifying if it was a success or failure of the missile. Notably, the news about the failure of the test were released only 6 months later the test itself. The week after the failed Trident test, on July 2016, Theresa May urged Parliament to approve the program on renewal of the same nuclear missile system worth of £40billion. With 350 majority vote, the program has entered into force. Does this mean that the main reason for high officials to cover up the Trident-failure was to reassure MPs about a system’s serviceability and ensure the program’s approval? The question is left unanswered unless either May or Fallon give a precise report on the event.

            As I have mentioned in the beginning of this post, the key point here is to explore implications of the ongoing Trident-debate on CMR in UK. If we were to analyze the government’s unwillingness to tell the truth to MPs, would its serve as a good generalizing indicator in assessing UK's CMR. Perhaps, yes. By 4 weeks of class we have covered theories, which focus on what should be the role of the military and how it should be controlled (if at all controlled) to preserve a good state of CMR. But we have a different focus in the situation of UK’s Trident-failure. What seems to be missing in UK’s CMR in this context, are these: 1) the agreement between UK’s Cabinet and MPs, 2) accountability to the citizens of the state. In this regard, though Avant’s theory was built around the US’s unique electoral system, I think it is also applicable to the case of UK (Owens, 2011). That is, the government has a little consensus with MPs on major security issues. With the fear of receiving a disapproval of its initiatives it resorts to hiding the truth from Parliament, as well as the public itself. Moreover, Giraldo's theoretical framework fits in here as well (Bruneau and Tollefson, 2008). In this particular case, the executive (government) prevents the legislature (House of Commons consisting of MPs) from questing for truth about the Trident-missile situation. Does this little capacity of legislature to check and oversight arise from the unique features of UK's political system is another difficult question though.

Bruneau, Thomas C., and Scott D. Tollefson. 2008. Who Guards the Guardians and

            How: Democratic Civil-Military Relations. University of Texas Press.

Owens, Mackubin Thomas. 2011. US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11:       Renegotiating the          Civil-Military Bargain. New York: Bloomsbury   Academic.

Giraldo, Jeanne Kinney. 2008. “Legislatures and National Defense: Global   Comparisons.” In Who       Guards the Guardians and How: Democratic Civil-Military Relations, eds. Thomas C.                 Bruneau and Scott D.  Tollefson. University of Texas Press, 34–70.