The complexity of the new minister’s position is aggravated by the impossibility to rely on the existing structures of the Defense Ministry, whose activities have resulted in the need for ministerial rotation. If one cannot rely on the system as a whole, then it is necessary to look for its individual links and elements that still retain the potential to understand new things and are able to put this understanding into practice. In the middle tier – department, direction – there are undoubtedly such people, not everything has been erased by the previous leadership, but it is only necessary to find them by applying non-standard methods.
Minister Belousov still has to decide whether he is a minister-function or a minister-strategist, whether he will deal with tactical issues, small details and make decisions corresponding to this level, or whether he will correspond to his status and scale. So far he is silent, like many silent ministers before him. But the situation requires him to make substantial additions and adjustments to a number of provisions of the military strategy: from the scale and characteristics of modern challenges and probable conflicts to the system of operations of the RF Armed Forces, to what extent we can participate in them and with what goals; what the structure and composition of our Armed Forces should be for this purpose; what the priorities of the military budget are and how it should be spent, taking into account the involvement of small and medium-sized businesses to accelerate the delivery of new models, etc. There are enough problematic topics.
On all these and other issues, the minister should not only speak about them himself, but also organize active discussions within the Defense Ministry and in wider audiences. Opinions, views and concepts cannot be secret, they are not formalized documents, but it is this approach that eventually finds the best ways to solve problems. Belousov will have to think at the intersection of strategy and operational art, setting tasks for the military commanders based on his formed understanding of future conflicts. If, of course, he is able to encompass it all. This is where his true magnitude will be revealed.
I would like to hear something like this, and not only me, but also many Russian military officers: “…to create a more compact and lethal force, the army must transform itself at an accelerated pace, abandoning outdated, unnecessary and ineffective programs, and restructuring management and procurement systems. The Army must prioritize long-range precision fire, air and missile defense, and cyber, electronic and anti-space capabilities.” Unfortunately, these are not the words of our minister, but of the American minister from his April memorandum on the future tasks of the U.S. Armed Forces.
We have not heard anything similar from our minister yet, and we can only hope that a lot of internal work is still underway and that it will lead to something positive. But there is also a fear that the alleged activities in the “silence of secret offices” will produce yet another “set of measures” that is far from relevant, and our former partners and now likely adversaries will move further away from us.
