The quotation,from Vladimir Putin’s annual address as president in 2006,neatly summaries the reason why Russia had to press forward with long-overdue reforms of its armed forces.Two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union,Russia was still left with an oversized military organization built for large-scale mobilization and the demands of the Cold War,but highly ineffective for the type of conventional military conflicts that Russia was most likely to become involved in.The rationale behind Russia’s reforms of the armed forces were thus clear long before the war in Georgia,which has often been pointed to as the reason why the reforms were launched in October 2008.President Vladimir Putin’s current period runs out in 2024,when he is due to step down,according to the Constitution.Given the fact that the current political system has been carefully crafted for almost 20 years,it is evident that there is uncertainty about its future.First,it no longer produces wealth for the population.For five years in a row,the real disposable income has been decreasing.Second,the legitimacy of the system could be questioned,since Putin’s popularity figures are going down,and the surge from 2014-2015 has been eradicated.War as well(indeed,the Soviet Union helped fuel conflict and instability),the communist ideology and groups that professed it lost their main backer with the fall of the Soviet Union.Some African states weakened as the result,and coupled with an influx of arms on the global market,it was easy for disparate individuals and groups to carve out areas of influence under the barrel of a gun.In the U.S.,private military companies(PMCs)emerged as“a function of decades of decisions underscored by both the strategic requirement for resources and neoliberal thinking.The desired result to recue costs,gain efficiencies,and create economies of scale”.
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