Putin’s War on Terrorism: A Strategic Dead End

Pavel K. Baev is a senior researcher at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). This article draws on a paper presented at the conference “New Security Threats in Eurasia”, held in Stockholm on 19–20 May 2005 and organised by the Central Asia–Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program.

Beslan—the event that requires no explanations and defies any epithet—has marked a crucial watershed in the trajectory of President Vladimir Putin’s counter-terrorist strategy. The applicability of the term “strategy” is certainly questionable, since the existence of a single, integrative aim behind the multi-directional efforts covered by the expression “counter-terrorism” has never been particularly clear in the Russian case. What is increasingly clear, however, is the shift in the net efficiency of these efforts from “reasonably useful” to “nearly senseless” or even “counter productive”. The consequences of this complex failure are accumulating rapidly, and a re-evaluation of the key elements of the Russian strategic course shaped by the challenge of terrorism might provide a clue to assessing their overall utility.

 

There is no need to reiterate the crucial role that a series of terrorist attacks, including two explosions in Moscow, played in securing the transition of power from Boris Yeltsin to his handpicked successor at the end of 1999. Nothing in his undistinguished career had prepared Vladimir Putin for the mission of “crusade” leader, but he rose to the task (perhaps to his own great surprise)—and that determined the centrality of counter-terrorism to his presidency. There is no intention here to question the fact that terrorism has emerged as a major threat to Russia’s security; indeed, in the “quiet” winter of 2005, Moscow itself was spared but not a single week passed without news of explosions and shootouts somewhere in the Russian Federation. While there is a great variety of brands of political extremism in Russia, all terrorist attacks are associated exclusively with one local conflict, so that “terrorism” has become synonymous with “Chechnya”. In fact, the very notion of “counter-terrorist operation” was introduced as a surrogate name for the second Chechen war, in much the same way as the first Chechen war was camouflaged as “disarming illegal armed formations”.

 

There is, however, reason to assume that there is more to this Russian obsession with counter‑terrorism than just the desire to suppress separatism and to destroy several terrorist groupings which might, or might not, be linked to al-Qaeda. Chechnya is certainly an important target in the counter-terrorist strategy but it is definitely not the most important one. It is possible to identify other Russian priority goals, both internal and international.

 

This paper examines the interplay between the war in Chechnya and other aspects of Putin’s war against terrorism, seeking to demonstrate how the contradictions between, as well as within, these separate “compartments” resulted in the now apparent strategic dead-end. Regarding Russia’s domestic policy, the analysis focuses on the instrumental use of counter-terrorism for regime consolidation and for transformation of the military structures. Regarding Russia’s foreign policy, the focus is on Putin’s desire to align his country with the United States’ “global war on terror” and to advance Russia’s influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The Chechnya Vortex

A systematic analysis of the conduct of the Chechen war is beyond the scope of this paper. But one particular point should be emphasised from the start: the Russian leadership has invested consistent effort in isolating the war in every possible way. Politically, a firm line has been drawn on minimising external interference by insisting that the Chechen conflict is an “internal affair” of Russia’s; economically, the system of oil pipelines was reconfigured so as to cut Chechnya off from Caspian fuel supplies; informationally, access to Chechnya was denied to independent media so that the domination of official propaganda was unchallenged.

 

This isolation of the war zone would make perfect sense were Moscow able to decide what sort of victory it is pursuing. That clarity, however, was lacking from the very start, when it had been perfectly possible to aim at a military solution with scorched earth tactics applied to the foothills south of the Terek River. Putin, apparently, has never had the stomach for such Stalinist brutality and so tried to combine forceful pressure with measured support to local loyalists, finding a trustworthy leader in Akhmad Kadyrov. But the Russian federal forces relied on violence of such intensity that Moscow’s half-hearted political manoeuvring was inevitably undermined.

 

Kadyrov’s assassination in Grozny on 9 May 2024 was a huge blow to the policy of “Chechenisation”—delegating combat operations to Chechen militias under the control of the pro-Moscow regime in Chechnya—but Putin still tried to preserve the façade of “normalisation” even when two Russian aeroplanes were blown up in mid-air by terrorists in August 2004. The Beslan school siege and massacre in September 2004 interrupted this public relations campaign for half a year, but in late March 2005, Putin again appeared on television, reviewing together with Kadyrov’s successor as Chechen president, Alu Alkhanov, plans to rebuild several blocks in downtown Grozny and asking about the achievements of the local football team, Terek. What made this retreat into denial possible was not only the visible decline in terrorist activity (as far as Moscow was concerned, at least) but also the killing by Russian forces in early March 2005 of Aslan Maskhadov, the leader of the Chechen resistance, who had declared a truce in the hope of advancing negotiations.

 

The ten-year-old war, however, has often seen a winter pause, while the terrorists after a large‑scale attack normally need time to regroup and train new recruits. Independent Russian experts argue that Maskhadov’s assassination was a strategic mistake that led to further radicalisation of the Chechen resistance and a competition among the warlords for the vacant position of leader. This radicalisation is also driven by the actions of the pro-Moscow militia commanded by Akhmad Kadyrov’s son Ramzan, which terrorises the population with its massive kidnapping campaign and looting. The Russian military was happy to push the dirty work to this militia in order to minimise its own casualties, but the activities of the kadyrovtsy have reached such a level of arrogance and criminal brutality that federal force numbers had to be increased. The maverick junior Kadyrov was until recently Putin’s favourite and even received the order of “Hero of Russia”, but now the Kremlin is contemplating a scheme to make Alkhanov into a “real president” capable of restraining the banditry.

 

Disarming the kadyrovtsy is an option too risky to consider, so the policy-planners in Moscow concentrate on what they know best: parliamentary elections in Chechnya, provisionally scheduled for October. Some Western experts see in these elections a real, and maybe the last, opportunity to advance dialogue and reconciliation in the hugely traumatised republic. Moscow, however, is perfectly aware that elections have recently become a risky business, as the astonishingly successful revolt in Kyrgyzstan in early 2005 has shown yet again. The Kremlin court shows no inclination to experiment with democratic procedures or grass-root aspirations and intends to apply the tested manipulative techniques of “managed democracy”.

 

The policy of deterring terrorism by making local authorities more dependent upon Moscow has been implemented quite consistently despite its obvious shortcomings. Across the whole northern Caucasus, widespread resentment against the corrupt and inefficient structures of power sponsored by the federal centre transforms into Islamic resistance shaped by a network of elementary organisations called jamaats. When earlier this year Russia’s interior minister, Rashid Nurgaliev, proudly reported the destruction of yet another jamaat, Putin reprimanded him for using such confusing terms and ordered that “terrorists” be called by their only real name.

 

This simplistic interpretation of smouldering societal discontent determines the methods of deterring its spread: in several recent operations against rebels in city quarters of Makhachkala (capital of Dagestan) or Nalchik (capital of another Russian republic, Kabardino‑Balkaria) heavy arms, including tanks, were used quite indiscriminately. The public response to these “victories” was rather mixed, so the Federation Council (the upper house of the Russian parliament) in late March 2005 approved changes in the Law on Defence that removed any restrictions on the use of the armed forces in counter-terrorist operations. Tanks, however, are hardly an efficient instrument against jamaats, which are in essence not terrorist cells but grass-root organisations performing crucial social functions. Their influence is not the product of subversive propaganda sponsored by foreign Islamic charities, but the sum of societal responses to the degradation of state machinery and authority. As the meagre results of a massive search-and-destroy operation in Kabardino-Balkaria earlier this year indicated, local authorities now prefer to find a way of coexisting with the jamaats rather than confronting them.

 

The stagnant and deeply criminalised hostilities in Chechnya are now resonating across the North Caucasus, sometimes described as the epicentre of the possible collapse of the Russian Federation. The direct spillover continues to be limited, but such surprise attacks as the June 2004 rebel raid on Nazran, Ingushetia, tend to trigger multiple violent clashes that intensify as local tensions grow. For a long time, Chechnya was an isolated black hole, but now it is rather the eye of the storm engulfing the whole region. Putin pays only occasional attention to this disaster area, preferring the more comfortable virtual reality of reports from his minions that the situation there is “great and improving”. His plenipotentiary envoy, Dmitry Kozak, is denied the support he badly needs.

Putin’s ‘Power Vertical’

Putin arrived in the Kremlin firmly convinced that Russia’s existence was threatened by an unprecedented erosion of the very centre of the state system: regional barons were pursuing their parochial agendas, showing scant regard for the federal legislation; oligarchs were busy plundering Russia’s riches and not bothering to share them with the tax authorities; and each ministry was conducting its own foreign and domestic policy, having long forgotten about any central co-ordination or guidelines. The new leader was not content with the inherited role of a supreme arbiter and aspired to fill the vacuum of power in the centre. His goal was to restore what he referred to as the “power vertical”, i.e., the traditional top-down federal system in which all state officials would be appointed by Moscow and responsible to it.

 

Putin’s vision of the Russian state recentralised through firm administrative control and concentration of power in the hands of the president was perhaps outdated if compared with modern concepts of regionalism and networking, but nevertheless appeared “progressive” against the background of post-Soviet neo-feudalism. He just needed a lever to discipline the rotten bureaucracy—and the war against terrorism provided precisely that.

 

At the start of Putin’s second presidency, in March 2004, only the bitterest of sceptics would have denied that the country was in much better shape than it had been four years previously, still shaken by the financial meltdown of August 1998 and alarmed by the incursion of Chechen rebel Shamil Basaev’s forces into Dagestan in August 1999. Since August 2004, however, the tone of most Russian self-assessments has turned sharply negative, emphasising the declining efficiency of control on every level and the re-emergence of fundamental risks to the survival of the state. Counter-terrorism had played a key role in consolidating the system of power—and the irreducible flaws in this strategy, revealed by the Beslan atrocity, have also caused the rapid erosion of this system.

 

Being by nature not a political but rather a bureaucratic animal, Putin saw the solution to Russia’s problems in the recentralisation of control, taking the KGB of old as the model for state-building. Seeing no value in and no use for political checks-and-balances, he took the simplistic design of the “executive vertical” and devoted every effort to its materialisation. His problem in realising this scheme was not direct resistance (which was never a wise option) so much as the lack of building blocks for the gigantic pyramid of power.

 

For Putin, with his initially very narrow political base, it was only natural to look upon the special services—military and security—as the main pool of cadres for his undertakings in reshuffling and reinvigorating the state machinery. He encouraged the import of retired and active personnel from the “power structures” into the state apparatus, and the war against terrorism became a very useful tool of this policy: many state agencies were required to organise special departments for channelling and co-ordinating their efforts towards the common goal of countering terrorism. That proliferation of second- and third-level special positions (deputy minister, head of department) in the ministries facilitated networking in the central apparatus between former colleagues and the appearance of several horizons of influence inside the presidential “power vertical”. On the assumption that the steady quantitative growth of “uniformed bureaucrats” inevitably leads to qualitative changes in the nature of the regime, sociologists and political commentators have popularised the slightly misleading term “militocracy”.¹

 

Indeed, it is not the military, but the Federal Security Service (FSB), successor to the KGB, that has increased its profile and influence the most, supplying the president with all the necessary ammunition in his recurrent confrontations with the regional barons and the unreliable oligarchs. Carrying the prime responsibility for combating terrorism, the FSB has benefited from massive new funding and advanced its long-cherished aim of restoring direct control over several other special services, such as the Federal Border Service and the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information. By the end of Putin’s first presidency, the FSB had developed such an all-penetrating network that its reach was not limited to the organisation’s professional sphere but had encompassed a much broader strategic agenda.

 

The vertical system of power was basically in place by mid-2003 and Putin’s re-election was in no doubt, so the question about the fundamental purpose of all that over-centralised control had to be answered. Putin was quite possibly sincere in his desire to modernise Russia by means of doubling its gross domestic product, but his regime was structurally incapable of generating any dynamism. The problem was not just that Putin failed to organise a unified team, since his economic advisers were never able to agree among themselves or with his ministers; the real problem was that his ambivalent agenda for modernisation was easily hijacked by the FSB-led cabal of special services personnel. Putin probably remained unaware that his reliance on this small group of chekisty (named after the Cheka, one of the predecessors of the KGB) had evolved into over-dependency until the moment of truth set by the attack on the oil company Yukos and its owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky in summer–autumn 2003. Taking personal responsibility for Khodorkovsky’s arrest in October 2003 and issuing the famous order “to stop the hysterics”, Putin passed the point of no return and then repeatedly had to cover for the embarrassing squabbles of his subordinates as they busily dismembered the oil giant.

 

An analysis of the strategic consequences of the Yukos affair in setting the trajectory of Putin’s second presidency would be far beyond the scope of this paper, but it is essential to emphasise that Putin’s system of power has become entirely self-serving and centred on control over the hugely increased flows of petro-dollars. Counter-terrorism, however, continues to serve as a major justification for the “securitisation” of the state, since the greed that drives the power structures needs to be covered by a reasonably convincing camouflage, and since the Kremlin cannot effect a real mobilisation of the public because it has nothing resembling a positive programme that could be conceptualised as a “national idea”.

 

The virtual “war” against terrorism was, therefore, quite instrumental for Putin, and the Kremlin became increasingly convinced that having this war was more important than winning the physical one. This useful basic technique for manipulating public fears failed to respond to the massive explosion of anxiety and anger triggered by Beslan, when Putin tried to rally public support in a speech that struck a tone quite similar to that of Stalin’s famous “brothers and sisters” address of July 1941 following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. This emotional appeal, however, dissipated in the matter of a few weeks as it became clear that Putin had no strategy for leading the country against the elusive enemy and his lieutenants had no intention of concentrating on this task since the Yukos campaign was nearing the crucial stage of dividing the loot.² It also became clear beyond doubt that Putin could not even punish his top siloviki (“power men”—i.e., former and present security and military officers who came into power under Yeltsin and Putin) for their blunders at Beslan since the responsibility for their incompetence was ultimately his. The “streamlined system of governance” defined by the struggle against terrorism has turned out to be a corrupt Byzantine court that exploits the terrorist threat to justify its monopoly on power.

Military Stagnation

In most analyses, the Russian military is presented as yet another “armed bureaucracy” and the top brass are included among the siloviki. Indeed, Putin has never missed an opportunity to emphasise his personal commitment to restoring Russia’s military pride, and defence budgets have been on the rise since the first year of his presidency. However, a closer look immediately reveals the lack of content in this commitment and a structural inadequacy in the “generous” military expenditures. Hence the sustained deterioration of the Russian military that is recognised by many experts as one of the most serious failures of Putin’s first presidential term.

 

Putin had inherited from Yeltsin a defeated and disheartened army, but he managed to mobilise it with remarkable success for the second Chechen war, which began in 1999. That reinvigoration was hailed as the beginning of the rebuilding of Russia’s military muscle but the momentum gradually dissipated as the war ground to a dead-end and the rot began to spread again. Putin several times declared his firm intention to arrest the degradation, placing particular emphasis on new tasks for the armed forces related to the war against terrorism. That guideline from the commander-in-chief, formulated in a particularly demanding way after the Moscow theatre tragedy in October 2002, when scores of people died after being taken hostage by Chechen separatists, did not sit well with mainstream military thinking. Much as in the early 1990s, Russia’s military had to deal with a range of tasks for which it had neither the capability nor training—and it would always be at a disadvantage in competition with other “armed bureaucracies”.

 

The only way out of this deadlock was to substitute for the threat of terrorism a range of security threats from the eternally unstable south—from Afghanistan to Georgia. A direct corollary was a shift of focus in strategic planning from the armed forces playing a supporting role in the FSB-led dismantling of terrorist networks to claiming a lead role in projecting military power across the wider Caspian area. The general staff insisted that such an expansion of tasks would require beefing up the conventional forces, objecting at the same time to the very notion of military reform. Putin opted for a middle way, asserting in October 2003 that reforms in the armed forces were over and that normal build-up and modernisation would follow. What actually followed could best be described as “more of the same”, so the dismal performance of the military in the Beslan crisis came as no surprise, and in early 2005, the FSB routinely borrowed tanks and other heavy assets from army units to conduct counter-terrorist raids in the North Caucasus. This proven inability to build usable military instruments that were indeed necessary for implementing an ambitious counter-terrorist strategy requires a more convincing explanation than just the rock-solid conservatism of the military bureaucracy.

 

In most analyses, such an explanation is built around the vicious circle of aggravating problems that demand progressively more resources, leaving next to nothing for investment to keep up with the “revolution in military affairs”. However, reliable expert assessments have been made that it would require only a modest increase in military expenditures to advance a reform project that would combine downsizing and modernisation.³ Indeed, the total costs of not reforming the military but merely slowing its degradation would by the end of Putin’s second term in 2008 be greater than those of reshaping it towards a modern design usable in broadly defined counter-terrorism.

 

In the opinion of this author, an important part of the explanation for Putin’s failure to modernise the armed forces is hidden in his uneasy relations with the military leadership.⁴ While the military bureaucracy in Moscow is not significantly different from other branches of the overgrown state apparatus, and the “parquet generals” are as corrupt and conformist as every other career apparatchik, a quarter-century of combat experience (counting from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) has produced a large cohort of hardened veterans in the officer corps. Lately, it is Chechnya that has brought into existence vast informal networks in the army underpinned by the feeling of battlefield camaraderie. Objectively, it is only these warriors (and not the inert bureaucrats) that can secure the success of any reform project. For many of them, the notion of reform is synonymous with disaster, but they could still be mobilised behind the aim of building a fighting force out of the present-day rubble. Putin, however, remains reluctant to attempt such a mobilisation.

 

His doubts, going back to the very start of the second Chechen war, are related to the inescapable fact that he has to rely on commanders whom he cannot really trust. The “Chechen generals” have their own agenda—decisive military victory over the Chechen separatists—and will remain loyal to the commander-in-chief only as long as he stays committed to this agenda. This conditionality is unacceptable to Putin, who values personal loyalty above all other talents. Seeking to exorcise the ghost of military opposition, Putin has placed Sergei Ivanov, the closest and perhaps most capable of his chekisty friends, in the key position of defence minister. Ivanov was careful to undertake a reshuffling of cadres in the hugely overstaffed military bureaucracy only after he gained trust among senior commanders by pushing forward their priorities and covering their failures. Putin may (or may not) be grooming Ivanov as a successor, but the latter—for all his free access to the highest of presidential circles—has very little to show in terms of achievements after four years in the job.

Part of a Global Struggle?

From the very start of the second invasion of Chechnya, Moscow insisted that this “counter-terrorist operation” was an “internal affair” of Russia’s. Presenting this local war as part of the global war against terrorism thus involved a stretch of logic. Putin, seeking to transform himself in the eyes of key Western leaders from a suspicious character with a KGB background who arrived in the Kremlin on a war ticket, into a reliable partner, undertook a sustained one-man diplomatic offensive. With hindsight, we can now say that he was successful beyond expectation in breaking through that barrier of estrangement; portraying himself as a champion of anti-terrorism was more useful than it first appeared when he advanced the argument that Russia was at the forefront of a global struggle against the rising challenge of “Islamic radicalism”.

 

That claim to be protecting “our civilisation” against “terrorist barbarity” initially did not impress his Western counterparts, who nevertheless gradually acknowledged that they could do business with President Putin—but perhaps not that kind of business. The storms of criticism over the brutal suppression of Chechnya slowly subsided as Russian economic recovery accelerated and the deliveries of increasingly valuable oil and gas supplies steadily grew. The real breakthrough arrived with the shock of 9/11. European leaders had to reconsider their scepticism when Putin, expressing to President George W. Bush the first words of international support soon after the collapse of the second World Trade Center tower, implicitly conveyed an “I told you so” rebuke to his doubters.

 

Bush embraced Russia as a member of the new anti-terrorist coalition (even if Moscow made no direct contribution to the campaign in Afghanistan), and that brought with it such symbolically important side-benefits as full membership of the G8. Putin may never have been truly enthusiastic about the prospect of building a Russia–US “alliance” as he was aware that following the US drum would hardly be a popular idea in Moscow. His strategic ambitions, rooted in the deeply cherished feeling of “belonging”, were much more about rapprochement with Europe. So, reversing the old Soviet diplomatic game of playing Europe against the United States, he tried to use his newly acquired profile in Washington to gain ground in Europe.

 

Europe, however, remained reserved about reshaping transatlantic relations around Bush’s anti-terrorist agenda and was too busy negotiating EU enlargement to grant Russia any privileges. Putin had difficulties advancing his grand Europeanisation project—to draw Russia closer to Europe by adopting EU norms on domestic and foreign policy—and was particularly upset by the persistent refusal of most European leaders to treat Chechnya as a part of the “terrorist threat”, which would have reduced all human rights issues to irrelevance. What helped Putin advance his European game plan beyond his expectations was the second Gulf war. As the US intention to attack Iraq became clear towards the end of 2002, Moscow carefully compared the parameters of available deals—and was disappointed with the offer from Washington. The turning point was Putin’s visit to Paris on 10 February 2003, when he and President Chirac announced their decision to veto the US draft of a new UN resolution that would have authorised war against Iraq. The newly formed “entente” (Chancellor Schröder made sure that Germany was the third member) affirmed its commitment to fight terrorism but insisted that Iraq was not a part of this struggle—while giving Putin the long-desired agreement that Chechnya, indeed, was.

 

That was the high point of Putin’s diplomatic manoeuvring and to get there he certainly took a calculated risk. Many mainstream experts in Moscow argued that he made a mistake in siding with “old Europe” against the United States over Iraq, but up until mid-2004 he had had every reason to believe that he had got things right. Moreover, the Kremlin never openly embraced those Russian commentators who gloated over the initial difficulties of the US campaign in Iraq, and so it was able eventually to mend relations with Washington without too much extra effort. That made Russia an even more valuable ally for the Europeans, allowing it to claim a more prominent place in the international arena than its sheer weight would warrant. Putin’s personal diplomacy, focused on cultivating primarily bilateral relations with key partners, was also a factor, and he was able to take much personal satisfaction in the fact of Chechnya’s disappearance from these exchanges.⁵

 

Moscow has never shown any interest in building the substance of various counter-terrorist “dialogues” and was perfectly comfortable with the fact that major powers pursued their own geopolitical agendas under the banner of the “global war” against terrorism. For that matter, contributing to the NATO operation in Afghanistan (which clearly serves Russia’s interests) was not an option; on the contrary, the plan has been to increase the Russian military presence in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in order to counterbalance US influence in the region. Russia also saw no problem in developing co-operation with two states accused by Washington of supporting Islamic terrorism, building a nuclear plant in Iran and supplying arms to Syria.

 

The Russian authorities remained unconcerned that their contribution to the anti-terrorist coalition was minuscule, and it was only in spring 2005 that they began to discover that the reinvigoration of transatlantic relations in Bush’s second presidency had significantly reduced their space for manoeuvre. For many policymakers in the West, however, the moment of reckoning came earlier, after the massacre in Beslan in September 2004. In an emotional address, Putin implicitly accused the West of supporting terrorists in order to weaken Russia and tear it apart. He then tried to explain his unwavering commitment to the “common cause” of the global war on terrorism, but the proposition that the United States and its allies are channelling terrorist attacks towards Russia is advanced again and again by officials of different ranks. It is neither a reflection of Russia’s old anti-Western phobia nor a cheap PR trick: the fundamental logic of Russia’s own counter-terrorist campaign sets it on a collision course with the West.

 

This logic came into play in full strength in late 2004, when Putin personally led Russia’s blatant interference in the presidential elections in Ukraine. Moscow represented the “Orange Revolution” as a decisive power test between Russia and the West; victory for the pro-Western candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, would inevitably lead to the deployment of “NATO tanks in Kharkov”. Since the fiasco of Moscow’s Ukraine meddling, the confrontational rhetoric has been toned down, but its sense of vulnerability certainly makes Putin’s regime desperately defensive and irrationally suspicious. Russia’s domestic struggle against terrorism aimed primarily at deterring “internal enemies” is incompatible with international co-operation that seeks to build new norms of political behaviour and to address the roots of terrorism-related security challenges by supporting democracy.

An Undependable Protector

Moscow began experimenting with the use of the threat of terrorism to advance its interests earlier than its Western partners—in fact, right from the start of Putin’s presidency in 1999/2000. While the main target of military “counter-terrorist operations” was certainly Chechnya, political efforts were focused not on the Caucasus but on Central Asia. Authoritarian regimes across this vast region saw the spread of Islamic radicalism, supported from outside by the Taliban but rooted in the anger caused by deepening poverty and rampant corruption, as an acute challenge to their survival. Russia was eager to play on these fears. Moscow pushed papers and plans for multilateral counter-terrorism structures, and even threatened to carry out air strikes on Taliban camps. However, when violence indeed erupted, for instance, during attacks by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in the Osh region of Kyrgyzstan in summer 2000, Russia had neither the capability nor the intention to intervene.

 

This slow-moving game changed dramatically in autumn 2001, when the United States discovered a need to use airbases in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan for its invasion of Afghanistan—and President Putin, despite objections from his lieutenants, swiftly gave his consent. The US deployment, limited as it is, has significantly shifted the balance of threats in the region, since the Taliban were thoroughly defeated in early 2002 and the IMU suffered heavy losses as well. The impressive US victory in Afghanistan, together with much new attention to the region from the United States, and from Europe, objectively eroded Russia’s influence, and Moscow responded with a new military–diplomatic anti-terrorist offensive.

 

Most experts in Moscow predicted that the war in Afghanistan would be a protracted affair with a heavy need for US ground forces; they also argued that the United States had no staying power in Central Asia. They were quickly proved wrong in the first assumption, but for some three years expected to see the second one confirmed. And, indeed, the second Gulf war saw a massive concentration of US efforts and attention on Iraq, reducing the residual instability in Afghanistan to a secondary concern, while Central Asia up until the sudden death of Askar Akaev’s regime in Kyrgyzstan in March 2005 had drifted to the margins of radar screens in Washington.

 

The warning message repeatedly sent from Moscow to the Central Asian regimes was that NATO forces would hardly rush to rescue them should a radical Islamic opposition challenge their power. Russian experts argued that from a military point of view, the forward-deployed US troops (mostly airbase technicians) were more a liability, as a potential target for terrorists, than an asset. To establish its credentials as a pillar of regional order and stability, Russia had to demonstrate that it had military strengths that could deter unrest and defeat terrorist threats. That, however, proved to be problematic.

 

In October 2003, Russia established a new airbase in Kant in order to “counterbalance” the NATO base in Manas, both in Kyrgyzstan, but it was rather improbable that a composite squadron of ageing Su-25/Su-27 fighter planes would make much of an impression against the background of the massive application of modern US air power in Afghanistan. Russia also tried to beef up the 201st Motorised Rifle Division, deployed permanently in Tajikistan, but that unit—so isolated from the headquarters of the Volga–Urals Military District and so dependent on local supplies—increasingly resembles a “lost legion”. Seeking to organise a truly impressive demonstration of its might, Russia held in August 2002 a large-scale military exercise in the Caspian Sea, with 10,500 troops and sixty ships performing joint operations. While the official scenario was one of demonstrating ability to destroy terrorist groups by land and sea, the littoral states made clear their reservations and Russia refrained from repeating such a show of force.

 

The core of the problem was that Moscow was trying to manipulate challenges that were too difficult for its unreformed military to handle. As long as its army was engaged in Chechnya, Russia lacked power-projection capabilities in both the Caucasus and Central Asia. That deficiency was first revealed in September 2002, when Moscow—claiming that Chechen terrorist groups had set up camps in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge—issued an ultimatum to Tbilisi threatening to apply “adequate military measures”. A quick review of these measures revealed, however, that a hot-pursuit invasion deep into the Georgian mountains was not on the cards, so after some stern warnings from the United States, Putin had to back down.

 

The real scale of the problem began to emerge after the November 2003 “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, when Moscow had to acknowledge the uselessness of its military instruments. The next crisis arrived just a few months later when the new Georgian government firmly applied pressure on separatist Adjaria—and Russia was unable to prop up its old ally Aslan Abashidze. The attempt to retaliate by provoking in summer 2004 an escalation of hostilities in South Ossetia, another separatist region of Georgia, failed because Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili played his weak hand very carefully.

 

It was Beslan that marked a new high-risk stage in Moscow’s attempts to exploit the threat of terrorism to put pressure on Russia’s neighbours. Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov spearheaded the campaign about Russia’s readiness to carry out “preventive strikes” on terrorist bases outside its territory. Putin expressed his support, thus giving this vague threat the status of official doctrine. It is clear that high-precision “surgical” strikes cannot even be planned with the capabilities available to the Russian air force; indiscriminate “punitive” strikes are the threat that Georgia must now take seriously. As for the Russian top brass and the president himself, after so many big statements, they are now under pressure to deliver.

 

Russia’s policy of strengthening its influence across the former Soviet space by exploiting the co-operation against terrorism and threatening to use military force against “rogue” elements foundered on the chain reaction of regime changes triggered by Georgia. Following those in Ukraine in late 2004, and Kyrgyzstan in March 2005, it has become clear that Russia has no capacity for saving friendly regimes even against small-scale uprisings, and the doctrine of “preventive strikes” is plain irrelevant. Conducting hastily reformatted military exercises in Tajikistan in early April 2005, Moscow even felt obliged to explain that the troops were not training to suppress possible revolutions. And when violence erupted in Andijan, Uzbekistan, in May 2005, the Kremlin’s reaction was limited to a cautious condemnation.

 

Overall, seeking to exploit concern about terrorism to advance its interests, Russia has failed to concentrate sufficient efforts in countering this very real threat, first of all in Central Asia. The prioritisation of personal networking with regional “leaders for life” has put the Kremlin in the dubious position of opposing any changes, thus jeopardising its relations with post-revolutionary regimes. The emphasis on counter-terrorism contained the opportunity to establish serious co-operation with the United States and Europe to stabilise the Caucasus and Central Asia; Putin preferred to play on Western divisions, particularly over the Iraq War, and lost that opportunity.

Endnotes

1. One solid sociological analysis of this phenomenon is Olga Kryshtanovskaya, “The Putin Regime: A Liberal State Governed by Former Military Officers?”, Pro et Contra 7, no. 4 (autumn 2002); for a sharp political comment see Adrian Karatnycky, “Jobs for the Boys: Putin’s New Militocracy”, Wall Street Journal, 13 June 2003.

 

2. See Pavel Baev, “Putin’s War in Chechnya: Who Steers the Course?”, PONARS Policy Memo 345, CSIS, Washington, D.C., November 2004.

 

3. See, for example, Alexei Arbatov, “What Kind of Army Do We Need?”, Russia in Global Affairs 1, no. 1 (January–March 2003), where a proposal for deep structural reforms is built on the basis of increasing military expenditures to the moderate level of 3 per cent of GDP.

 

4. See Pavel Baev, “President Putin and His Generals: Bureaucratic Control and War-Fighting Culture”, PONARS Policy Memo 205, CSIS, Washington, D.C., November 2001.

 

5. Typical in this respect was his visit to London in June 2003; see Jonathan Steel, “Putin Sweeps the Chechen War under His Red Carpet”, Guardian (London), 18 June 2003.