Russian Prez Channels His Inner Rumsfeld

Remember the days when "transformation" and "net-centricity" was all the rage within the Pentagon? On Sept. 10, 2001, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war on the military's Cold War-era business practices, describing the Pentagon as "one of the world's last bastions of central planning."

Now, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is trying to drag his country's military into the 21st Century. In the latest issue of Newsweek, Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova have a great piece about how Russia's president has embraced a vision of a leaner, more wired force that is capable of responding to current-day brushfire wars, not just great-power conflict.

Interestingly, this latest push for reform came out of Russia's 2008 war with Georgia. While Russian troops managed to defeat the Georgians -- and prop up separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia -- the victory was a close-run thing. "The campaign," Matthews and Nemtsova write, "exposed what independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer calls 'embarrassing failings" in Russia's fighting ability." And they offer a few vignettes:

At least 11 Russian aircraft and several drones were shot down, and there were reports of extensive burning and looting of abandoned Georgian villages by undisciplined troops. Many Russian soldiers were spotted going to battle in running shoes and polyester sweatpants instead of boots and camouflage uniforms, and one junior officer even asked Newsweek reporters to lend him a Georgian SIM card to call his superiors after radios failed.

Almost immediately after the war, Medvedev launched a top-down review. And what they found was not surprising to anyone who followed the collapse of the Soviet military and the debacle in Chechnya: Russia still has a top-heavy force structure (one officer for every 2.5 men, and way too many generals); a completely effed-up conscription system; and seriously out-of-date equipment.

Of course, fixing Russia's broken military won't happen overnight: The aftereffects of economic crisis are still being felt, and the country's creaky industrial base is still dependent on subsidy. And then there's once-and-future-Tsar Vladimir Putin, who is now prime minister but is widely seen as the power behind Medvedev. Whether Russia's shadow elite will ultimately support reform is open to question.

[PHOTO: Kremlin.ru]

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