the development of russian military policy and finland

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· The Development of Russian Military Policy and Finland
ther the troops trained for this task. Four distinguished researchers at RAND
Corporation gave the following assessment of NATO’s capabilities:
Power projection and the maintenance of significant forces outside of Europe’s immediate
neighbourhood will be particularly difficult due to reduced force size; limited lift
and logistics capability; and a lack of certain key enablers (such as missile defence
and unmanned aerial vehicles). Additionally, several key NATO European nations
are either eliminating or significantly reducing key capabilities such as littoral
maritime forces and the related intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms.
[…]
Put simply, the unit of account for European ground forces is set to become battalion
battlegroups and brigade combat teams rather than full-strength divisions and corps.
The navies of the major European naval powers will see radical reductions as well.
For example, if Brazil’s naval expansion plans are executed by the mid-2020s, the
Brazilian navy will have carrier, destroyer and amphibious fleets comparable to the
British and French navies combined. 26
The manpower of new NATO member states is modest. The rebuilding of
the armed forces of the former Warsaw Pact countries is still in process. Their
armed forces were to be used operationally only in specific auxiliary tasks ordered
by the Soviet Union.
2.2 The Change of Attitudes in Russian Foreign Policy
The warm relations between Russia and the western countries at the start of
the period following the Cold War unfortunately did not last long. Russia’s
liberal Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Kozyrev, who was well disposed
toward the West, surprised his audience at the CSCE foreign ministers’ meeting
in Stockholm on December 14, 1992. He noted that:
The space of the former Soviet Union cannot be regarded as a zone of full application
of CSCE norms. In essence, this is a post-imperial space, in which Russia has
to defend its interests using all available means, including military and economic
ones. We shall strongly insist that the former USSR Republics join the new Federation
or Confederation without delay, and there will be tough talks on this matter. 27
Kozyrev admitted later that the speech was intended to be a joke. Its objective
had been to serve as an alarm clock. Twenty years later Russia is in the process
of consolidating her grip over major portions of the post-Soviet space in
the name of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), and hardline
circles in Moscow are optimistic as, in their opinion, “The White House
26 Gordon, Johnson, Larrabee & Wilson, 2012, p. 140.
27 Rotfeld, 2009, p. 30; Whitney, 1992.