Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future - Strategic ...

CHAPTER 2
RUSSIA’S CONVENTIONAL ARMED FORCES:
REFORM AND NUCLEAR POSTURE TO 2020
Roger N. McDermott
Although Russian defense reform was already in
its advanced planning stages prior to August 2008, the
Russia-Georgia war served to facilitate launching the
new effort to reform and modernize the conventional
armed forces. This reform, repackaged as the “new
look,” was not only ambitious in its scope and aims
but would, if implemented, fundamentally transform
the Russian military. Formally announced in October
2008, with the administrative or organizational
elements rapidly carried out throughout 2009, and
progressing towards achieving key targets by 2012,
Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov’s reforms have
revealed contradictions and unforeseen challenges,
while the resulting corrective processes exposed a
degree of reconceptualization. 1 The delicate balance
achieved in avoiding the reform being undermined,
either through institutional inertia or until now largely
ineffective or at times irrationally-inspired critics, will
continue until these issues are resolved; most likely,
not before 2012. 2
SERDYUKOV’S REFORM
On October 14, 2008, after leaks about the reform
agenda and a period of reflecting on the operational
lessons of the campaign in Georgia, Serdyukov briefed
the defense ministry collegium in closed session. Viktor
Zavarzin, the Head of the Duma’s Defense Com-
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