"In war the moral is to the physical as ten to one."
--Napoleon
The Chechen War may come to be seen as one of the greatest disasters
in Russian military history, greater than Tannenberg, greater than
Tsushima; not, obviously, because of Russian losses, which have been
limited, but because of what Chechnya has revealed about the
humiliating depths of contemporary Russian military decline. Quite
simply, the Russian army today is weaker in relative terms than it
has been for almost four hundred years--a fact which, if it persists,
may be of incalculable significance for the future of Eurasia.
The hard evidence of the Chechen War should make Russian military
weakness in the conventional field obvious to everyone--but it is
still necessary to emphasize and repeat it, since so many in the West
have a vested interest in avoiding the issue. It is also true of
course that even when the present state of the Russian army is
admitted, a major question remains as to whether this collapse is
temporary and reversible, or is likely to prove long-lasting.
This question is obviously of key importance in the context of a
possible Communist return to power in Russia. I myself believe that
the Communists could do little in the short term to turn the army
into an effective fighting force--partly because the reasons for its
present collapse have above all to do with morale, and are linked to
deep changes in Russian society and culture; and partly because a new
round of ideologically-inspired Communist mishandling of the Russian
economy would make Russia even less able to pay for major military
reform than it already is today.
