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US-Russia top military chiefs met in Finland. What does it lead to?


Jorge11

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“Gerasimov’s Doctrine” – a key to Russian Success
On the 22nd of September at the Finnish government’s Koningstedt residency in Vantaa a meeting took place between General Velery Gerasimov the Chief of General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of United States General Mark Milley. Military Commanders have held internal negotiations in the past – in 2019 in Geneve, Switzerland.

As always, official information on the agenda and results of meetings of heads of general staffs of two strongest armies on the planet stands out in laconism and restraint.  According to the press-service of the Ministry of Defence of Russian Federation the Military Leaders discussed “issues of mutual interest including lowering the risks of occurrence of incidents during military activities.” In the Russian Defense Ministry, by the tradition, which has settled in the international diplomacy, it has been noted that the meeting "carried constructive character".
 
The Pentagon stands in solidarity with the Russian colleagues that, by the way, happens not so often. Mark Milley's press secretary colonel Dave Butler with the reference to the chief has noted efficiency of the meeting. According to him, Valery Gerasimov's dialogue with Mark Milley "became the next stage of the negotiations directed at improving the communication between the military management in order to decrease the risks and find ways of evading conflict situations". As reciprocal curtsey to the Russians, Butler has shared Milley’s reverence for mister Gerasimov, having specified that both military leaders have not failed to show sense of humour, of course, "when it was pertinent".

In spite of the fact that Valery Gerasimov's negotiations and Mark of lasted nearly six hours, details have remained in secret. Such state of affairs in the Pentagon was explained as "established practices".  

The surreptitiousness of negotiations between Valery Gerasimov and Mark Milley, on one hand, has strengthened the mysterious atmosphere around the Russian army and, first of all, it’s military leaders, on another, it has led to the rapid growth of interest among the western experts in modern Russian commanders. Special attention of the American and the European analysts is directed at the general Valery Gerasimov which is quite understandable as the head of the Russian General Staff for the last several years remains a recognized ideological leader and the mentor of Putin’s group of elite commanders.

Among our military experts there isn’t one, who doesn’t have a strongly established opinion about the Russian general. He is characterised as a man with stone-cold face, he keeps confidence and calm in most extraordinary and unusual situations. Mister Gerasimov along with his immediate charismatic superior Minister of Defence Sergey Shoygu permanently accompanies the Russian leader Vladimir Putin on military venture, tests of the new Russian weapon, and also international visits (especially, to traditionally unsteady Middle East) and meetings with world leaders (as it was at the June summit of Putin and his American vis-a-vis Joe Biden in Geneva when the general Gerasimov was part of the Russian delegation).
The trust of the head of the Kremlin Vladimir Putin the chief of the General Staff shows the high status and weight of the general Gerasimov in the Russian military and political elite is unprecedented. Cardinal difference between him and his predecessors, in our opinion, lies at mister Gerasimov’s excellent expertise in the field of military diplomacy that has proved itself during numerous meetings with heads of the foreign states and the governments.

Besides, there is no doubt that the role of the general Gerasimov as a head and the organizer of modern Russian military science derived from the first Russian emperor Peter the Great, the creator of the regular army. By definition the head of the Russian General Staff is obliged with key functions of development and practical introduction of scientific concepts of the military constructions.

His predecessors – Georgy Isserson, Alexander Svechin, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Boris Shaposhnikov, and many others gained outstanding practical achievements due to a theoretical judgment of character and forms of future wars. General Valery Gerasimov who looks good as the army commander, managed to be a successful leader and coordinator of modern military science.

At the same time Gerasimov had a great luck to check the effectiveness of his means and ways of conducting modern war on the ground. Russia relying on its military force got back its status of a key power in the Middle East despite skepticism of its geopolitical competitors.

Roger McDermott, professor in Jamestown Foundation said Gerasimov's role as president of Academy of military sciences (AVN) marked an important step in further improvement of the Russian army. He stressed that Valery Gerasimov's election as the AVN chair in December, 2020 was caused by his aspiration to let the academy revive the interest in military science and art of war.

Being an inspirer of the Russian military science, Valery Gerasimov does his best in summarizing the modern armed conflicts experience and modeling of future wars. Meanwhile, his American colleague Mark Milley is not involved in any kind of scientific research and the analysis. Mister Gerasimov is widely known in Russia as the author of a number of articles in which he comprehends the experience of wars and military conflicts of the past and defines the character hostilities of the future. Mark Milley, the graduate of Priston and Columbia University is a rather a politician than a military theorist.

Such differences between Russian and American military chiefs can be explained by differences of military systems of the two nations. The U.S. Joint Chief of Staff is initially engaged in combat operations planning, the Russian General Staff also conducts scientific forecasting.

The American military analysts point to these disproportions in powers of Russia’s and U.S. military staffs. “The General Staff of Russian Armed Forces solves a much bigger range of problems than simple planning of operations. It is also responsible for development and improvement of the theory and practice of future war by forecasting. In the Russian military system the forecasting is directly connected with military science”, – Charles Bartls and Lester Grau wrote in the book “The Russian way of waging war”.

Being directly involved into multi-level scientific researches on forecasting of the future conflicts, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian army is a key coordinator for the enterprises of country’s military and industrial complex. Possessing information on perspective weapons of potential foes, every head of the Russian General Staff, as a rule, personally supervises development and tests of the weapons of deterrence.

Eventually, specifics of Russia’s political system in which military command is most distanced from election processes allow the Chief of the General Staff to concentrate on his professional duties only. The U.S. political system expects that the chairman of Joint Chief of Staff shows flexibility to minimize political risks as the White House administrations change.

Theoretical concept of Chief of Russia’s General Staff caused discussions among military experts. The so-called “Gerasimov's Doctrine” is the concept of “new generation war” or the “hybrid warfare”: simultaneous use of power methods, information campaigns, political pressure, and economic sanctions. For the first time this term was used by the British researcher Mark Galeotti in February, 2013 – almost immediately after Gerasimov’s speech Russia’s AVN conference and the publication Gerasimov’s article “Science’s value is in foresight” in “Voyenno-promyshlenny Kuryer” newspaper. The article included ideas about a combination of military and non-military methods of armed struggle between the states. Afterwards Gerasimov’s article was also published by “the Military Review”, the popular English-language magazine, and was repeatedly quoted in European and American mass media.

The research associate of the Kennan Institute in Washington Michael Coffman wrote that the term “hybrid warfare” was first mentioned in an article in 2005 by Americans James Mathis and Frank Hoffman, who used this definition to describe the nature of the military conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Coffman considers that Gerasimov precisely described the western model of “hybrid warfare” in the Big Middle East and tried to explain how the West succeeded in use of non-military methods against its foes.

Despite the intrigues around terms, “Gerasimov's Doctrine” is an issue of a great interest as it describes the scale of Kremlin’s foreign policy claims and effective actions of the Russian military using methods of “new generation war”.

Helsinki meeting did not become a bright political event or a breakthrough in relations between Russia and the West. But the quiet Finnish capital once again gives a hope for the military chiefs of two nuclear powers mutual understanding. In a situation when politicians fail to find a common ground, military professionals are able to avoid new global shocks.

 

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