Why Russia is at War

Once one of the planets two superpowers, since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Russia has become smaller than it has been for over three centuries. But now over 80 percent of the population was Russian, where the Soviet Union was sliding towards only 50 percent Russian. The terms by which the Soviet Union was broken up, let each area keep whatever military or civil assets that were in their territory. Thus Russia lost much of its military equipment. It still retained more than half, because the strategic reserves were always kept in Russian territory. The Russian military did not decline that much during this break up, for the military had been declining in ability for several decades. The 1980s war in Afghanistan had revealed the rot, and the 1994-1996 attempt to put down a rebellion in Chechenya confirmed it. Training and leadership had declined to very low levels. Sharply reduced defense budgets did not help the situation. But Russia does have a long and impressive military tradition. And there was always a core of elite paratroops, commandoes, air mobile and mechanized troops that could be depended on. But this was a force of only a quarter million soldiers to guard an area nearly twice as large as the United States. Several areas still present the danger of rebellion or invasion. In Central Asia, Islamic fundamentalists threaten to "liberate" the millions of Moslems still living in Russia, or at least "liberate" the vast lands in Asia that Russia has occupied for centuries, but are still claimed by non-Russians. In the Caucasus, there are still disputes with Chechens and some thirty different ethnic groups in adjacent Dagestan (the largest are 500,000 Avars, 270,000 the Dargins and the 200,000 Lezgins). Chechenya is a quarter the size of Dagestan, but with 1.2 million (mostly Chechen) people.

The war in Dagestan eventually spread to other parts of Russia, with enormous bombs going off in Moscow and other cities. The Russians have learned from their dismal experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Chechenya in the mid 1990s and are able to defeat, or at least stalemate the Chechen rebels who seek to incorporate Dagestan, and the rest of the Russian Caucasus, into an Islamic state. The Chechens first invaded Dagestan in early August, 1999, but were forced out by the end of the month, and invaded a second time in early September. The first bomb went off on September 4th and destroyed an apartment building housing Russian officers and their families. The second one went off in Moscow on September 9th, the third one was also in Moscow on the 13th. A forth bomb exploded in southern Russia on the 16th.

Russia invaded in the Fall of 1999 and by the Spring of 2000 had taken the largest city in Chechnya, Grozny. Rebels continued to operate in southern Chechnya, but, as in many past rebellions, the Russians had more troops and money. Russia is determined to put down the Chechen rebellion, for if they do not, other non-Russian parts of Russia would be tempted to rebel as well. One important difference between this rebellion in Chechnya and many earlier ones is the presence of international media. The rebels have worked the media skillfully and this has put diplomatic pressure on the Russians to reach some kind of deal with the rebels. But the rebels themselves are split into several factions, so it's debatable if there is any single rebel entity that the Russians can deal with. Many Chechens are tired of the war, and the Russians are taking advantage of that to set up a local government staffed by Chechens. Meanwhile, the rebels will continue to resist until, as in the past, most of the rebels get tired of fighting.