Lecture
The most important condition for the existence and effective, progressive development of any state is the presence of peaceful international relations, sustained social stability and social peace within the country, and the constant concern of humanity for ensuring the military security both of the world as a whole and of each individual state.
All this is achieved by carrying out a complex set of economic, socio-political, spiritual-ideological, diplomatic and other measures and actions of both a national-state and an international character.
Among all measures and actions of a national-state character aimed at ensuring the country's military security, the most important and the most specific is the state's activity in creating (building) and continuously improving its military organization—the principal armed force capable of preventing and repelling, and if necessary destroying, any armed adversary that dares to launch armed military aggression against it.
For this reason, knowing what the military organization of the state is, which armed formations it comprises, what role they play and what place they occupy in the overall system of factors ensuring the military security of the Fatherland is an important condition for the effectiveness of military personnel and the fulfilment of their professional duty.
The military organization of the state is a system of military and paramilitary armed structures (formations) created to ensure the protection (security) of the interests of citizens, society and the state against various forms of military and other armed violence.
In every society a variety of armed formations are created not only by the state but also by various social organizations and associations.
In this connection it is important to distinguish between the concepts of "armed formations in society," the "armed organization" and the "military organization" of the state, and "paramilitary," "militarized" and "special armed" formations.
Armed formations in society are the totality of various organized structures in the exercise of whose functions armed violence is employed. The degree to which these formations are armed differs substantially depending on their social status and the nature of the tasks they perform. They are therefore subdivided:
by socio-political criterion (status)—into state, socio-political, and asocial (anti-social, illegal) formations;
by degree of armament and combat purpose—into military, paramilitary and militarized formations;
by nature of formation—into regular (permanent) and irregular (non-permanent) formations.
The armed organization of the state is a system of organized structures (formations) created by the state, in the exercise of whose functions armed violence is employed in accordance with the law.
The military organization of the state is a system of armed military structures (formations), manned predominantly by service personnel, in the exercise of whose functions special military armed violence is employed.
In accordance with international criteria, military structures are understood to be those organized armed structures that consist of warriors (service personnel), are created as a rule by the state, are in its service and maintained by it, and are specially and professionally trained to wage armed struggle (war) against an external and internal enemy.
The principal features of an armed military unit are the following: it must be headed by a lawful commander (a person vested with the authority to issue orders and demand their execution); it must be intended chiefly for the conduct of military operations; the members of the military organization (warriors) have the right to carry arms openly; and they must observe the laws and customs of war as determined by the international community and historical tradition.
State regular armed military formations are created in accordance with state legislation, on a permanent basis, for waging armed struggle (war), chiefly against external enemies. Irregular armed military formations are armed structures that lack a firm and permanent organization. They differ from regular troops in their systems of manning, service and so on (Cossack forces, the people's militia, partisan forces and others).
Some states create paramilitary formations that are closely adjacent to the military organization or are partly incorporated into both regular and irregular troops—for example, the National Guard in the USA, the Territorial Army of the reserve forces in Great Britain, the territorial forces in the FRG, the Carabinieri corps in Italy, the special-purpose police units (OMON), the special rapid-reaction units (SOBR), and formations guarding restricted-access facilities in Russia, and others.
Militarized formations are understood to be organizational structures (formations) made up of civilians whose activities involve, in their substance and methods, features of the use (application) of armed violence: the militia (police), defence sports and technical societies, departmental emergency and rescue formations and others.
Military and paramilitary formations created by the state and linked into an integral systemic structure constitute the unified military organization of the state.
The military organization of the state also includes those formations that are manned not by service personnel (civilian employees), but whose functions are wholly and directly connected with supporting the service and combat activity of the troops, military formations and bodies.
Other armed structures not manned by military personnel, whether belonging to the state or to various subjects of civil society, do not by their nature and aims form part of the military organization (the militia, departmental security services and the like).
Non-state (public) armed formations, mainly militarized ones, are created by various institutions of civil society to protect their governing bodies, leaders, rallies and marches, as well as to wage partisan and insurgent struggle in national liberation wars and social liberation movements. Non-state armed formations also include private security groups and personal bodyguards.
Thus, for example, in Russia in 2002 there were 14,000 security organizations with a total strength of 500,000 people, guarding 70,000 enterprises and institutions. In addition, various illegal asocial armed formations frequently arise, especially in times of crisis, as a rule from the declassed, marginal social strata of society, with the aim of satisfying the selfish interests of narrow, often criminal groups whose actions run counter to state and public interests (bandit formations, terrorist groups and the like).
The balance between state and non-state armed formations in society depends on the nature of the relationship between the state and civil society. A social community in a developed state normally functions as a dialectical, contradictory unity of these two sides of itself.
The balance of armed formations created "from above" and "from below" changes depending on a number of circumstances: the nature of the development of foreign and domestic political relations (stability, crisis, war, revolution, reforms and so on); the state of the economy (the availability of resources, the ability to maintain state armed formations in the requisite numbers); the state of the social and demographic structure of society (the size and development of the working class, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, and a population size sufficient to permit the necessary conscription into the army); the attitude of the people toward military structures; and the national spiritual factor (patriotism, traditions and others).
The military organization of the state represents the principal and decisive military force in society. Its creation involves the conscious and purposeful participation of those subjects of political relations and of civil society that have an interest in the armed defence of the country. These are, above all, the state, and also political parties and movements capable of influencing military-political decision-making through their representatives and factions working in various organs of state power (the government, parliament, various committees and commissions).
The specific content, structure and functions both of the military organization as a whole and of each of its structural elements are peculiar to each state, although their general characteristic features are the same. In any case, they are determined by a number of principal domestic and international factors: the condition and trends of the given state's economic, political, social, demographic and other forms of development and security; the level of scientific understanding of the nature and content of present-day and future wars and of military affairs as a whole; its geopolitical position and the trends in its development; and the state of patriotism and of the national elite's (especially the political elite's) sense of responsibility for ensuring all forms of national security.
The military organization of the state is constantly transformed in response to changes in the geopolitical, regional and national situation, especially during society's transitional periods. Thus, whereas the military organization of the USSR consisted of three main components (the Armed Forces, the KGB bodies and the Internal Troops), the military organization of Russia today consists of a combination of numerous services and branches of the Armed Forces of Russia, troops of other federal departments, and various special military structures:
The Armed Forces (the army)—the core and foundation of the state's military organization.
Other troops—the troops of federal ministries, services and the like: the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Civil Defence Troops of the Ministry for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of the Consequences of Natural Disasters, and others.
Military formations attached to certain bodies of executive power: engineering and technical, road construction, aerospace search and rescue units and others.
Military bodies within a number of structures of the federal executive power and federal departments: the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Federal Security Service and its component part, the Border Service, the Federal Protective Service of the Russian Federation and the Special Communications and Information Service under the FSO, the Main Directorate of Special Programmes of the President of the Russian Federation, and others.
Elements of the country's industrial and scientific complexes intended to support military security tasks.
In the future, further transformations of Russia's military organization are possible, in the direction of ever fuller correspondence to the natural triad of the physical environments of the troops' service and combat activity and to the specific character of the principal threats to national security (land, sea, air), or to the nature of real threats (nuclear deterrence forces; general-purpose forces; special troops intended to combat terrorism; the provision of information security and the like).
In wartime, special military formations may be created (military units for guarding the rear areas of fronts and formations, sabotage and reconnaissance groups, partisan formations, the people's militia and others).
It should be emphasized that in building the military organization of the state it is important to be guided by a historically substantiated principle—indeed a regularity: excessive fragmentation of the power structures of the state's military organization and the weakening of centralized control over them are incompatible with the growth of its defensive might.
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