Lecture
Ensuring military security presupposes the creation of a whole range of conditions and the formation of factors whose realisation makes it possible to achieve this goal. They constitute the mechanism for ensuring military security.
The mechanism for ensuring military security is a system of actors of military security whose interaction makes it possible to identify and forecast military dangers and threats, to develop a strategy and, on the basis of a normative and legal framework, to organise coordinated military-political activity to eliminate them in the interests of ensuring the security of the individual, society and the state.
Structurally, the mechanism for ensuring military security consists of the following components.
The actors ensuring military security. These are the institutions, bodies, organisations and persons operating within the military security system and accomplishing the tasks of ensuring it in accordance with defined capabilities, powers and competence. According to the National Security Concept of the Russian Federation, they are: the President of the Russian Federation, the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Government of the Russian Federation, the Security Council, the federal executive bodies, the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff, and the executive bodies of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The actors ensuring military security also include local self-government bodies, public organisations and associations, and citizens.
The objects of ensuring military security. The Law of the Russian Federation "On Security" notes: "The national security of the Russian Federation is a state of protection of the individual, society and the state from possible internal and external threats, which is achieved by the aggregate of actions of state authorities, local self-government bodies and individual persons on the basis of laws and other legal acts to ensure the sovereignty, unity and indivisibility of Russia's territory, and the stabilisation and subsequent socio-economic and spiritual-moral development."
In accordance with this, the objects of military security should be taken to be the interests of the individual, society and the state, which are the following:
the military protection of the security of the individual, of his or her life, health, constitutional rights and freedoms, dignity and property;
ensuring the military security of society, which presupposes protecting legality and order by forcible means and methods, forming political, economic and social stability, creating safe conditions for people's work and everyday life and for the activity of public organisations, upholding the equality of social and ethnic communities, and curbing organised armed crime and militant ethnic and religious extremism;
upholding the security of the state by military means, which includes: protecting the democratic foundations of political power, state sovereignty, and the territorial integrity of the country; and resolutely countering corruption and attempts to criminalise state structures, including the security agencies.
The object of the policy of ensuring military security may be taken to be all those spheres of society's life in which the military potential of the state is created: the economy, science and technology, social and political relations, and the spiritual-ideological domain.
The normative and legal component of ensuring military security. It comprises the legislative acts, principles and moral norms upon which the process of achieving security is built. Such normative acts include: the Laws of the Russian Federation "On Defence" and "On Security", the "National Security Concept of the Russian Federation" and others. These documents define the principal tasks of ensuring military security and the powers of state bodies in accomplishing them. At the same time, the duties and powers of such actors of military security as local self-government bodies, public organisations and associations, and citizens are insufficiently regulated. For the individual, for collectives, and for public organisations and movements, non-legal principles of a moral and humanistic character apply, such as moral obligations, personal responsibility, honour, dignity and others.
The theoretical and research component of the mechanism for ensuring military security. The practical solution of the problems of military security depends to a considerable extent on their scientific support. First and foremost, this presupposes the conceptual elaboration of a theory of military security. The changing character of threats and of the capabilities of society and the state, and the dynamism of the geopolitical situation in the world and in particular regions, directly determine the need to conduct fundamental research continuously in the field of the general theory of security and its constituent part, the theory of military security.
In this connection one cannot but agree with the view that "…today the problems of ensuring military security are predominantly fundamental and often worldview-related in character. Without resolving these problems, any particular studies lose their meaning. Their correct resolution creates the ideological and methodological basis for research into the directions of ensuring military security and of building the state's military organisation over the long term."
Among the particularly pressing problems of the scientific support of activity aimed at achieving the necessary level of military security are the following: the development of a methodology for forecasting the military-political situation and assessing the state of the country's military security; research into the content of the process of managing the state of military security; determining the essence, content and character of the military conflicts that may be unleashed against Russia; the development of the theory and practice of building the military organisation, and others.
A significant role in the scientific support of national and military security is played by the Scientific Council under the Security Council of the Russian Federation, specially created in accordance with a Decree of the President of the Russian Federation in 1994. A whole range of civilian and military research organisations and institutions take part in accomplishing these tasks.
The substantive-activity component of the mechanism for ensuring military security. Its content consists in the concrete activity of the actors of military security in achieving its principal goals, which is carried out on the basis of definite principles along a number of lines. The substantive-activity component may be represented as a set of sequential actions (stages) by the actors of military policy, employing at each of them quite specific means and methods in the interests of ensuring military security.
Such actions include the following:
forecasting possible military dangers and threats, carried out on the basis of an analysis of the actual military-political situation;
informing all actors of military security about the character and degree of danger to national interests, about the state of the objects of security and their capabilities for neutralising threats;
taking decisions at the earliest possible stage to forestall and neutralise military threats, with a determination of the capabilities of the state and the Armed Forces;
mobilising all actors ensuring military security to accomplish the tasks of rapid response to emerging threats, and the timely deployment of all forces and assets to eliminate an actual danger;
analysing the effectiveness of the measures taken to suppress a military danger and, where necessary, making adjustments to decisions taken earlier.
The principal principles of ensuring the military security of the state are the following:
the interdependence of the state's military security and regional and international military security. This principle is expressed in the fact that the strengthening of national military security cannot be effective without the stabilisation of regional and international relations;
ensuring the country's military security with due regard for the interests of other states. Security must be mutual and equal and must be built on trust between states;
treating military security as one of the most important priorities of the policy of the state and of the institutions of civil society. This means that all governmental and public structures and all citizens are obliged to see to it that Russia's defence might is sufficient for the reliable protection of the interests of the individual and society, the territorial integrity of the state, its democratic gains and the country's independence, and for an adequate response to military dangers and threats;
the dependence of the effectiveness of the military security system on the condition of society, its principal goals and prospects for development. In ensuring its security and protecting the interests of its citizens, society and the state, Russia has the right to use a wide range of means, and should a threat arise to its existence as an independent state, then all means, including nuclear weapons. Our state and society have national interests for the protection of which we are prepared to use all military means.
Undoubtedly, when the situation permits, political-diplomatic, economic and other non-military means have priority. However, one must not exaggerate their capacity to ensure military security. This is especially dangerous in a situation of intensifying neo-globalist activity by the United States and NATO. In this bloc's new strategic concept, a course towards the further enlargement of the alliance's membership has been proclaimed, and it has been granted the right to conduct military operations without the consent of the UN Security Council and outside the "NATO area of responsibility". Under these conditions, the means of ensuring military security can be effective only if they rest on military might sufficient to protect the vital interests of the state;
realistic deterrence. This principle is based on the state's resolve to use military might adequate to the character of the threats and sufficient to prevent or suppress it. Such an orientation of the military-political leadership indicates that the Russian state has abandoned the principle of "defensive sufficiency", whose implementation played a negative role in the precipitate reduction of the Armed Forces, the collapse of the military-industrial complex, and the orientation of the troops solely towards defence. Only in combination, using various methods and types of armed struggle, can the tasks of protecting the country's national interests be successfully accomplished;
the use of military force must take place on the basis of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and federal laws or of a special decision of the supreme legislative body, and only when all non-military methods of ensuring Russia's security have been exhausted and have proved ineffective;
the Armed Forces are employed resolutely, consistently and systematically, on the principle of escalation, up to the elimination of an armed attempt to damage the vital interests of citizens, society and the state, and the creation of conditions for concluding peace that are advantageous for the Fatherland;
the use of military force against peaceful citizens or to achieve domestic political goals is not permitted. But the operation of this principle does not extend to the struggle against illegal armed formations that pose a threat to Russia's national interests. In such a case, joint actions by individual formations of the Armed Forces together with the troops of other governmental structures are permitted, in strict accordance with the Constitution and federal laws;
the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation take part in wars and armed conflicts in order to accomplish priority military-strategic tasks that meet the interests of the country and its allied commitments.
Military security is also implemented on the basis of such principles as: legality; a balance of the vital interests of the individual, society and the state; integration with international security systems; the mutual responsibility of the individual, society and the state, and others.
The substantive-activity component of the mechanism manifests itself most fully in the principal lines of activity for ensuring military security. Ensuring Russia's military security under contemporary conditions is carried out along the following lines:
Developing and maintaining the military organisation at a level adequate to the existing and potential threats to the state.
The timely and full financial and economic support of all measures connected with the development of the military sphere.
Improving military legislation and strengthening the normative and legal framework for the activity, development and employment of the Armed Forces.
The qualitative improvement of the Armed Forces, ensuring their combat and mobilisation readiness, and the accumulation of militarily trained reserves.
Ensuring the coordinated development and activity of the Armed Forces, other troops, military formations and their command bodies in the interests of accomplishing the tasks of ensuring the country's military security.
Preventing any military-technical and technological lag along the principal lines of development of the armed forces and military equipment
Ensuring the reliable protection and impenetrability of the state borders, and countering NATO's expansion to the East and the expansion of this bloc's zones of influence.
The effective use of military force to overcome separatist tendencies and eliminate criminal bandit formations, and to suppress armed conflicts.
Participation in peacekeeping operations and the struggle against international terrorism.
Strengthening military cooperation with allied states and coordinating actions with them in the development of the armed forces.
Thus, ensuring the country's military security, which is the most important component of national security, is determined by many factors. They include: the real and potential capabilities of the state and its military organisation; the level of the military-political leadership; the degree of social and political stability of society; the coordination of the activity of the actors ensuring military security, and others. But a special place among them belongs to the further theoretical elaboration of the concept of ensuring the military security of the state, which presupposes first and foremost the formation of the theoretical and methodological foundations for studying the essence and specific features of this process.
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