State-Building and Post-Soviet Military Affairs

Since 1991 the post-Soviet states have faced the extremely difficult task of devising fundamentally new security concepts and assembling new military forces in the midst of a profound socioeconomic upheaval. As the preceding chapters graphically demonstrate, attempts to fulfill this task have been closely intertwined with efforts to build new states, consolidate nations, and, in varying measures, transform the existing socioeconomic order. Caught up in changes of such sweeping scope, individuals and social groups find it difficult to formulate any stable notion of their own interests, especially when they must weigh short-term against long-term interests. 1 The same is true of military institutions, and indeed of whole national societies. The formulation and effective pursuit of interests, whether individual or collective, presuppose certain fixed realities that permit rational calculation of the costs and benefits of a limited set of alternative courses of action. As a consequence, the conceptualization of national interests and military policies in the post-Soviet states has been fraught with special complexity and confusion.