Reconstruction of the logic of the president’s unexpected personnel maneuvers
Generals with stripes are by definition hawks, and civilians in suits and ties are by definition doves. This is roughly what the first instinctive reaction to the news of the appearance of a purely civilian Minister of Defense in Russia looks like. But in the case of the sensational appointment of Andrei Belousov, everything is exactly the opposite. Arriving at the Federation Council for the procedure for his reconfirmation as Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov made an extremely harsh statement about the dilemma that now faces the West: “If they want (resolution of the conflict in Ukraine — “MK”) on the battlefield, then will be on the battlefield.» Let’s put this declaration of intent on a par with the appointment of Belousov and the reappointment of Lavrov himself, a politician and diplomat who has long come to the conclusion that diplomacy does not work in our current relations with the West. Let's put it in — and we'll get fairly comprehensive information about Putin's strategic plans for the next stage of the Northern Military District.
“War is too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military,” Charles de Talleyrand, the French foreign minister under several political regimes, once said. A loud statement is loud, but not entirely accurate. If you entrust the planning and implementation of combat operations to non-professionals in military affairs, then defeat will become not just probable, but an inevitable consequence of such an approach. The military economy, military finance, military supplies, issues of political governance of the country during periods of acute military conflicts — this is what, in fact, should not become a zone of monopoly influence of the military.
We automatically talk about “the loss of the USSR during the Cold War.” But there is also an inaccuracy hidden here. The Soviet Union did not lose the Cold War. He stopped it by making a conscious (or perhaps unconscious) decision to unilaterally disarmament in the face of an enemy who refused to do the same. Why? Because the people who ruled the economy during the Gorbachev era, despite all their good intentions and positivity, turned the previously not very effective Soviet economic model into a completely unworkable or even dead one.
The results and lessons of the First World War are even more salient and revealing. In purely military terms, Russia did not lose this conflict. She stopped participating due to internal political collapse. And this political collapse, in turn, was caused by an economic collapse. Roughly speaking, Petrograd has run out of bread. And this led to first a gradual and then rapid destruction of the mechanism for governing the country and the army. Of course, in this case I am coarsening and simplifying. Of course, modern Russia is infinitely far from Petrograd during the last weeks of the reign of Nicholas II or the USSR during the decline of Gorbachev. But all this does not negate the main thing: a successful final of the Northern Military District for Russia will directly depend not only on purely military issues, but also on the overall economic stability of the state.
The complex and competitive management partnership of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and his now former first deputy Andrei Belousov (the head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina and several other names must be added to this list) has already made a significant contribution to ensuring such stability. The Russian economic miracle of 2022–24 is largely their doing. But, as we see, Putin decided: against the backdrop of a progressive increase in defense spending, further ensuring such stability requires the destruction of the wall between the civilian and military sectors of the economy. In fact, Andrei Belousov has now been sent to carry out this task. Why him? There are several reasons, in my opinion.
The most important form of “political capital” in modern Russia is not high positions, not connections in law enforcement agencies, and not the amount of financial resources you control. The most valuable, one might even say precious, asset in Russian politics is the trust of the first person. Since the last prime ministerial term of Vladimir Putin, Andrei Belousov has had such trust. He is not involved in business and is not a member of any financial or political grouping. He is his own man, and he is also 100% the president’s man, who in no way hides his status. Belousov is strong because Putin is behind him. Belousov is strong because Putin and he are complete ideological like-minded people. It’s no secret that in the highest Russian spheres there are different attitudes towards the Northern Military District and the current course towards harsh confrontation with the West. Officially, everyone, naturally, ardently supports the president’s line. But some do it at the behest of their soul, and others because “it’s the right thing to do.” As Putin well knows, Andrei Belousov clearly falls into the first category. One of the personal acquaintances of the new Minister of Defense called him in a conversation with me an “imperial” in ideological terms. I'm not sure this term is correct. But here’s what I know for sure: Belousov was one of the first in the circles of senior Russian economic leaders to warmly welcome the reunification of the Russian Federation with Crimea and is a passionate supporter of Putin’s current geopolitical course.
Belousov is strong because he is a seasoned and skilled hardware fighter. The new Minister of Defense is absolutely inflexible and not inclined to compromise. If he is confident in the correctness of his position (and usually he is confident in it), Andrei Belousov stubbornly rushes forward like a tank or a bulldozer. He will not be frightened by the prospect of hardware confrontation. Belousov is strong because he is a competent and experienced manager. Finally, Belousov is strong because he has a clear idea of what he wants to do and how he can do it. The Institute of National Economic Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been the “think tank” of the new Minister of Defense for many years. Just this April, a group of authors from this institute, including, by the way, the new head of the Russian defense department, Dmitry Belousov, released a special report “Russia 2035 — towards a new quality of economy.”
Here is a key passage from this document: “The demand for high rates of economic growth and its efficiency is all the more relevant and important in connection with the need in the medium and possibly long term to incur increased costs for the defense and security of the country, as well as for the restoration of Donbass and the Azov region » And further: “In the conditions of ever closer intertwining of civil and military technologies, the scientific and technical potential of the domestic defense-industrial complex and the flexibility of its restructuring from civilian to military products and, in the future, vice versa, through new diversification of production,” are becoming increasingly important.” If you want to know the ideological, political and managerial credo of the new Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, then this is it — in its purest and most concentrated form.
How exactly does Andrei Belousov intend to implement this truly grandiose program in practice? Here's a concrete example of how his brain works. Eleven years ago, in his then incarnation as the Minister of Economic Development of Russia, Belousov told me during an interview: “Yes, there are and will be corruption losses. And we must fight this. But at the same time, it is necessary to introduce schemes that will make it unprofitable to steal. We must use the principle that no one steals from themselves… Let's say I am a customer and on behalf of the state I order a contractor to build a road… But let's make sure that the contractor also operates this road… The contractor will have an interest in not engaging in theft. After all, he will have to give his own, and not someone else’s.”
Let's try to summarize. The new defense minister will not engage in petty savings. Under him, there will be no ill-conceived “optimizations” in the spirit of one of his predecessors, Anatoly Serdyukov. Belousov is a supporter of establishing efficient processes, such large-scale government expenditures that they work with maximum efficiency. In a geopolitical sense, this means that Russia is preparing for a long and possibly even more difficult military conflict than now (see Lavrov’s statement at the beginning of this material). Many in the West are now running around with the idea that “Putin just needs to sit out.” The appointment of Andrei Belousov indicates that the GDP clearly sees this danger and is actively looking for an antidote against it. Belousov’s main task is to replace “searches” in the previous sentence with “found.”