What is better: contract or conscript servicemen? What kind ought to constitute the Ukrainian Army for it to be really combat effective?
The “Svidomo” [“Consciously”] Bureau along with the Defense and Security Policy Centre sought answers to these questions in manifestoes of presidential candidates. By taking the presidential oath one of these eighteen people will automatically become the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As we have ascertained in earlier publications the future President with have to dedicate one third of his time to Army issues.
What Army Each of Them Wants
The leaders of the pre-election rating Victor Yanukovitch and Yulia Timoshenko are both championing a professional Army. The leader of the Party of Regions even gives the exact deadline, namely by 2011, which means that in a year’s time all servicemen without exception will be hired as opposed to drafted. Likewise, Timoshenko advocates abolition of conscript service as a matter of principle but fails to divulge in her manifesto when exactly she plans to implement this.
By the way, as to sentiments in the Ukrainian Army, only 36,5% of servicemen that took part in the poll conducted by the Centre last October were in favour of the idea to drop conscription altogether. The vast majority of servicemen believe that the Ukrainian Army should present the mixed type. Over 54% of servicemen polled by the Centre call the idea of complete transition to professional army “economically unsound, poorly thought-out and ill-advised political decision”. The candidates, to all appearances, have no inkling of such sentiments.
The incumbent Supreme Commander-in-Chief Victor Yushchenko promises in his manifesto that “the Ukrainian Armed Forces will become robust, professional, contract-based”. However, it was during his presidency that the programme of the Ukrainian Army’s transition to contract-based service fell through, to all intents and purposes. Officials are now hectically trying to cobble up a revised plan that reschedules the deadline for complete transition for 2015 instead of 2011. The Presidential Decree with the new term has already been signed but no corresponding changes have been made to the State Programme where the old date still appears.
However the military advise against it: 21,9% of the Ukrainian officers polled by the Centre believe that this deadline should be pushed further ahead in the future than 2015. 71,4% of the officers say flat out that the project “Contract-based Army-2015” is unfeasible.
Let us go back to the manifestoes. Sergii Tyhypko also professes that the Army should be contract-based (as well as mobile and professional). Oleh Tiahnybok subscribes to this point of view.
Like other candidates, ex-Minister of Defence Anatolii Grytsenko evades giving detailed specific description of the Army he will command. His manifesto reads only, “Our Army will become contract-based and ensure reliable protection for our people. Our soldiers will be professionals.”
Inna Bogoslovska promises a contract-based Army in five years, that is in 2015. Candidate Vasyl Protyvsih [“protyvsih” in Ukrainian means “against all”] calls conscription press-ganging and insists on a professional army without any draftees.
Summarily: 8 out of 18 candidates at least mentioned the words “contract-based Army” in their manifestoes. They all are going to develop the Armed Forces without conscripts. The rest of the candidates didn’t even stop to think about this issue. Their manifestoes say nothing about the army manning principles.
Why Is Contract-Based Project Not Working Out?
“We have intensified the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ transition to the professional basis: the percentage of contract servicemen among our privates and NCOs today is over 50%”. This is how Victor Yushchenko was telling the military about the progress in the Army development on the 3rd of December this year during celebration of the Armed Forces Day. He failed to mention though that according to the State Programme of the Armed Forces Reformation and Development During 2006-2011 the percentage of contract servicemen by 2009 was to have amounted to 70%.
The reason this Programme fell through is very trite: money. A contract-based recruit gets paid approximately 900 hryvnias. This sum has been unchanged for the past four years. The Army scrapes the bottom of the barrel to provide enough expendables such as soap, uniform, food, electricity. Reformation is simply not an issue under consideration in these circumstances.
Despite all the plans to reduce and subsequently whittle down conscription so that in 2010 young Ukrainian men would for the last time receive call-up papers from their local Military Registration and Enlistment Offices, conscription this year has in effect been increased by 6 000 (from 47 000 last year to 53 000 this year). This is the programme “People Instead of Money”. It is still impossible to relieve the Army of certain tasks referred to as “extrinsic functions”. There is no money to hire cleaners, drivers, laundresses, guards for military storages and depots… This money was stipulated by the State Programme but never allotted. This is why there is an increased need for conscripts this year; after all someone has to guard military materiel and clean up the territory of military units.
There are other reasons why this transition to professional army is not panning out. In the course of the aforementioned poll servicemen were also asked to enumerate problems that thwarted the contract-based army development. The respondents offered several different answers. Over 80% mentioned the financial factor, but not only this one. Here are some more:
- failure to take steps aimed at making military service more attractive (40,5% of respondents);
- unsatisfactory military-patriotic upbringing of young people (21,2%)
Officers (14,7%) complain of low-quality selection (medical, psychological, etc) of recruits for contract-based service done by Manning Centres. Contract servicemen (25,6%) in turn emphasise such problem as officers’ unwillingness to revise their attitude to contract servicemen as professionals and assistants to these officers.
Here are some figures given by Victor Yushchenko at this year’s celebration of the Armed Forces Day. 5671 contract servicemen left the Army in 2008 whereas as many as 4811 servicemen have already done so over the past eleven months of this year. 564 young officers and 144 highly skilled military pilots left the Army in 2009 alone.
Two thirds of today’s contract servicemen are planning to retire over the next few years. When asked, “Are you planning to make a new contract after the current one expires?”, only 35,4% of the respondents said “yes”. The rest are leaving the Armed Forces thus foiling the plans of our presidential candidates to have a contract-based Army.
What Army Do We Really Need?
Let us go back to the candidates. Almost half of them advocate a contract-based Army. Even those who use the words “professional Army” in all likelihood mean contract-based Army. However contract-based manning without proper training does not automatically spell professionalism whereas high level of combat training for conscripts with appropriate logistic support to such training will ensure moulding of these conscripts into professional military.
Therefore the “transition to the contract-based service for the sake of transition” formula by which the presidential candidates that mention the Armed Forces seem to be guided is unjustified. It is necessary to develop a manning model that would be economically expedient and able to enhance tangibly defence capability of the state.
The results of the analysis done by experts of the Centre demonstrate that the most rational model of the Armed Forces manning is the mixed one with the contract-to-conscript ratio varying between 2,5:1,5 and 3:1 respectively. This will allow of saving some 4-7% of material and financial resources allocated to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Yet another challenge is patriotic upbringing as well as unity of the society and the Army. For instance in Germany conscript service was introduced in 1956 as a tool of public control and warranty of link between the German society and the Army. It was anticipated that conscript service would make it possible to destroy the caste exclusiveness of the German military. In Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Finland) universal conscription is a tool with which national identity, unity of the society and the link between the civilian and the military sectors are shaped.
In November and December of 2009 the Centre conducted a social survey to find out what Ukrainian citizens thought of the Army. Well, when asked about the Army’s functions the respondents (39,1%) put “upbringing of the youth” third after “defence of the country” (77,1%) and “protection of sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability” (53,8%).
Citizens also hold an opinion about a contract-based Army. Respondents consider transition to contract-based service to be a factor that can enhance the Ukrainian Armed Forces potential (19,3%), but only after some other steps have been taken, namely increased effectiveness of government (38,4%) and military command and control (28,1%) as well as improved social welfare for the military (32,0%).
Therefore complete transition to a contract-based Army is not an unequivocal issue. The future Supreme Commander-in-Chief will have to face the challenge of a contract-based Army. Once he has taken office he will no longer be able to hide behind general phrases about professional army and world peace.
