A New Model Army

Ossetia showed Serdyukov's cleaned-up Army in action. Only volunteer soldiers with at least two years' training were used there. The 58th Army managed to deploy 23,000 troops to the region within 12 hours of the commencement of Georgia's shelling the Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali—a huge improvement over the 10 days it took Russia to respond when Chechen rebels invaded Dagestan in 1999. According to independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, the quick deployment owed to the fact that the operation had been war-gamed extensively since April. Russian engineers had also repaired railway lines deep into Abkhazia to allow the faster movement of Russian armor.

While the invasion went smoothly, however, the tactics used were old fashioned. Tank columns trundled slowly down a single road—and would have been massacred had they faced a modern Western military. Analysts say that coordination between Russia's forces was also dismal, with aircraft operating almost independently. The Russians, in addition, inexplicably used Tu-22 strategic bombers for reconnaissance and to strafe ground targets. And communications and field intelligence were less than impressive: one Russian officer asked a NEWSWEEK reporter if she could lend him a Georgian SIM card for his phone; he also asked if she knew where the nearest Georgian front lines were (the latter request was politely declined).

In many ways, however, these shortcomings were beside the point. Today's Kremlin doesn't need a world-beating Army—just one that's better than Moscow's planned adversaries, namely the weak, post-Soviet states on Russia's periphery. Much of Serdyukov's overhaul has been remedial, aimed at facilitating the execution of basic strategies. The Kremlin is in no position to take on NATO. Yet it may not need to. According to a gloomy analysis circulated last week by the NATO college in Rome, "Moscow is likely to see NATO as a paper tiger unable either to provide real support to its partners or to respond to conflict in the wider Euro-Atlantic area."

That may be overstating things; in terms of cold military force, NATO remains vastly superior, outspending Russia (despite Moscow's budget boost) by a factor of more than 20. Russia does produce some good hardware, such as the air-defense systems coveted Iran and Syria, and its attack helicopters and fighter-bombers are relatively modern, says Felgenhauer. But "Russian conventional forces are still decades behind most NATO countries," says one NATO military attaché in Moscow not authorized to speak on the record. Moreover, recent NATO advances in command-and-control systems, the integration of battlefield intelligence with air cover and electronic surveillance "leave Russia standing," the attaché says.

But if Moscow's right, it needn't worry. To regain its old dominion, all Russia need do is get its old military machine up and running again. And the signs are that's just what it's done. Steamrollers may not be agile, subtle or fast. But as Georgia showed, they do a very good job crushing most anything that gets in their way.

With John Barry in Washington and Anna Nemtsova in Gori

© 2008