26.10.2011
Autor: Martin Hurt
Kavatsus suurendada kaitse-eelarvet tasemeni 2% SKT praegusel ajal, mil paljusid inimesi pitsitab üleüldine hinnatõus ja kõrge töötuse määr, eeldab Vabariigi Valitsuse ja Riigikogu poolt kindlat tahet ja suutlikkust seda otsust kaitsta. Seetõttu on loogiline, et lisaraha suunatakse eelkõige valdkondadesse, mis toovad kaasa kaitsevõime märgatavat kvalitatiivset kasvu (sh kaitseotstarbeline varustus ja mobilisatsioonivarud).
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postitas: RKK/ICDS blog
16.10.2011
Autor: Martin Hurt
Valitsus on esitanud Riigikogule 2012. aasta riigieelarve eelnõu, mille kohaselt eraldatakse sõjaliseks riigikaitseks summa, mis võrdub 2%-ga SKT-st. Otsus langetati juba 1990ndate aastate lõpus, kuid alles nüüd viiakse see täide. Tegemist on seetõttu märkimisväärse sündmusega.
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postitas: RKK/ICDS blog
27.09.2011
Autor: Martin Hurt
Täna kaitseminister Mart Laari sulest ilmunud arvamusartiklis sisalduvat kavatsust tuleks vaadelda laiemas kontekstis:
1. Järgmisel aastal saavutab kaitse-eelarve lõpuks taseme 2% SKP-st. Lagi on käes, rohkem raha juurde ei tule. Edaspidi kasvab kaitse-eelarve käsi-käes sisemajanduse koguproduktiga. Kui on soov suurendada kaadrikaitseväelaste arvu või käivitada mõni suurinvesteering, eeldab see mingi olemasoleva tegevuse kärpimist nii nagu seda tehakse teistes valdkondades nagu nt kultuur, keskkonnahoid või rahvatervis.
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postitas: RKK/ICDS blog
29.03.2011
Autor: Martin Hurt
Reformierakonna ja IRL-i valitsusliidu programm peaks üldiselt rahuldama neid, kelle jaoks Eesti riigi julgeolek on südamelähedane.
Olulisemad tegevused eeloleval valitsemisperioodil saavad olema:
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postitas: RKK/ICDS blog
14.12.2010
Author: Tomas Jermalavicius
In the run-up to the national elections, Estonia’s political parties are on a look-out for new items for their agendas. Commendably, defence policy is not overlooked in the political debate. Equally commendably, parties are assuming positions congruent with their political ideologies: the liberals are advocating gradual transition to all-volunteer force format (often wrongly termed as “professional force”), while the conservatives are defending the “two-tier” format (or mix of full-time volunteers and conscripts) currently in place. Whatever the practical outcome of this debate, the Estonian society will benefit if this sensitive issue will have been discussed thoroughly and intelligently. The last thing you want to do is to imitate what others (Sweden, Germany, Lithuania etc.) do without understanding your own aims, needs and assumptions – this would be simply a counter-productive “strategic parroting”.
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postitas: RKK/ICDS blog
21.01.2010
Autor: Anthony Lawrence
There will be a general election in the UK this year, after which whoever wins will carry out a defence review. This will be the first since the 1997 Strategic Defence Review, which re-focused the UK’s armed forces from their Cold War role towards being a “force for good in the world”. The preliminary work is already underway and, not least because of substantial pressure on the UK defence budget, it seems that even key acquisition projects will be up for debate. These include, notably, the future carrier programme, the Joint Strike Fighter (F-35) programme, the Typhoon (Eurofighter) programme and even the independent nuclear deterrent.
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postitas: RKK/ICDS blog
26.08.2009
Autor: Tomas Jermalavicius
Confronted with formidable challenges of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States military realised that their old ways of conducting warfare were irrelevant and that they had to relearn the forgotten tricks of “small wars” anew. In this quest, the U.S. military leadership became fascinated with a rather old managerial concept of learning organisation: the counterinsurgency manual of 2006 explicitly refers to the imperative for the U.S. military to turn itself into a smart learning organisation as a precondition for long-term success in current and future military campaigns.
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postitas: RKK/ICDS blog
23.05.2009
Autor: Anthony Lawrence
During the Baltic Defence College’s Higher Command Studies Course, the excellent Professor Christopher Dandeker (who will be speaking again at ICDS in late August) delivers a seminar on the relationship between the armed forces and society. As part of this, he discusses the extent to which the armed forces can be different from wider society. The armed forces tend to be conservative, close-knit communities. Their overwhelming concern to maintain operational effectiveness often, understandably, leads them to push back against social and cultural changes. But at the same time, the armed forces recruit from and derive their support from wider society. If they do not reflect at least most of the values and beliefs of their host societies, they will have trouble attracting new members and find it more difficult to win the necessary backing of the public. So, mirroring developments in society albeit with some delay, the role of women) has grown considerably in most NATO armed forces. Gay and lesbian personnel have been also been welcomed in many armed forces; President Obama is reportedly in favour of reviewing the US military’s ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy.
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postitas: RKK/ICDS blog
16.05.2008
Autor: Anthony Lawrence
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” say the English, meaning that if someone makes you a present of a horse, you don’t show ingratitude by inspecting its teeth to see how old it is. It’s a free horse – you accept it with thanks. Although cavalry still survive in today’s armed forces, horses themselves tend only to be used for ceremonial purposes and Ministries of Defence are rarely offered real animals. But in the period following the end of the Cold War, there have been many occasions when nations building and modernising their militaries have been offered, and have accepted, used military equipment at little or no cost.
The usual human response to free stuff is to grab it. There are websites pointing you towards the many things you can get for free and few of us could deny that we get a buzz from acquiring something for an unexpectedly low price. This is harmless enough when it comes to cosmetics samples – you can always throw them away if they bring you out in a rash – but when bargain defence equipment is on offer, a little more care is needed. There are at least three questions that need to be thought about.
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postitas: RKK/ICDS blog
24.04.2008
Autor: Tony Lawrence
In Tuesday’s Päevaleht, Leo Kunnas argued that the size of Estonia’s wartime defence forces should be driven by the strength of the permanent readiness units in Russia’s Leningrad Military District – meaning a wartime strength of 40-50 000 – and criticised the Ministry of Defence for spending money on projects that are unrelated to primary independent defence capability or are of secondary importance militarily. Kunnas is thus advocating that Estonia’s defence planning should be ‘threat-based’ – the force structure should be designed to meet the most stressing threat scenario.
NATO used threat-based defence planning during the Cold War; the existential threat posed by the Warsaw Pact defined almost all of NATO’s force structure. Intelligence allowed the threat to be characterised and measured; NATO’s objectives, in terms of deterrence, territorial defence and the restoration of captured territory, were quantified and agreed; and a mass of simulations and wargames were employed to calculate the force structure necessary to meet those objectives. This approach was attractive in the circumstances of the Cold War – the threat was immediate and real and the necessary force structures to meet it could be calculated with a fair degree of confidence. But even during its chilliest days, Cold War threat-based planning was polluted by the reality of financial constraints. NATO planned not for the most stressing threat, but for the most stressing threat its members were prepared to afford to meet.
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postitas: RKK/ICDS blog
