Who was calling the shots? Civil-military relations in Russia, 1996--2001

In the often anarchic environment of the 1990s, the nascent Russian Federation experienced misunderstandings and missteps in civil-military relations. Were civilians really in control of the military in Russia? Did the military obey orders from civilian authorities, or was it merely giving lip service to those it served to protect, implementing its own policies and courses of action in practice? In the second half of the first decade (1996-2001) of post-Soviet Russian civil-military relations, who was calling the shots?; In Kosovo during the late spring of 1999, as NATO's military intervention was in full swing, Russian troops moved to occupy the airport at Pristina, suggesting an attempt to garner a larger role for Russia in the anticipated NATO-brokered peace plan. The army's move may have been a military initiative, absent civilian authorization. Later that same year, the army responded to attacks in Dagestan by rebel forces located in neighboring Chechnya, reinitiating the use of force into that region. As in Kosovo, there is reason to conclude that the decision to go to war again in Chechnya may have been made by the military acting on its own initiative. In both cases, President Yeltsin was weak and may have been manipulated by the military. After Putin's election in 2000, when the submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea, Western assistance was rejected because the military lied to the president. Putin's missteps in handling the incident might be attributed to the misinformation he received in this more subtle example of how the military can undermine civilian authority.; Gaps in authority existed when the defense establishment in Russia was unable or unwilling to provide the necessary direction and supervision to its armed forces. In the three cases that are examined in this dissertation there is evidence that these conditions led to military adventurism: initiatives that ran counter to civilian will, but nonetheless were thought to be in the best interest of the country. Examining civil-military relations during the transition from the Yeltsin to Putin eras may help to understand the later stages of Russian politics, in Putin's second term and beyond.