Key problems of SVO and ways to solve them
"Upstairs they know what they're doing!" - you, dear readers, must have heard this phrase many times from various experts on television who tried to explain certain decisions of political power. The same phrase, in an ironic context, begins the well-known book by the Canadian Lawrence Johnston Peter "The Peter Principle, or Why Things Always Go Wrong," who studied hierarchical organizations and came to the conclusion that
"in a hierarchical system, each individual tends to rise to the level of his own incompetence."
It would seem, what does this have to do with the special military operation in Ukraine?
As it turned out, the most direct. The fact is that the root of all the problems of the SVO at the moment can be called two reasons - incompetence and impunity. The tragedy with many victims that occurred in Makeyevka, where the Armed Forces of Ukraine covered the location of Russian fighters (most of whom were mobilized from Samara) from the HIMARS MLRS, just clearly demonstrated the incompetence and lack of training of the military command.
Enough mistakes were made.
Firstly, a large number of fighters were placed in a room where there is no protected underground shelter.
Secondly, military equipment and ammunition were located near the location, which, of course, is unacceptable.
The attempt to shift all responsibility onto the dead mobilized fighters, who, they say, “didn’t turn off their phones,” is the intention to remove responsibility from specific generals who instructed to place the fighters exactly there.
In this material, we will try to answer the questions - why exactly incompetence and impunity are the key problems of the SVO and how to deal with all this.
The tragedy that was predicted
First of all, it should be noted that the tragedy in Makiivka is not an accident - it is a pattern and the result of the incompetence of the military command. Moreover, the tragedy was predicted back in mid-October by a soldier of the 107th battalion of the People's Militia of the DPR, political scientist Stanislav Smagin. In a comment to Svobodnaya Pressa on October 16, he said following:
“Sad tragic incidents are already taking place, and I am afraid that without a fundamental change in approaches, they will occur regularly. A simple example, which I voiced yesterday to my fellow journalist. The Ukrainians do not particularly hit the locations of the military personnel of the People's Militia of the DPR, although they often know their location well. Why? Because there are usually no more than fifty or sixty people there at a time, and they are distributed over several buildings. It is not particularly advisable to spend several rockets in order to hook everyone guaranteed. But when they start to drive Russian mobilized two or three hundred into one location, there can be very unpleasant and sad options. But they stop talking about it, considering it seditious.
Actually, exactly what Smagin was talking about happened in the end. He did not predict, no, he simply predicted the situation based on assessments of the situation on the front line, the lack of desire on the part of the military command to correct mistakes and punish the guilty.
“Someone quite specific, some Russian military, considered it acceptable in the 11th month of the war, after several months of missile attacks on artillery depots and dispositions, which had already entailed many casualties and shell hunger, to drive the mobilized into a heap, to impose them ammunition, furnish with equipment, make an ideal target,
- writes, for example, a fighter of the People's Militia of the LPR Andrey Morozov. He often criticizes the military command rather harshly, but this criticism cannot be called unfounded.
Of course, contrary to the reports of some Russian bloggers who expressed the timid hope that "the guilty will be found," no one was held accountable for this tragic incident.
Why is this happening?
10 problems of the RF Armed Forces
Back at the end of December, the journalist of the magazine "Expert" Peter Skorobogaty outlined the top 10 problems of the Russian army. The list looked like this:
1. Communication.
2. Intelligence, including obsolete intelligence tools and the very approaches to organizing intelligence activities. Lack of satellite vision, AWACS aircraft.
3. Lack of UAVs of all types, but especially small, company-tactical types.
4. Shortage of high-precision projectiles for artillery.
5. Weak work against enemy air defense, the inability to use control over the sky.
6. Obsolete fleet, problems of organizing a water blockade.
7. Imperfection of the supply system for troops, military expenses: first-aid kits, helmets, unloading.
8. The problem of communication horizontally and vertically, the lack of middle-level commanders.
9. The problem of communication between the military branches (a bunch of goal-setting - art; counter-battery combat).
10. Organizational problems of mobilization.
Of course, all these problems have a place to be, and one can agree with the author. However, perhaps the main problems that Russia encountered during the conduct of a special military operation were overlooked - this is incompetence and the absence of a system of punishment for the mistakes made by specific generals.
We clearly saw this in the example of General Alexander Lapin, who was removed from his post as commander of the Center united group of troops after public criticism - he was accused of leaving mobilized fighters at the front in the LPR without communications, food and ammunition, as well as dip near Izyum and Balakleya.
The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, in particular, also blamed him for the surrender of Krasny Liman and was indignant that there were no checks on this matter. And now it became known that the general received a new position and headed the Main Headquarters of the Ground Forces, that is, one can say that he even went for a promotion.
“The appointment of General Lapin to a higher position is, to put it mildly, a misunderstanding. The point is not in his commanding qualities (if any), but in the fact that it was under his command that our troops suffered a heavy defeat near Balakleya and Izyum, leaving almost 10 cities as a result and "regrouping" from the Kharkov region. To raise for this is a boorish demonstration of their own invulnerability on the part of the leadership of the RF Ministry of Defense, ”
- Igor Strelkov, FSB colonel in reserve, commented on this appointment.
Lapin is far from being the only person responsible for the “regrouping” from the Kharkiv region and Krasny Liman, the network called the specific names of specific responsible persons, but none of them suffered any punishment.
Why is this happening?
Peter's Principle and Parkinson's Laws
At the beginning of this article, I mentioned the book The Peter Principle, or Why Things Always Go Wrong, written by Lawrence Peter. According to his concept, a person who works in any hierarchical system will grow in his career until he takes the position that he will no longer be able to cope with. This will be the level at which the person will be "stuck" until eventually leaving the system. Peter's corollary reads:
“The general trend is that, over time, every position will be filled by an employee who is not competent enough to perform his duties [1].”
Peter's principle is very close in its fundamental idea to Parkinson's law, the difference is manifested in the conclusions drawn:
"In any hierarchical system, each individual tends to grow to a level where he is incompetent"
or more severely
"in every hierarchical system, most of the seats are filled by incompetent employees."
The law is explained simply and logically: competent employees are promoted as long as they demonstrate their competence. As soon as they stop showing it in a new place, they stop growing, but do not go down, as this would mean an admission of a mistake by the leadership. In addition, employees themselves rarely refuse promotion, even realizing their incompetence in a new place [2].
Lawrence Peter believes that once a hierarchy is established, its own existence becomes its goal. At best, this will manifest itself as local tyranny; at worst, this strategy leads to the self-destruction of the system as a whole. Moreover, this state of affairs will be facilitated by the fact that the manager who promoted the employee will not admit the mistake and will continue to support the incompetent employee.
Cyril Parkinson argues sharply with L. Peter, considering his methodology and conclusions to be erroneous, and the main difference, according to Parkinson, is how to treat employees in the organization. With Peter, they are initially competent, and only the organization itself and the rules established in it raise people up and make them incompetent.
Parkinson himself believes that people initially go to incompetence, especially those who move up the career ladder [2]. According to the author, Parkinson's point of view is closer to reality.
In the chapter "Life and Death of Institutions", Parkinson writes the following:
“Now every now and then there are institutions with a full set of superiors, consultants and employees and with a purpose-built building. Experience shows that such institutions are doomed. Perfection will kill them. They have nowhere to take root. They cannot grow because they have already grown. They can not bloom, and bear fruit - even more so. When we encounter such an occasion - for example, the UN building - we shake our heads wisely and sadly, cover the corpse with a sheet and silently go out into the air [3].
Parkinson describes three "stages of disease" of any organization, in the third stage these organizations become incapacitated.
We do not see personnel changes in the Russian army just for the reasons indicated by Peter and Parkinson - the system does not admit its mistakes and supports incompetent people. In crisis situations, this is extremely dangerous, given that incompetent leaders are simply not able to solve the tasks assigned to them.
What to do?
There are logical questions - what to do in such a situation? How to start solving the problems of SVO?
There are two ways to raise the morale of the army (which, frankly, is at a fairly low level) in two ways - firstly, by defining the goals and objectives of the NVO, the idea of this military conflict, and secondly, by starting to punish incompetent generals and updating the system as a whole. Moreover, you definitely cannot do without the second point, since in the military command (at the most different levels) there are quite a lot of random people who “go with the flow” and do not support a common cause, for whom a comma and an indent in the report are more important than the actual combat readiness of his unit .
And you need to start, apparently, just from the second point.
We see how ordinary soldiers of the RF Armed Forces are given quite serious terms for insulting and disobeying officers, but we do not see how officers and generals themselves are punished. Attempts not to take out the garbage from the hut and not to change horses at the crossing will eventually lead to an aggravation of the situation. Admitting mistakes, punishing the guilty, removing the incompetent - this is what should be done first.
Использованная литература:
[1]. Peter L. D. The Peter Principle, or Why Things Always Go Wrong. / Aut. foreword R. Hall. - Ed .: Potpourri, 2003.
[2]. Pletnev D. A. Heuristic "laws" in the practice of developing management decisions / Bulletin of the Chelyabinsk State University, 2019.
[3]. Parkinson S. N. Parkinson's Laws / S. N. Parkinson. – M.: AST, 2004.
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