The Manpower Problem: Russia's Army of Conscripts, Convicts , and Contractors

What happens when a military power relies on troops made of coerced recruits and convicts?

In this episode of GNSI At the Boundary podcast, Drs. Guido Rossi and Tad Schnaufer join the show to unpack their latest research paper on Russia’s flawed mobilization strategy in the Ukraine war. Drawing from their article in the Journal of Strategic Security, they explore how Russia’s early assumptions of a short, low-intensity conflict with minimal resistance collapsed into a prolonged, high-intensity war requiring mass manpower.

Facing constraints on full mobilization, the Kremlin turned to alternative sources of fighters, these being conscripts, convicts, contractors, and coerced recruits, or also known as “ersatz soldiers.” The result of such recruits is a fragmented force structure, mounting casualties, and growing long-term social and strategic risks.

Links from the Episode:

 • Conscripts, Convicts, and Contractors: Ersatz Soldiers and Russia's Total Mobilization Workarounds – By Drs. Tad A. Schnaufer and Guido Rossi

• GNSI Announces Student Cohort for ISI Programme 

• USF Article on Calvin Pham’s grandfather

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At the Boundary  from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida,  features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.

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The mission of GNSI is to provide actionable solutions to 21st-century security challenges for decision-makers at the local, state, national and global levels. We hope you enjoy At the Boundary.

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Transcript

EP 128 - 27 April - Tad Schnaufer and Guido Rossi 

SPEAKERS

Dr. Guido Rossi, Glenn Beckmann, Tad Schnaufer

Glenn Beckmann  00:00

Glenn, welcome to this week's episode of at the boundary, the podcast from the global and national security Institute at the University of South Florida. I'm Glenn Beckman, your guest host for today

Glenn Beckmann  00:29

on the podcast, we're going to speak with two of our own researchers here at GNSI about their recently published article in the GNSI Journal of strategic security, which examines Russia's flawed military mobilization strategy in Ukraine, doctors Guido Rossi and Tad schnaufer will join us in a few minutes first. However, a couple of headlines to tell you about we're excited to announce the four USF students selected to go to the UK this summer to attend the International Security and Intelligence Program that's one of the world's most prestigious educational opportunities. And through our partnership with ISI, we're able to send USF students to Cambridge each summer. And this year, we'll be sending Melina Otero, a first year student in international studies and history unique Alston, a first year graduate student studying AI and business analytics. Justin lecker, a graduate student studying science and financial analytics. And Zachary Kuntz, a second year PhD candidate in history. Congratulations to all four of these outstanding USF students. It's going to be an exciting summer for you. GNSI is beginning the search for Undergraduate Research Fellowship positions for the fall semester. There are multiple openings under a variety of specialties. Specifically, we'll be looking for applications in the following research areas, resistance and resilience, strategic competition, society and the military. There will be resident and non resident fellowship positions available. These opportunities are open to currently enrolled undergrad and graduate students. The resident fellowship research positions are open to currently enrolled USF students and will include class credit. The non resident positions are open to non USF students and professional military education institutions, but will not include class credit. You'll find more information on our website in the near future, as applications will open soon. The latest GNSI decision brief is out. Guest author, Greg Howell is an international economic development consultant and former Senior Foreign Service officer with USA ID. His decision brief examines the global fragility Reauthorization Act specifically through the lens of an America First foreign policy. You can find it on our website. And one final note today, the USF news team recently published an article about one of our students from the future strategist program. Calvin Pham is a student in the Judy gnsift Honors College at USF, studying global business, but he's also a member of FSP and keenly interested in global and national security, thanks, in many ways, to his grandfather, he was a pilot in the Vietnam War who helped 51 people escape Saigon just hours before it fell In April 1975 it was one of the war's most daring escapes, and many of those 51 people became part of Calvin's far reaching family here in the US, it's an absolute banger of a story well worth reading. You'll find a link in the show notes, and thanks to Paul Guzzo of the university news team for writing that story. It's time now for our featured conversation this week, as we join Tad schnaufer And Guido Rossi as they discuss their recent journal of strategic security article examining how Russia's misreading of the Ukraine war led to a fragmented, improvised mobilization strategy relying on conscripts, convicts and contractors as ersatz soldiers to sustain a prolonged conflict. They unpack what this reveals about modern, large scale combat operations, from the limits of partial mobilization to the enduring requirement for mass manpower in high intensity war. Let's turn it over to tad and Guido

Tad Schnaufer  04:24

Guido, thank you so much for joining us at this episode of at the boundary.

Dr. Guido Rossi  04:29

Thank you, Ted, thank you for having

Tad Schnaufer  04:31

me well. And coincidentally, today, we're going to talk about a journal article we co authored, and the Journal of strategic security, the JSs, which is hosted between GNSI and USF libraries, and it came out in March of this year. The focus of the article really covers the mobilization of Russian forces in the current war in Ukraine. Hence the title conscripts, convicts and contractors, Aristotle soldiers and Russia's. Total, total mobilization workarounds. So first, before we dive into the term airstrike soldiers and what the article dives into, what was your motivation for this article?

Dr. Guido Rossi  05:11

Well, so my original research really had to do with recruiting, and from that on, you know, motivations to join and what is called propensity for service. So you know, what is the level of willingness by individuals to enlist in the military, in this case, US military. But the I always thought that the type of war, or type of wars that a nation embarks upon can also influence that, because obviously, if a war is not well supported by the public, then you won't have high levels of propensity for service, and you will not have many individuals enlisting. And so from that came the idea of then delving into the categorization of typologies of war, of types of war?

Tad Schnaufer  06:04

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think, you know, as we were discussing writing this article, my big motivation was I was currently, when the war started. I was serving with the Joint Multinational Training Group Ukraine, and we were looking at the Russian buildup on the Ukrainian border. And it just seemed like the numbers were so small. You know, the estimates between 160 190,000 it just didn't seem it just didn't seem like the Russians mobilized enough people to accomplish the type of war that they're embarking on. And as we talk about in the article and the first section of the article, we talk about that typology of war and how the Russian expectation of the war differed very greatly from what they ended

Dr. Guido Rossi  06:37

up getting. So they got the type of

Tad Schnaufer  06:39

war wrong. Yes, yeah. So their lack of either intelligence or willing to listen to their intelligence services, and possibly this is the decision makers being an echo chamber which we discuss, yeah.

Dr. Guido Rossi  06:51

So essentially, I think the main mistake by the Russians was on two sides, understand, misunderstanding the type of level of support that the war would have gotten from the Russian population, and then, of course, the potential Ukrainian resistance. They really thought they were going to be greeted as liberators. And so therefore the military effort Canadian phase of the invasion was not going to be very difficult. It was not going to last long. And so for the effort, I think they gathered about 200,000 soldiers for the image, for the invasion force. And well, their miscalculations turned out to be pretty harmful, because the war did not turn in their favor. It certainly got a lot of Ukrainian opposition, Ukrainian resistance, and then the inability, later on, of receiving support for this kind of war prevents them from launching a full mobilization of the population, and so getting the necessary military personnel in to continue the effort, right, right?

Tad Schnaufer  08:03

Because the typology, or the type of war that we believe the Russians were expecting as we go through kind of different categories, the nature of the conflict would have almost been defensive, in a sense, they were selling it as this is a defensive conflict, to defend Russian citizens in Ukraine. Well, a defensive wars typically tend to be more popular, right? Get more public support because someone has affronted you, right? The justification for the war, the threat. The Russians expected this to be a high level threat war, because they're saying, again, going to Putin's speech right before the invasion, that they need to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine, because it's a threat to Russian citizens in Ukraine, but also to Russia proper, whether you believe that or not, that's what the Russians were using for justification geographically, the Russians were also trying to frame this in the narrative of their invasion, almost as a homeland. You know, Ukraine's part of us. They're our brothers. So in a sense, this isn't a foreign war, or at least they tried not to sell it as a foreign war. And again, homeland fights typically gain more public support. They expected a limited intensity, like you noted Guido, and they also expected, likely a short duration, short and decisive conflict.

Dr. Guido Rossi  09:04

And for this reason, you also go back to the terminology, they still insist on calling it a special military operation, to not characterize it as a as a full blown war, certainly of not long duration, right?

Tad Schnaufer  09:17

And that's a big use of that term, special military operation. The Putin regime tried to maintain that for a long time, even after it drove into a year two and year three. But we can see that those Russian expectations were not the reality on the ground. As you noted. They miscalculated the Ukrainian will to resist, and ability, slash capability to resist. They also miscalculated the just number of soldiers you need. And we get into the article, you know, just some of the numbers based off of us Russian old Soviet doctrine. In the end, they would have needed far more than that, 190,000 200,000 troops that invaded. They probably would have needed three or four times that to accomplish their mission, assuming they had anticipated a. A full resistance from the Ukrainians, which they again, either miscalculated or had bad intelligence or they just refused to look at it, because the reality of the war was almost the opposite of what we just described. Instead of it being perceived as perceived as as a defensive war, it was perceived as offensive by the Russians and, of course, as the world, right? So it was not you can, you know, the official line is we're defending Russian citizens in Ukraine. That's clearly not the case, and that line of that narrative did not carry through

Dr. Guido Rossi  10:29

to public support, or at the very least, we're defending Russians from NATO encroachment, yes, in Ukraine, yeah.

Tad Schnaufer  10:34

So they're trying to frame it as defensive and Egypt. But it seems the reality on the ground is it's obviously just an offensive conflict, and that hurts with you know, as we tie this into the mobilization piece, when you try to mobilize people for a conflict, again, it's way easier to mobilize people and rally them around the flag when you're being attacked from the outside. It's harder when you're the aggressor. So Russia's again, expected to hope, you know, and from our research here, expected the war to be framed as defensive, but it has come out offensive. The clear threat, saying Ukraine's a threat in the military, this demilitarization of Ukraine, that's not overly evident as well. It's not an existential threat. We talk about that in the article, as well as is a big difference from mobilizing a population gets support when you've been attacked and you're under an existential threat. Obviously, Ukraine does not necessarily, in any military way, pose an existential threat to Russia that limits their ability to mobilize for it. And again, the intensity of the conflict is far higher than likely Russians anticipated, and obviously the duration is much longer. So all those things hinder the Russian and Putin administration's ability to mobilize forces and while maintaining public support for

Dr. Guido Rossi  11:44

the conflict, yeah. So essentially, so far they Putin has only been able to launch a partial mobilization, which is the call up of, I think, if I recall correctly, 300,000 reservists, of whom, not all, were sent to the front lines and and they in that even turned out to be quite a gamble, because it received public backlash. And when did it happen? When did they

Tad Schnaufer  12:18

so the major mobilization took place in the fall, slash winter of 2022 so the invasion happens in February that fall. The Russians realized, whoops, we did not follow any of Clausewitz principles of mass and concentration. They really thought they could just topple the government and overthrow the Zelensky government and put it in pro Russian government. It seems like almost all their political calculations of what their political objectives could not be met with the military force they used so they didn't mobilize a major force before the invasion in February of 2022 they fought the summer. Remember that big withdrawal from Kyiv and Sumy provinces in the north. They reorient the military force in the summer, and then that fall, they realized we're going to need to gather that mass of forces to try to overwhelm the Ukrainians. And that's when that first, and really the only, major mobilization of reserve forces, came up in the late 2022

Dr. Guido Rossi  13:14

and there was the maximum attempt at mobilization that they have done so far. It's not like Putin could not legally call a mobilization. If he didn't want to, he would, well, he would need, of course, to issue a formal declaration of war, but that would undercut his notion of these invasion of Ukraine being a just a special military operation, rather than a full scale war. And on top of that, he would also encounter huge public backlash, and considering that the survival of the regime rests on, well, not so much support by the public, but support by the oligarchs and by the military that would make the survival of his regime much more fragile, can we say? And so that is the reason why they have not resorted to, at the very least, not to another partial mobilization, and certainly not to a full mobilization of Russian population, right?

Tad Schnaufer  14:19

Because, from the military perspective, they could have just mobilized 300,000 troops at the beginning, in addition to what they already had on the border. So they could have mobilized everybody up front and probably overwhelmed Ukrainians at the beginning. Right? They chose not to do that because they were trying to get one. They thought they wouldn't meet resistance, or the Ukrainians would have the will. But also, you're trying to achieve your objectives with the most with the smallest force possible, right? So it's cheaper, less lives, right? Obviously, they miscalculated. So then when they start calling up reserves, they start meeting this resistance, because particularly the urban elites in Moscow and St Petersburg, they're not looking to serve in a military operation, particularly one that's perceived as offensive and external to the nation. So. So they

Dr. Guido Rossi  15:00

essentially found themselves in a quandary. They had these operation that had started that was not really going anywhere. They didn't have enough forces to go in, continue on, but they couldn't really back out of this situation. And they had these, these need for more military personnel, but with the inability, really, of mobilizing the population. And so they resorted to alternative sources of manpower, which we termed ersatz soldiers. So which means, typically alternative sources, typically of lower quality. And that is why we titled The paper conscripts, convicts and contractors, right?

Tad Schnaufer  15:43

And so that's where the Russians turn to as they realize they're not going to be able to mobilize their reserve forces, the properly trained reserve forces, for this crisis one, because there's some legal issues with it. As you noted, Putin would have to declare war. He had to go through the Duma. He could do that. The Duma is likely, you know, going to rubber stamp, you know, everything he says anyway, but there's a lot of public bash backlash that could happen for that. So what the Russians do for their mobilization woes? And after the 2220 late 2022 mobilization that we noted, they start looking for alternative sources of manpower, of soldiers, to be able to push to the front lines. This is where you start seeing a lot more inclusion of at the time, groups like Wagner group. You see recruiting from prisons. You start seeing immigrants that are in Russia, or people on visas in Russia being forced into service or coerced into service, or even groups from Central Asia and Africa that are tricked into service. You come serve in the Russian military, and we'll give you citizenship or some sort of huge bonus. We also see huge expenditures from the Russians on death benefits, for families, on Sign Up bonuses, because in the Russian legal system, certain contractors and conscripts cannot, or conscripts cannot serve outside the country in a foreign war. This is a legacy law coming back, going back to Russia's experience in Afghanistan the 1980s so only certain soldiers in the Russian military can fight in a foreign war that's not defensive, that's offensive. And in this case, because a war hasn't been declared, a lot of those soldiers legally, although they have been used legally, are not supposed to be used in an offensive format, particularly when there's no war declared. So Russia had, has had to use this workaround, and these subpar, you know, populations of, you know, prisoners or people being coerced in the service is where they've turned to. So by doing

Dr. Guido Rossi  17:35

that, and also, I had also people in financial trouble or other people accused of crimes that are real or fabricated. They have been coerced into service, coerced into signing contracts with the with the military, and so that's why the, I think, the term of, you know, volunteers, it's actually, it's a misnomer, because they are not really volunteer soldiers have been coerced into service. Let's not forget the North Koreans as well that have been brought into Now, not all of these troops, especially the North Koreans and the conscripts, have been deployed to the front lines. Except, Well, initially, actually, a scandal broke out that some a number of conscripts had been included in the original invasion force, and some of them died. And that created even more backlash in Russia, especially because this is young people that are not supposed to be at the front lines. And so again, goes back to the public backlash that the Putin regime would suffer if it was to actually declare war and and then being legally authorized to deploy conscripts abroad in Ukraine. But these, these other sources of manpower, they have been deployed in the in the cursed region, to then free up more people for activity, people for for the ongoing operations in Ukraine. And I think it's also interesting. I think the how the invasion of Kursk by the Ukrainians could have modified, perhaps the type of war had the Ukrainian effort into Kursk really been perceived as an invasion of the homeland, it could have turned the war around for the Russians. It could have been perceived as really a invasion of the homeland, as a security threat to the heart of Moscow, and could have been the basis for for Putin to actually present the war now actually as a war, not as military operation anymore, but as a survival war, war survival with the potential of declaring the war and therefore mobilization. But the, I think the the important thing here is that it was obvious for. The start that the Ukrainian, Ukrainian incursion in the Kursk was never meant to actually be an invasion of Russia. It was just a way to divert forces away from the operations in the

Tad Schnaufer  20:10

Donbas well, and in that 2024, invasion of Kursk by the Ukrainians, where they push across the border into the Russian province of Kursk, that that allowed going back to that legal standpoint, that allowed conscripts, and, in the end, pushed the North Koreans to send troops. Because now, in a sense, Russia is on the defense, to your point. But you know, one alternative the Russians could have done to, you know, going to your point, Guido, is that they could have just let the Ukrainians, in a sense, get a little bit deeper, and really sent the national alarm, like, look at how deep they pushed into it and then called a general mobilization. It seems that the Russian administration Putin's and his and his advisors understand that they're barely keeping the lid on this conflict in a sense of where they're recruiting, the people they're mobilizing. They've exhausted, really, the prison system. They've really exhausted a lot of the immigrants and those people with financial difficulties. They've lowered the standard standards for the military when it comes to health, you know, and their overall fitness standards. And they've heavily recruited from rural regions that are economically underdeveloped, where people are looking for a chance to to increase their economic situation through military service, assuming they survive, because there's a high casualty rates. There's a lot of, I mean, as of right now, here we are in 2020, you know, mid or here we are in early 2026, and estimates of you know, 1.5 million Russian casualties. So this war has been very costly, and we have seven, roughly estimated 700,000 Russian soldiers on the front line right now.

Dr. Guido Rossi  21:50

Yeah, and again, we started from an invasion of force that was 190,000 and now we are at 700,000 so the idea the article was that force that it's present today, that is the force that they should have used at the beginning. Had they done so, they would have probably completely overwhelmed the Ukrainian forces, and they would have been able to achieve their strategic and political objectives of getting actually in the Kyiv and replacing the Ukrainian regime, and then also completely seizing the entirety of the Donbas and the disputed regions. But that did not happen. The Rise to the present levels of force happened gradually, and it allowed, on the other hand, on the other side, the Ukrainians, to also mobilize to withstand that force, and that led to the lengthening of the conflict. So to to the present day, ongoing, it doesn't, doesn't without an end in sight. And essentially, instead of reaping the benefits of mobilizing, mobilizing a small force to avoid complete public backlash, to keep the conflict on the sly, the result was actually the opposite. The conflict expanded, expanded and in both both size, casualties and time and so now it's a bigger problem for the Putin regime than it would have been at the beginning.

Tad Schnaufer  23:23

Yeah, of course, we're making some assumptions with that. Is that, obviously, again, from the military standpoint, you know, basic ratios that are in standard doctrines across the world. You know, you want three attackers to one defender, and you want to, you know, somewhere in the realm of 20 soldiers for every 1000 people that in an occupied city to be able to maintain control, right? So their numbers were very low at the beginning. And what we're stating is that, yeah, they would, they would have benefited the Russians, obviously, to mobilize more at the beginning and go in full, full bore. So why didn't they? They would have known that. Russian planners would have known that, right? It's those assumptions of will as those assumption of Ukrainian will as those assumptions that they would be able, that they were more, maybe more technically advanced, that that they wanted to keep it low impact on the population, so they didn't want to mobilize. And then possibly, you know, this is another thing that's discussed, is if they would have mobilized 500,000 troops, the signal to the Ukrainians might have been way different, right? Perhaps that number actually would have motivated the West to do more, because, if you remember, in the lead up to the war, the two the, you know, 190 ish 1000 soldiers that the Russians had on the border, the Biden Administration released a lot of classified documents stating, hey, it looks like this is going to happen. Like this is going to be the one. But a lot of you know, and a lot of people said, Ukrainian is going to fall very quickly, or Kyiv could fall in a week, even with that low number of troops. So it seems like the intelligence estimates, even on the western side, were incorrect, but if the Russians would have mobilized 500,000 troops, it might have caused far more alarm before the invasion. It takes a long time to get that many people in uniform. It would have been clear, you know, as. We look at the lessons from this conflict, that we note in our research is that, yes, you need to mobilize enough to accomplish your objective, keep your political objective within the realm of achieve ability of this force that you're employing, and don't think that you're going to be able to get around mobilizing large portions of the population for large scale conflicts because of the advent or the increased use of drones, or anything like that. Because even the drone forces we've seen in Ukraine, despite the Ukrainians making upwards of 4 million drones a year, that has not decreased the requirement of having soldiers on the ground. You still need soldiers to occupy positions and fight so,

Tad Schnaufer  25:56

ground drones or unmanned or uncrewed ground vehicles, or uncrewed air vehicles or uncrewed sea vehicles, which have been, you know, exploited throughout the conflict. Those are great and those do shuffle around where there are needs for soldiers and sailors. But nonetheless, the requirement to put people in uniform is still there, and it's still very high and in the hundreds of 1000s, as we said, despite all the advancements that has happened in the war since its beginning. Over four years ago, you still have, like I said, roughly 700,000 Russians on the front lines and about 600,000 Ukrainians.

Dr. Guido Rossi  26:29

And that led us to also think about applying these lessons to an American case. So in case of large scale combat operations, either against China or against Russia. And so what would be the lessons that the United States would need to learn before getting to any kind of war like this, or any any war at all? And also, what would be the mobilization potential of the United States?

Tad Schnaufer  26:59

Yeah, so, I mean, we come up with five major points in this article as a framework, or as a, I guess, a baseline for that analysis that Guido just mentioned, and it's, I mean, one, if a country is going to start a conflict, they have to use overwhelming force. That's that that harkens back to the Powell Doctrine and other doctrines formally in either military literature or even political literature. Like said, The Power Doctrine number one still ranks if you're going to embark on military force, make sure you have overwhelming ability to achieve that. Decision makers need to be need to base their political objectives on the reality of the conflict at hand. If your conflict is going to be an overseas offensive conflict, something like Vietnam or the Russians in Afghanistan, or the Russians today in Ukraine, you can expect that your public support will not be that high, particularly when it comes to that idea of propensity of service, which Guido brought up, there's difference of people supporting the war and then people willing to serve in it. That's a huge gap. So yes, people might support the war, but when you say, hey, it's time for you to go ahead and front lines, they're going to be way more remiss, particularly if it's portrayed that type of war is a foreign so it's held in foreign soil. It's offensive, so you're kind of the bad guy oftentimes.

Dr. Guido Rossi  28:16

Yeah, so just like the Ukrainian war right now, where the opposing, opposing the Russians and fighting them back. The war itself has decent levels of public support by the Ukrainians, but when it comes to actually propensity for service, wanting to enlist in the military, well that's a completely different story. So the two so the two factors of public support and willingness to serve or propensity for service, they're loosely correlated. They're not necessarily the same thing, and so we want to explore the relationship between the two and continue to apply the framework of the types of war in a new paper that we're writing about, what about potential levels of resistance to the draft or resistance to mobilization, depending on what type of war is being waged, also by looking back at historical cases of war, and particularly, you know, if we're looking at American mobilizations, and we're looking at War One, War Two, Korea and Vietnam, right?

Tad Schnaufer  29:30

Because, you know, as we look at the current article, we're talking about with the Russian case, the overall warning is that embarking on an offensive, you know, roughly, unjustified, prolonged overseas conflict, regardless of intensity, is going to have some public support backlash, and your country is probably going to end up having to use these aerostat soldiers, these subpart soldiers, on the population. Going back to our future research that we'd like to take this framework to in American cases. We saw that particularly and very evidently in Vietnam with programs such as McNamara's folly, where the United States in Vietnam in one of those types of wars. So again, a type of war that's offensive in nature. It's it's hard to justify in the public eye. It's prolonged and it's overseas. That's what Vietnam was for the United States, and intense, and in that case, a high intensity. The United States had problems mobilizing and drafting. The population had a lot of public pushback. So what does the government do? They use subpar people who in this case, when I'm talking about McNamara's folly, that's or McNamara's, McNamara's 300,000 or 100,000 that's where they the Secretary of Defense at the time, Robert McNamara lowered the health standards and test standards for basic level recruits so that they could incorporate more people from populations that typically would be denied service because they would be seen as unable to properly execute orders or unable to carry out operations in harsh environments, particularly the jungles of Vietnam, but they lower those health standards to get the numbers. And that's one thing with mobilization. It's not just about the numbers. It's not, you know, we've talked a lot of numbers over the course of this interview and in the article, you know, we talked about 100 109,000, 700,000 but one of the big points we're getting at is the title, who makes up those numbers? Because there's big difference between an army of professionally trained reservists and active duty members in 600 in a 600,000 person army, compared to an army that might be larger, but where you have con convicts, you have people who have been coerced in the service, you have people with a lot of health issues, or you have people with mental disabilities that have been forced to the front lines, they're going to fight differently. And, you know, one part that we expanded on this article, and we're looking to do so in the next article, is what happens when those individuals come home. You know, in Russia, they're having a lot of issues with this phenomenon. They call that Black Widow phenomenon, where people getting married just to get the death benefits, potentially of soldiers that go to the front lines in Ukraine and die. And so you having marriages, you know, on false premises, you have families that are maybe getting these benefits or not. I mean, it's really creating a lot of social issues at home, particularly in the communities affected. As we noted, it's not so much the Russian elite or the Russian urban classes, and it's in its major cities. It's more of its rural classes, and people in underdeveloped regions across Russia, particularly in the east, that are suffering from this. And then the ramifications of far are not just on the battlefield. It's what do you do when these when these individuals come home or Or what do their families do when they perish or suffer severe injuries? Are they going to be taken care of by the state, particularly if they're not actually in the beginning, they were, they were pushed their front lines under false pretense, or, I guess I'd say poor motivation. Course, they were pretty much forced.

Dr. Guido Rossi  33:04

And then another thing is, another point that I wanted to make is the use of us at soldiers, like you said, provides soldiers of lower quality, or that can create problems if we're looking at contractors, contractors spell troubles. They have done they've done that in Russia, and we saw it with a major mutiny and essentially an attempted coup to Russia. And from then on, then starting, started a lower reliance on contractors for the efforts in Ukraine. But it's not the first time that contractors created problems. They created problems in Afghanistan and in Iraq, especially during the USF effort, which again was turned into a lengthy war, sometimes of at least of higher intensity than predicted, that was not widely seen as justified or and it was certainly an overseas war that didn't have very high levels of public support, and therefore the United States could not have launched a mobilization For that war at all. In fact, it wasn't done but to obtain the military personnel necessary for that other strategy, strategies were implemented, like the stop loss or heavy reliance on contractors, which then created problems.

Tad Schnaufer  34:36

For example, I mean one of the issues with contractors, whether you're talking about in the war in Ukraine, or Russian contractors in the Wagner group that were in Syria a few years ago. And we saw some issues with that, or contractors working for the United States and Iraq, is that they work in this gray zone in the Geneva Convention and laws of war as well, because they're not uniformed military members. So oftentimes they're doing things that. Are in the gray zone of morality, or they're being used in such ways that countries don't necessarily want to use their uniformed soldiers for.

Dr. Guido Rossi  35:07

So the using Iraq of contractors, in some cases, led to escalation of the conflict, as when they were some black water contractors were ambushed in Fallujah and that led to a major American involvement in that city, leading to the Battle of Fallujah and so also changing the narrative sort of that the US had for the war in Iraq as a friendly occupation of territory.

Tad Schnaufer  35:36

Yes. So, I mean, so in the end, as we wrap this up, and we kind of bring it back to the current article that was just published in March. The overall lessons are that the Russians obviously made some major miscalculations with the number of troops. They invaded with the resolve of the West resolve of the Ukrainians, and then this slow mobilization process where they tried to mobilize their reserve forces met with some public pushback and ended up using all these other methods to get people on the battlefield. So whether those are again, Wagner group, whether those are prisoners, immigrants, people with financial difficulties, people with subpar health conditions, things like that that limited their ability to be, you know, well trained frontline soldiers. Then this has also changed Russian tactics, where it's a lot of, you know, from what we're hearing, a lot of just kind of wave tactics, just throwing attack after attack, and throwing these individuals who aren't very well trained, who aren't really ready for a combat right into the front lines in these attacks. But for the West, for the United States, for other countries, one of the big things to take away, as we noted, is you're going to need as a major nation in a major conflict, whether we're talking about Taiwan, whether we're talking about somewhere else, you're going to need to be able to mobilize a large, well trained force to properly execute a conflict. And if you're not ready for that, you're going to end up resorting to these airshot soldiers.

Dr. Guido Rossi  37:04

And I think also it's an important cautionary tale for for any nation really, to not get involved in stupid wars, essentially, so wars that are not justified, offensive wars for unclear or offensive war simply for resources, wars that don't receive because they won't receive levels of public support, and especially if they are big wars of their or if there's the potential of these wars increasing intensity and duration, then there will be a problem of personnel Well, and

Tad Schnaufer  37:41

I think it's one thing you know to touch on briefly is that most of the time, decision makers aren't thinking this is going to be a 10 Year War, like when we, when we increased our president we, as in the United States, increased our presence in Vietnam. If you look at, you know, Lyndon Johnson's administration, they were thinking that by increasing our presence, we're going to shorten the war. And really it just dug us in even deeper. And but they weren't, they weren't thinking, hey, this is going to be another seven years, and it's going to, we're going to have to mobilize 500,000 forces and increase, you know, and go through the draft. So oftentimes, that miscalculation up front that drags a country into these long term, long term commitments, and then they find themselves in a quagmire, same with the Russians in Afghanistan in 1980 when they came across the border. 1979 when they came across the border, they took a bull. They were able to overthrow the government there and really establish themselves. They did not anticipate a 10 year occupation the that's why. What we're saying in the article, and as we do further research, is mobilization is important. You're going to need that military arm of any diplomatic or political engagement to ensure that you have the force behind your words. But in the end, you have to keep your political objectives aligned with the one, the force you're willing to use, and also within the realms of a short, decisive role, really trying to avoid, again, getting bogged down in a conflict, as as we've seen with the Russians in Ukraine and Afghanistan, United States and Vietnam, for example.

Dr. Guido Rossi  39:09

And I to really bring it to the present time, to the present times. I think there's a there's a big dilemma now about Iran, because there, there are rumors of getting into an actual ground war, but I'm not so sure that these war would qualify as a, first of all, as a short war fully justified in the eyes of the American public, of and of short duration, and so the administration obviously needs to weigh and evaluate all these aspects very, very carefully if they don't want to get themselves into a similar situation as the Russians in Afghanistan or the or the Russians in in Ukraine. And that's why

Tad Schnaufer  40:01

we're looking at again our next article, but it's more hypothetical, on what does a general mobilization look like for a possible world war three scenario, a huge existential threat, or even a large, large threat, something like a Korean War. So with with that in mind, we hope you enjoy the article, and we'll look forward to continuing this line of research and understanding how countries mobilize their populations for different types of wars.

Dr. Guido Rossi  40:26

Thank you so much, Guido, of course, now Thank you Ted.

Glenn Beckmann  40:34

Special thanks to our guests today, doctors Guido Rossi and Tad schnaufer. Guido is one of our research fellows at GNSI, while TED is our strategy and research manager, their article in the latest issue of the Journal of strategic security is a great example how the more things change militarily, the more things remain the same. With regard to the unchanging demand for mass in warfare. Next week, on the podcast, we're going to talk with a couple of the students that were making the trip to the nation's capital for the first ever GNSI DC experience. We're sending six USF students to DC to immerse themselves in the heart of the country's defense and national security industry. We're going to find out what they think about that upcoming trip next week, if you don't want to miss that episode or any other episode, be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. We know you have a lot of options, and we appreciate you sharing some time with us today. You can find GNSI on YouTube, LinkedIn and x be sure to follow like and subscribe while you're there, tell your friends and colleagues as well, and you should definitely check out our monthly newsletter. You can find that all on our website, usf.edu/gnsi,

Glenn Beckmann  41:47

that's going to wrap up this episode of at the boundary. Each new episode will feature global and national security issues we found to be insightful, intriguing, maybe a little bit controversial, but overall, just worth talking about. I'm Glenn Beckman, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time at the boundary.