Impact strategic nr.6-7 - Centrul de Studii Strategice de Apărare şi ...

ACTUALITATEA POLITICO-MILITARĂ
are those ones referring to: 1) Romania’s NATO membership.
For achieving this status, Romania has a lot of
obligations and responsibilities, as a state and as an army.
There are necessary measures of modernization of the
army in order to become a compatible and interoperable
army with the Alliance’s members ones. One of the main
measures refers to the increase of the professionalization
of the national armed forces, by updating the legal frame,
by organizing, training and leadership in concordance with
NATO’s standards, by increasing the number of professional
soldiers. Actually, on missions NATO accomplishes
around the world, all state members send just professional
soldiers. As a result, Romania has to obey strictly this
rule. We have sent military structures in Afghanistan, as
an element of the multinational coalition fighting against
the international terrorism, structures based exclusively on
personnel recruited volunterely; 2) Romania’s admission,
in the close future, in the European Union is another determination
leading to the professionalization of the army.
Most members of this organization gave up conscription
or are on the way of doing it, as a mean of recruiting a
part of the military personnel. As a future member of the
Union, Romania will have to recruit its personnel only by
volunteer procedure if we want to align at the European
standards and not to have major problems in this area.
Becoming an EU member will bring both a lots of obligations
and rights for the Romanian citizens. For instance,
there will be a free circulation in EU space for the people.
Therefore, any young Romanian person will may leave to
work or to study in any European member country. From
this perspective, there may appear a lot of disorders in
finding the right persons for joining the army and their
inner motivation to reply positively to this obligation; 3)
the participation of some Romanian military structures to
NATO missions. As a NATO member, our country will
send abroad different military structures and soldiers to
achieve specific missions. By definition, on these missions
there are admitted only professional soldiers because of:
a) the high risk of these missions. The one participating
to a NATO mission has to do it freely, not obliged by law;
b) the need of a specialized military training of the one
being a part of a NATO mission; c) the existence of some
strict selection criteria for the soldiers involved in a NATO
mission. The most important criteria is the volunteer in
choosing the military profession; 4) the characteristics
of the security environment, at regional, global level
represent another important factor in professionalization
of the army. After the end of East-West confrontation,
the world states face risks and threats they must handle.
Among these risks and threats we may mention: the
uncontrolled spread of weapons of mass destruction. It
is possible some countries and some terrorist groups to
get this kind of weapons and use them on blackmailing
other countries or their own objectives (as North Korea’s
withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Nuclear Weapons
Treaty); the spread of organized crime networks (people,
drugs, weapons smuggling); the aggression against some
countries’ informational systems; the international terrorism;
the development of a cosmopolitan society, on
one hand, and the identity search, on the other hand, as
a consequence of the decline of the great ideologies and
the characteristics of the civilizations shocks. As a NATO
member, Romania will have to involve actively in actions
of preventing and diminishing the effects of some risks and
threats. But efficiency depends on the personnel quality; 5)
the international treaties and conventions on reducing the
forces and some weapon types. By signing them, Romania
is obliged to reduce them to some extent. It is obvious these
downsizings need to be compensated by high professional
personnel and by modern fight capabilities; 6) the reform
in NATO’s member states. After the end of Cold War the
risks and threats from the traditional enemy-members of
the Warsaw Treaty- disappeared. Now we face stronger
ones- the international terrorism, organized crime, illegal
people smuggling, and uncontrolled spread of weapons of
mass destruction. On the other hand, the need of aligning
NATO’s objectives to the present European and worldwide
political-military conditions, to the new types of missions
this organization has assumed regionally and globally and
to the effects of the technical-military revolution – all
these facts have determined the beginning of an ongoing
reform in NATO’s members armies. The same reform has
a strong impact on the similar process happening in the
armies of the states invited to join NATO.
3. Possible consequences of
the professionalization of army
The professionalization of the army has both sustainers
and rivals because of its social, economical, political,
military and psychosocial consequences. We present
some of the possible and probable consequences: 1) the
higher cost of a professionalized army comparing with
those ones of a mass army. The specialists assert that
on short run more money has to be spent for a professional
army. On long run the costs become lower if we
take into account: the increase of the functional period
of time and high readiness of the fight technique that
is handled, exploited and maintained by specialists and
not by amateurs; the expenses necessary for equipping,
feeding, hosting, the medical assistance of those ones
performing the conscription may exceed the expenses
for the volunteers; the periodical expenses for training
the conscripts, in sum, are higher than the ones for the
soldiers hied on a contract basis; 2) problems in assuring
IMPACT STRATEGIC nr. 1-2/2003
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