When then-U.S. President-elect John F. Kennedy interviewed Robert S. McNamara in December 1960 for a job in his administration, he knew exactly what he wanted from his future secretary of defense.

McNamara had vast experience in analyzing the efficiency of the U.S. bombing of Japan during World War II and was also a top-level expert in strategic planning, rationalization, and statistics in major business.

JFK wanted a civilian, business-minded defense secretary who could count the money. He looked for a secretary that would endorse his reorganization of U.S. defense policies towards more civilian control of the military and more flexible use of military force in the Cold War. He wanted McNamara’s experience in systems and effectiveness analysis to be applied in rationalizing U.S. global defense grid, as well as in strategic planning and procurement.

And, what’s important, JFK agreed to provide McNamara with a lot of leeway in doing his job. 

So McNamara decided to resign as the president of Ford Motor Company after just five weeks and joined the Kennedy administration. As everyone knows, he ended up becoming the longest-serving U.S. secretary of defense, a paramount figure in U.S. politics of the 1960s, although with a long list of big mistakes — especially involving the Vietnam War. 

And when in late August 2019 Ukraine’s recently-elected President Volodymyr Zelensky offered the post of defense minister to Andriy Zagorodnuyk, it was a hopeful replay of sorts. 

Zagorodnuyk — successful in the drilling business, an active supporter of the army in Russia’s war, and an advocate of military reforms — became Ukraine’s youngest defense minister ever at 42. With his background in resource management and planning, he was purely civilian, unlike the traditional establishment of post-Soviet generalship that ruled the ministry for decades. 

Zagorodnuyk was a chance to bring the much-suffering ministry closer to the Pentagon rather than a stagnant, sleepy post-Soviet people’s commissariat. He, of course, didn’t match the scale of McNamara, but from the very start he had a very clear to-do list of reforms that he laid out in his interview with Kyiv Post, and he and his team followed the plan. 

The minister made an accent on introducing more strategic-minded planning in defense policies and procurement, on rationalizing resource spending in the military, on eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy. He finally started making very practical steps towards things that had been expected for years — like reducing excessive secrecy in military procurement, which has been a comfortable breeding pool for immense corruption. 

His activities gained acclaim from watchdogs the opinion of which we trust. His team did not produce any corruption scandals over its time in the ministry. In early 2020, he claimed that the first serious results of his work would be seen throughout the upcoming year. 

But Zagorodnuyk was dismissed by Zelensky in early March, after only six months in office — because, as sources quoted the president, Zagorodnuyk “did not prove quality of himself.”

Instead of him, Zelensky preferred to appoint Andriy Taran — a 65-year-old retired lieutenant general, a man of the old system. Instead of trying something new in giving green light to a motivated, civilian business manager with successful background, we basically rolled back to a long-ingrained bureaucrat of the same old post-Soviet military establishment that led Ukraine’s defense to almost complete collapse in 2014. 

We do not know for sure if Zagorodnuyk’s reform would be a success after all. But what we know for sure is that things now are rapidly getting back to the old order now — with all of its poor effectiveness, lack of initiative, breakthrough ideas, and enthusiasm. 

It’s been more than a month since Taran assumed the office, but he still hasn’t presented his comprehensive plan of actions for defense, with deadlines and clear goals. We have heard nothing but very general, trite statements we continue hearing for decades — NATO standards, enhancing the Armed Forces potential, encouraging personnel to stay in ranks for money. 

The new minister, by contrast with Zagorodnuyk, has almost no interaction with the press, and, as it can be seen, is more busy doing endless Soviet-style inspections and ribbon-cutting rather than working on combating corruption and introducing strategic, systematic changes in the military.

Statements of his press service are again filled with standard bureaucratic talk instead of strict facts and informative messages on what’s being done at the ministry.

On the other hand, a very illustrative thing occurred on April 13: Taran with his decree officially eliminated the Reforms Project Office, a consulting volunteer body at the Ministry of Defense overseeing progressive reforms in the military. Many officials with reputations as strong reform advocates and supported by Zagorognyuk have already been kicked out in the very first weeks of Taran’s cadency.

Multiple sources in the ministry keep insisting that the very reason Zagorognyuk got booted was his confrontation with Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak over new rounds of disengagement of forces in Donbas. Zagorodnyuk reportedly opposed the pullout proposal advanced by the Russian side in negotiations in Minsk, Belarus. As a result, Yermak allegedly lobbied Zelensky into the abrupt, situational dismissal of his defense minister.

This episode shows a lot about Zelensky: He is not a Ukrainian JFK. 

This was also something that could set a status quo for the country’s Defense Ministry in its post-Soviet stagnancy of imitated reforms that lead to nothing but an endless going around the circle.

For now on, no motivated top business manager from beyond the system would agree to come to the ministry and tackle that mess — knowing that in any given moment, he or she can be easily and rapidly booted by the wish of Zelensky’s yet another favorite standing close to his ear. 

Any outsider knows that months of his or her work at the ministry could be flushed down the toilet, with no chances to actually being achieved. And that he or she will be put to public shaming as an incompetent government manager, just because the president is not capable of going beyond abrupt and ad-hoc decisions whispered by his circuit. 

From now on, no hypothetical Ukrainian McNamara would leave his hypothetical successful career in a hypothetical Ford Company for the sake of such unpromising prospects in the service of motherland. 

Instead of that, the top office in the Defense Ministry will always be eagerly accepted by the very same old post-Soviet apparatchiks — the ones who have stewed in this stagnation for 30 years, but now vow to turn the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the military force of the future.

(c) KyivPost