1) Moving nukes closer is bluster. All they do is change the flight time - for the tactical nukes - from 4 minutes to 3 minutes. Big whoop.
2) When the entire rest of the continent, and most of the world is convinced you're dangerously batshit crazy, waving a loaded gun around and megalo-maniacally threatening them with it isn't likely to calm them down. It is likely to confirm all their worst fears about you, down to their marrow. And Russian military and territorial aggression, coupled with manifest military ineptitude, (which wasn't the case in 1950, or even 1980), is making that decision an easy one to make
3) When threatening your neighbors is your go-to response for everything you don't like, they're going to devote every waking moment to doing the opposite of what you want, and the first chance they get, they're going to throw a net over you, disarm you for good, forever, and lock you in a lunatic asylum until you die. True for people, true for nations.
4) Russia's less-than-proficient military performance is liable to let everyone in on that secret, and make generals everywhere think that attacking Russia to depose Putin is a lemon worth the squeezing.
5) Defending those additional borders saps more military resources Russia doesn't have to spare even now. Go Vlad, go! Shoot your other foot: it's got bells on.
Putin's ambitions to re-establish the "glory" of Russia under International Socialism is blowing up in his face. Figuratively today, and literally tomorrow. The sooner someone in Russia shoots the sonofabitch in the head and unloads the entire magazine there, the safer the world gets for the next 50 years. And if the Russians won't do it, the West is inevitably going to step up to the plate, and they're going to hedge him in with a fence of swords and spears against which he cannot prevail, and so formidable he'll never dare try. Russia is going to become the Carthage of the 21st century, and it's all because of Putin. China is going to dine on Russia's entrails, from Siberia halfway to Moscow. And Moscow's future? To become Mariupol.
Mining the Cornucopia of Fail is something Putin can continue to do for some good amount of time. But not without consequence. And not forever.
A lot of Soviet military planning was based on the idea that the they would be retaliating against a first strike from the United States.
ReplyDeleteMost Americans thought that was crazy. What they didn't know - and every Soviet schoolchild did - was that America had already sent its army into Russia once, trying to overthrow the government. It was poorly planned and barely implemented, and the American soldiers went home without accomplishing much, but that's not how the Russians were taught about it.
(after the October Revolution, Wilson sent an American Expeditionary Force to Russia to support the Tsarist [White Russian] faction against the Soviet [Red Russian] faction in the civil war.)
Well aware of the efforts. It rivals Gallipoli in hubris and stupidity.
ReplyDeleteMost "Soviet military planning" was a world-class oxymoron.
"Russian military planning" hasn't improved on it much.
Poor Putin! He's trying so hard to be Iron Joe, and instead he's more Nicky the Duce.
ReplyDeleteIs Putin mostly bluffing? Probably? But any time nukes get added to an equation the unknown oops factor gets involved and makes an inadvertent screw up possible. Once the canned sunshine makes an appearance all bets are off.
ReplyDelete(Seriously, I'm reading Massey's "Nicholas & Alexandra" right now, and the whole thing about how the Autocracy of pre-WWI Russia was living it up in Europe while most of the Russians were living the moujik life in the mud and borderline starvation kinda looks like Russia now.
ReplyDeleteVolodya looks like a less moral version of Nicky the Duce more every day.