XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.atheism, rec.arts.tv   
   XPost: alt.survival, talk.politics.misc, soc.culture.russia   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats, comp.os.linux.advocacy, sci.military.naval   
   From: trumptardsss@74.net   
      
   Alarmists cite as evidence of Russian might the amount of military   
   hardware still sitting around in Russia, along with Putin’s undeniably   
   large investment in his military budget.   
      
   But this misses some important realities, including the condition and age   
   of that equipment, the frayed infrastructure of Russia’s military   
   commands, and the poor quality of Russian conscripts. The Russian military   
   is a large regional force, and it can kill a lot of people. That doesn’t   
   mean it can sustain a war with a vastly more populous and wealthier   
   coalition of some three dozen nations (or more, if others join the fight).   
      
   Moreover, NATO enjoys a qualitative edge that would spell disaster for   
   Russian forces in short order, especially in the air. The Vermont Air   
   National Guard (which for years has intercepted Soviet and Russian   
   aircraft on the US East Coast) is more ready to go to war than the Russian   
   Air Force.   
      
   Without control of the skies, Russian ground forces stand no chance after   
   whatever initial blitzkrieg might get them into NATO territory, and their   
   commanders know it. World War III will not be like doing stunts at an air   
   show, and taking out NATO’s aircraft will surely not be like blowing up   
   unsuspecting commercial airliners.   
      
   Finally, NATO has something the Russians sorely lack: experience.   
      
   Wisely or not, the US and its allies have been at war in the Middle East   
   and Central Asia for nearly 15 years, and NATO’s armies are salted   
   throughout with men and women who know how to fight, supply, communicate,   
   and remain cohesive in the face of actual combat.   
      
   Russia’s military, once sharpened by World War II survivors and later by   
   the veterans of the brutal attempt to subdue Afghanistan, now boasts men   
   whose combat experience mostly consists of blowing up apartment blocks in   
   Chechnya and shooting at outgunned conscripts in Ukraine.   
      
   This is not to say that the Russians won’t achieve their initial goals   
   with speed and violence. A sudden dash into the Baltics or across the   
   Polish border might succeed at the operational level for several days.   
      
   But NATO is not Ukraine: Russian forces will find themselves not among   
   shell-shocked, conflicted, and impoverished people in the post-Soviet   
   ruins of Donetsk, but in modern towns and cities full of people who hate   
   them and whose skies and streets will rapidly be filled with the kind of   
   military response the Ukrainians can only dream about.   
      
   This is not a new problem for the Kremlin. Many years ago, a former KGB   
   official said to me that he’d been assured by Soviet military leaders that   
   if the USSR had wanted to attack during the Cold War, Warsaw Pact forces   
   could have cut through West Germany in a week. I agreed. “You could have   
   gotten in,” I said. “How were you planning on getting out?”   
      
   An uneasy silence followed: my interlocutor’s clear assumption was that by   
   Day Seven, NATO would have surrendered already, and there was no real need   
   to think about Day Eight.   
      
   Putin suffers from the same kind of thinking. But Russia’s generals, who   
   are neither fools nor madmen, almost certainly understand that a sustained   
   war with NATO is an unwinnable proposition.   
   Russian soldiers   
   A Russian serviceman aboard an armored personnel carrier salutes next to   
   the blue-white-red tricolour flag of Crimea. Grigory Dukor/Reuters   
   Both Putin and his generals, however, are counting on a political, not   
   military, victory. Putin’s bluster and the Russian military’s continued   
   probes and feints into NATO territory are all predicated on the Soviet-era   
   belief that NATO is essentially a charade, a phony alliance made of spun   
   glass: pretty to look at, but so delicate it will shatter at even the   
   smallest blow.   
      
   Should Putin attack, it will not be to defend the “rights of Russian-   
   speakers” or some other fantasy, but rather from the delusion that one   
   sharp military strike will smash NATO as a political entity once and for   
   all.   
      
   President Obama and his team have not helped to dissuade Putin from   
   believing he has the upper hand.   
      
   The White House is either unable or unwilling to rally NATO, and refuses   
   to treat Russia’s invasion and repeated provocations like the challenges   
   to world peace that they are. Unfortunately, what the White House sees as   
   calm and patience, Putin sees as weakness and fear.   
      
   This is especially dangerous because Putin does not seem to grasp that   
   NATO’s members, once invaded, will fight according to their training and   
   their experience, and not by a snap poll of people in New York or   
   Nebraska.   
      
   They will fight with very real and very modern Western weapons, rather   
   than with hashtags and selfies from chipper spokespeople back at the State   
   Department. And in the end, if Putin orders his forces West, the Russians   
   will lose, and lose badly.   
   nato v. russia   
   The state of play between Russia and NATO. Mike Nudelman/Business Insider   
   At that point, Putin will only have two options: he can sue for peace   
   (something he seems constitutionally incapable of doing) or he can resort   
   to nuclear weapons. Russian military planning already includes a bizarre   
   concept called “nuclear de-escalation,” in which the use of tactical   
   nuclear arms shocks the enemy — meaning NATO — into letting Russia off the   
   hook for whatever mad scheme got them into a jam in the first place.   
      
   The idea that nuclear arms “de-escalate” anything makes no sense unless   
   except to those molded by Soviet indoctrination: if you believe the West   
   is inherently weak and decadent, then you believe the use of even one   
   nuclear bomb will bring NATO to its knees and expose the US and its allies   
   as cowards. The reality, of course, is that nuclear use will almost   
   certainly escalate, and no matter how it ends, Putin, his regime, and   
   Russia as he knows it today will all be gone.   
      
   So what is to be done? The US and NATO should take three steps   
   immediately. First, NATO conventional forces should be bolstered by US   
   forces in permanent positions closer to Ukraine, a proposal NATO commander   
   Philip Breedlove raised last spring. If Putin means to test NATO, he   
   should have to reckon on a confrontation with actual US forces right at   
   the start.   
      
   Second, we can provide defensive arms to Ukraine. So far, Putin’s invasion   
   has been essentially cost-free, and if he intends to press on, it should   
   be at a far greater expense than he’s currently paying.   
      
   Third, and just as important, we can change our tone and end all our   
   pointless talk about “strategic patience” and “pivots.” We must make   
   clear, as we did for a half century, that the peace of Europe is a core   
   interest of the United States. The safety of Europe is indivisible from   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)