BALTIMORE, Maryland April 11, 2014 - War or no war. That is the ominous issue. No deaths, or, really, no more deaths, or perhaps thousands of deaths, that is the ominous issue that the world has allowed to come to rest on the shoulders and in between the ears of one single solitary man: Vladimir Putin, the Russian Strong Man. If he orders the troops he has massed on the Russian-Ukrainian border and in South Ossetia forward, there will be war: it might be quick and it might be long, but there will be war. If he does not, if he permits those soldiers to stand pat or if he recalls them to their original peacetime bases, there will be no war.
In early March, Putin opened the flood gates and poured tens of thousands of Russian troops into Crimea. It was a Russian operation through and through. They surrounded every Ukraine base on Crimea and bullied the Ukrainian troops so belligerantly that they finally all gave up their guns. This was not a surgical operation to accomplish a limited goal: this was Russia all the way. They embarassed the Ukraine troops, stole their weapons and ships and even Ukraine's only submarine and a whole lot of their fighter jets. Then, for good measure, they massed tens of thousands of other troops on the Russia-Ukraine border, replete with heavy artillery, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and enough logistical support to allow those troops to stay on the go for a very long time. At the very same time, Putin started massing troops and heavy equipment in South Ossetia. This location is actually a part of a different country - Georgia - but Putin marched his army into Georgia in 2008 and occupied a couple of portions of it. He hasn't left. South Ossetia may as well be Russian because Russian troops are garrisoned there. Now, a whole lot of Russian troops are there. American intelligence says Putin intends to open a land bridge from Russia to Iran, and Putin will use South Ossetia as a staging area.
In response to these war preparations and initial implementations, the West has enacted economic sanctions against a handful of Russian bureaucrats, held up some defense contracts the Russians had negotiated with western industries, and spewn forth a whole lot of bad hot air. What Barack Obama, Angela Merkle, David Cameron, Francois Hollande and Donld Tusk better be ready for is the day that thay have to conclude that economic sanctions are not going to work. What will they do then? And, even more poignantly, has that day actually already arrived?
There is some indication that the western nations have given this subject at least some thought. USA Air Force General Philip Breedlove, the head of all military operations in Europe for NATO, was instructed within the last ten days to draft firm plans to deploy NATO troops into Eastern Europe to assure rattled NATO nations near Russia that the world's preeminent military alliance will have their backs in time of trouble. Any such deployment will have to be big enough to offer a legitimate deterrent force to Russia. The problem with Breedlove's orders is that NATO is not supposed to deploy anywhere but into NATO countries. Ukraine and Georgia are not in NATO although both want to be. Even if NATO could deploy to Ukraine, there is no way it could be done fast enough to stop Putin, who is already on the border will a fully mobile, fully armed, and fully supplied army of massive proportions; the last estimate is that the Russian Army on Ukraine's border is now 40,000-men strong.
It absolutely must be vividly clear to the west that Putin is not a modern man who is reluctant to use his military to get what he wants. They - the west - really don't know what they are dealing with. The Putin of the past was a man in charge of a degraded military. If he had illusions to the contrary, he got a wake up call in 2008 in Georgia when his supposedly world-class military was bogged down and, at times, pushed back, by a small but determined Georgian Army that had a bully inside their nation that had to be dealt with. In other words, they were fighting for their lives, their homes and their families. Since 2008 the Russians have used their massive new supplies of capital from their burgeoning energy output to refurbish their military. They haven't caught up to these United States yet, but while they are growing stronger, and fast, we are getting weaker, on purpose.
Putin is emboldened. Putin is in charge, these days, of a powerful army, navy and air force with a big chip on their shoulders. I don't want to start comparing Putin to Hitler because there is reason to believe that Putin has something of a conscience somewhere. But it is very clear that his conscience, such that it is, will not prevent him from barging into Ukraine, and building his land bridge to Iran, and whatever else he feels his country has coming to it for the wrongs inflicted on it in the past. Until the west decides that it must fight fire with fire, Putin will bring the battle to us, whether we like it or not. And do not think that if Putin doesn't march into Ukraine in the next month the danger is over. He is the one with time on his side.
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