Why Is The West Suddenly Revealing Its Troop Presence In Ukraine? ZeroHedge asks.
Russia appears to be preparing for a large-scale conflict with Nato sooner than expected, a think tank has warned.
American policy research group The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reached the conclusion after analysing military, economic and financial indicators.
President Vladimir Putin’s attempts to stabilise Russia’s economy are said to be part of preparations for a potential future large-scale conflict with Nato, not just for a protracted war in Ukraine.
According to the ISW assessment, the Russian military is making reforms so it can keep fighting in Ukraine while also expanding its conventional capabilities in case it decides to ramp up the aggression.
Warning that Putin ‘is plotting for war with NATO sooner than expected’
Two plus years ago when Russia began massing troops on Ukraine’s border to invade and U.S. President Joe Biden responded to Russia’s troop build-up on the border of Ukraine with threats of sanctions - which Mr. Biden believed at that time would effectively neutralize Russia - and calls for regime change while visiting NATO troops in Poland - after those developments it seemed immediate and obvious to me that the world would be on track toward WWIII.
Two years ago my analysis matched the ISW assessment today - Russia wants a showdown with NATO. Russia had prepared for this. One theory is that after the Russian invasions of Crimea and Georgia 8 years ago above two years ago, Mr. Putin pressed his military on the state of Russian nukes and found there were significant gaps. One aspect to nuclear weapons that may not be widely known is that they require significant investment to maintain in usable state. The radioactive material needs to be re-machined. I think it took 8 years for the Russians to get their nuclear arsenal in a usable state.
The trouble is that from the Russian perspective, there will never be a better time to push NATO into the ultimate confrontation than now in the hot war of Ukraine. Russia thinks a confrontation with NATO is inevitable. Russia believes that if this war ends and their inevitable confrontation with NATO is put off then that will only give NATO time to mount up, arm up, all to the disadvantage of Russia.
The trouble is that the West is convinced Russia does not want to fight NATO and do not take this gameplan into consideration.
The latest of the dominoes to fall is the normalization of the idea of bolstering Ukranian ground troops on the frontline with NATO troops in support roles.
The crux of the dilemma driving the world inevitably to war is that leaders of NATO and Russia both have staked existential credibility to the fight. Both sides will continue pursuing options for conflict over any peaceful resolution that loses face. Both sides are prepared to accept peace on terms that are harsh to the other party.
Russian does not have to win the war in Ukraine to draw out NATO into a make or break confrontation. Russia just has to keep the fight grinding until Ukraine or NATO cry ‘uncle.’
Conversely, NATO will not accept a settlement that curtails any, much less all, of NATO’s continued involvement in Ukraine’s security affairs without accepting NATO has limited purview over European security.
‘Jamming’: How Electronic Warfare Is Reshaping Ukraine’s Battlefields
This is not an article about victorious Ukr. tank crews blasting top 40 tunes during their missions. It is in fact about the deteriorating conditions in the technological fight tilting decisively against Ukranian forces.
‘A two thousand pound education dropped by a ten-rupee jezail.’ - Rudyard Kipling
The war raging between the Ukraine and Russia in the eastern plains of Europe - is the first war I am aware of that is taking place as a conventional guerrilla battle. Heretofore the dynamic has been to use $50 in garage door level electronics and old war head to do millions of dollars of damage to a Humvee and whatever the costs of training and deployment done to the troops inside of on top of it. Rinse and repeat and the superior superpower will go broke before the guerrillas. Wars have been lost and won on this economic logic - typically the side with the millions in equipment wins or loses by spending billions and salting the earth - ‘winning hearts and minds by destroying the village in order to save it’ in the old Vietnam parlance. In Ukraine - the dimension of air superiority is being fought as a guerrilla strategy - where battles are being fought by both sides - won and lost in Ukraine based on one side or the others to inflict asymmetric damage with cheap drones bearing explosives.
From the moment Russia began massing troops on the borders of Ukraine, and the U.S. president Joe Biden got involved by threatening sanctions, I thought we were almost certainly headed toward direct war from this confrontation. This was for two reasons. I knew enough of the context of post Soviet NATO expansion to know that Russia was not likely to back down from their right to invade Ukraine anymore or less for similar reasons that the United States was going to back down from invading Iraq in 2004. The principal in both cases was to defend the principle of their right to attack, not necessarily the decision to do so. On the other side, I figured NATO was never going to prepared to backdown if their actions were countered. Since that time the signs I was waiting to see that would substantiate that outcome have fallen in line one after another in similar patterns.
For every measure the west deploys, Russia has a counter measure. First the sanctions that were supposed to cripple Russia’s economy failed to score. Then NATO began walking back redline after redline - providing more missiles and capabilities. One by one these technologies have landed with a splash and then slowly been solved by the Russian minds fighting with them in real-time. HIMARS was devastating, until the Russians figured out how to jam its signals. The Russkies got good enough at it they began returning the missiles back at where they were fired from. The vaunted PATRIOT missile system has been solved - low-cost drones to trigger millions and millions in missile costs or by the use of hypersonic missiles - another story. The lesson seems to be that advantages on the battlefield that are predicated on communications of any sort - like microprocessors geo-positioning themselves midflight to track a target - are prone to hacks given sufficient high-tech capacity that every modern fighting force has. This may be bound by the laws of physics - the medium of wave frequency and airwaves are open by the laws of physics.
In the beginning of this war, Western leaders spoke openly of their strategy to ‘boil the frog.’ They explained that through calculated micro-aggressions they could escalate the war without triggering a full-on nuclear response. Western leaders also could have been talking about their approach to drawing their own people into war.
The latest domino is France broke NATO’s ice on openly deploying troops to Ukraine. “Every front-line soldier needs seven supporting supply chain persons to support them, what if NATO helped maximize Ukraine’s battle forces by filling 7/8s of what is required - every single Ukranian could fight to the last - that could work, right?“ This is the winding garden path of thinking every NATO leader is walking down right now. The tricky bit - for them - is threading the needle of public opinion - that sits ranges between bring it on gung-ho bravado and bags packed and ready to sit this out in Tahiti - with plainly nauseated ready to fetal in the moderate middle of the road position - at the idea of nuclear WWIII. The Overton Playbook push comes from Mr. Macron. Most every leader - most certainly military strategists - are itching for this opportunity because they believe they will win and they believe winning is necessary to maintain any measure of peace and stability and prosperity in a post Maidana coup, post Russian invasion, post NATO involvement in Ukraine, post sanctions world. The Overton window moving playbook follows this pattern - six to twelve months before the thing we are saying we won’t do we openly talk about how it will never happen - then six months or so someone brings it up - then we talk ourselves into it. Soon others follow suit. Last summer thereabouts there were a flurry of articles about how the West would never put troops into Ukraine. Now here we are. Look it up - the same pattern has fallen every other redline the West said it would not cross.
Conclusion
Let’s be clear about this essay. I am not speaking to what I want to happen or think should happen. I carry no water for Russia. I understand that many in the west feel supporting Ukraine with billions in military aid is the right moral argument and that is why they do so. I respect that - but I am not making a moral argument. I do not share the thought process that lies behind such thinking. Geopolitics are not primarily questions of morality to me - but reality and practicality. My thought process is based on probabilistic outcome - not wishful thinking. Despite what the West’s propaganda would have us believe - and remember all the articles about how Russia was running out of ammo, losing the war, sanctions would cripple them, and other falsities we have seen come out over the last few years - events have not substantiated any of this.
History tells us that NATOs political and military leaders will throw millions of lives to save their position. Consider the common thought shared among the West that supporting Ukraine is a chance to give Russia a strategic defeat on the world stage. Maybe. Has anyone asked, what if that effort falls flat? As we look at the moves China, India and the global has made - drawing closer with Russia or at least refusing to get involved at the West’s behest - the unravelling of the global economy under sanctions and multi-polar trade arrangements (like RISC) - what of the possibility that our intent may boomerang back.
When I first voiced my concerns two years ago, that we are now on a path to nuclear confrontation, no one I spoke to thought I had any clue. Last summer when I mentioned the possibility Western troops would go to Ukraine after this winter after Ukraine’s military started to collapse, those I spoke to chuckled and rolled their eyes. ‘Russia is scraping the bottom of the barrel to keep this going, they can’t last much longer.’ is a quote I remember. I worry that this is the general mentality. What, me worry?
update - recent events substantiate the theory of Russian provocative intent to NATO. Major alert as Putin fires Russian cruise missile over NATO territory for 39 seconds sparking growing concern over escalation of the Ukraine war (msn.com) Earlier in the war Russian pilots acted aggressively to Western drones.