George Rebane
Russia’s new tactic is the use of long-range missiles, many of which can be fired from Russia proper, to overcome the demonstrated ineptness of its land units and manned aircraft over Ukrainian air space. Putin needs to reorganize his conventional forces because they most certainly have not performed as previously advertised to the Kremlin. So the approach in the interval is to bombard the crap out of Ukrainian cities with missiles that are hard to intercept, and hope that President Zelensky will call for a favorable cease fire in order to stop the wholesale slaughter of the country’s civilian population. (more here)
With modern precision-guided missiles, this tactic is a movable feast for thugs like Putin whose saber-rattling has caused a comprehensive cowering by western leaders in the name of not willing to risk WW3 by striking Russia with any of several available and effective military responses. He and Xi can use this approach from their own landmass to their heart’s content in future territorial conquests. As long as western leaders continue to promise that they will not respond in any way that would (heaven forbid) irritate the international gangsters, they can assemble their land forces at the border and then proceed to slaughter the target country’s civilian population from afar.
As we now know, this will do the trick against any fearful opponent who openly declares from the gitgo that they’ll do nothing “reckless” to rile the attacker. I challenge anyone to come up with a reason why such a tactic will not be used repeatedly until the west says ‘Enough!’ and demonstrates that we too are willing to return to MAD and risk WW3 to protect our interests. Without the will to use force, non-military sanctions will not work to stay the hand of a tyrant; the planet is already too interconnected commercially and financially so that surgical sanctions have little effect, and the more comprehensive sanctions spill over and also hurt us and our allies.
In desperation, today we have learned to redefine our interests in favor of international criminals like those who run Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, … . We learned long ago that the ONLY way to defend, let alone expand, liberal governance on this planet is to always be ready to go to the mat with the world’s tyrants, and appear willing to do that sooner than later with the big thugs. This principle applies at all scales when we look at what our cities have become as we constrained law enforcement and started nurturing criminals.
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