Will Russia Invade Crimea? -- Michael Weiss, Daily Beast
Ever since the Charge of the Light Brigade, Crimea has been synonymous with disaster for the West—and saber-rattling Russia now sees it as ground zero in the battle with Ukraine’s new masters.
“I’ll tell you something else, which military historians never realize: they call the Crimea a disaster, which it was, and a hideous botch-up by our staff and supply, which is also true, but what they don’t know is that even with all these things in the balance against you, the difference between hellish catastrophe and brilliant success is sometimes no greater than the width of a sabre blade, but when all is over no one thinks of that. Win gloriously —and the clever dicks forget all about the rickety ambulances that never came, and the rations that were rotten, and the boots that didn’t fit, and the generals who’d have been better employed hawking bedpans round the doors. Lose — and these are the only things they talk about.”
It may not have been George MacDonald Fraser’s fictional antihero Flashman—a Victorian cross between James Bond and Frank Underwood—who tried in vain to stop the Charge of the Light Brigade across the Balaclava plain, but ask any reasonably well-educated Englishman about “the Crimea” and chances are he can do you a shade better than a few lines from Tennyson in descrying stupidity, calamity, and geopolitical misfortune.
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My Comment: An excellent and must read analysis on Russian intentions in the Ukraine. As to what is the U.S. intelligence point of view on Russian intentions, Eli Lake found that the American intel community are of the opinion that there will be no Russian invasion/incursion into Ukraine. As to what is my opinion .... I firmly believe that the IMF/EU/U.S. and probably Russia .... will (in the end) bail out Ukraine and provide to them the economic assistance that they need. But if things go south in Ukraine .... a probability if the economy collapses .... and if the violence escalates appreciably (specifically against Russians) .... and if the central government loses control resulting in Ukraine teetering on the brink of becoming a failed state .... Russian tanks and soldiers will be storming into Crimea and Western Ukraine within a week.
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