Russian Military’s Professionalism Prevented Bloodshed in Crimea – Putin. © RIA Novosti. Vasiliy Batanov
Taking A Spoon To A Gunfight -- David Maxwell, War On The Rocks
Taking a Spoon to a Gunfight: The West Dealing with Russian Unconventional and Political Warfare in Former Soviet States
As the Russians now try to reach a diplomatic solution in order to consolidate their gains in Crimea – as evidenced by Putin’s call to Obama and SECSTATE’s meeting with the Russian foreign minister – it is useful to try to understand how Russia has used all of its elements of national power to achieve its objectives.
While the United States has spent the last decade-plus trying to learn to “eat soup with a knife,” the Russians have been reaching back to some tried and true methods from the Cold War. Some in the U.S. national security community want to continue to focus on expeditionary counterinsurgency warfare and armed nation building while others long for large-scale maneuver warfare along the lines of the Fulda Gap. However, while we debate these two forms of warfare and the proper balance between them, the Russians are practicing something different: unconventional warfare in support of political warfare to achieve its strategic objectives.
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My Comment: What I would also add is that the Russian strategy has been helped immeasurably by the interim Ukrainian government's clueless behavior in confronting this Kremlin strategy. Case in point .... there is no cabinet minister or high government representative in the Ukrainian interim government from Eastern Ukraine. Throw in their push to pass anti-Russian language laws .... the blow-back is all but guarantee .... and Moscow is there to pick up the pieces.
2 comments:
Boy do these guys have a grasp of the blazing obvious. Coerce must be the new buzz word in that rarefied air of DC. Also when one of these guys brings up Sun Tzu my eyes start to glaze.For my money your analysis has more accurate than any of these others. I'll only add that going in Putin and his knew that there would be cameras everywhere with near instantaneous commentary available world wide. They made no attempt to suppress any of that, instead did everything right in the open. The in country troops no insignia. Other side of border troops, there just in case. That's being pretty certain of your cause and possible opposition.
Should read "is more accurate".
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