Continuing my posting to the blind, deaf, & conventionally minded ... You may be out of the JW's but you are still thinking in a box.
Now that Russia is back it is clear why powerful countries are wary of doing battle with it. Putin is getting his way.
Sorry, Ukraine, You Can't Beat Putin - Bloomberg View
www.bloombergview.com/articles/.../sorry-ukraine-you-can-t-beat-putin
Jan 28, 2015 - ... restrain Russia's incursions into Ukraine, but they can't defeat Putin. ... that
Ukraine's military simply isn't capable of standing up to Russian ...
No one will defeat Russia militarily: Putin in state of the ...
www.firstpost.com › World News
The First Post
Dec 4, 2014 - Moscow:>Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin in his annual speech on
Thursday defended the Kremlin's aggressive foreign policy, ...
Don't Arm Ukraine - NYTimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2015/02/.../dont-arm-ukraine.htmlThe New York Times
Feb 8, 2015 - The key to success, they maintain, is not to defeat Russia militarily, but to raise the
costs of fighting to the point where Mr. Putin will cave.
Upping the ante in Ukraine also risks unwanted escalation. Not only would the fighting in eastern
Ukraine be sure to intensify, but it could also spread to other areas. The consequences for
Ukraine, which already faces profound economic and social problems, would be disastrous.
The possibility that Mr. Putin might end up making nuclear threats may seem remote, but if the
goal of arming Ukraine is to drive up the costs of Russian interference and eventually put
Moscow in an acute situation, it cannot be ruled out. If Western pressure succeeded and Mr.
Putin felt desperate, he would have a powerful incentive to try to rescue the situation by rattling
the nuclear saber.
Our understanding of the mechanisms of escalation in crises and war is limited at best, although
we know the risks are considerable. Pushing a nuclear-armed Russia into a corner would be
playing with fire.
EXCLUSIVE-NATO Russia Expert: Why Putin Can Win ...
www.breitbart.com/.../exclusive-nato-russia-expert-putin-can-wi...
Breitbart
Apr 23, 2014 - All the states on the periphery of the Russia Federation are now very ... This is a
superb guide to how to defeat a nation that is militarily much ...
...Breitbart News: Is the inadequacy of the West’s response just a function of ignorance of
Russia?
Donnelly: No. It’s deeper. We do not understand Putin’s way of war. We don’t even have the
right vocabulary to describe it. To our citizens, war is “Saving Private Ryan”. That’s not Putin’s
way of war. Russia was a military superpower, but it was also masterful at the indirect,
non-kinetic way of war. See the book Unrestricted Warfare authored by two colonels in the
Chinese army. This is a superb guide to how to defeat a nation that is militarily much more
powerful than you. It lists all the various ways you can undermine a strong Western nation
without firing a shot: the use of economics, the NGO sector, sympathetic members of your ethnic
diaspora, or space and the cyber domain. Russia has honed this mode of war since the fall of the
Soviet Union and used it in Georgia and now Ukraine and its neighboring nations.
Breitbart News: Russia today has an economy the size of California, or the Republic of France.
Could they win this war?
Donnelly: Vladimir Putin is a long-term strategic thinker whose goal is to rebuild Russia’s
greatness, and he has a natural advantage. It is relatively easy to defeat an adversary who does not
have a game plan, even if they are stronger than you. You may have a PhD and an IQ of 160, but
if you’ve never played chess before and have never heard of the Fool’s Mate stratagem, a child
can defeat you with it in two moves.
Also, you hear the constant refrain, such that “Russia would never do X because it has too much
to lose.” This betrays a complete misunderstanding of the difference between the strategic culture
of Russia and the culture of our politicians. The winner may quite simply be the side that is more
prepared to take losses. That is definitely not us. “
The influential new report urging Obama to arm Ukraine ...
www.vox.com/2015/2/3/7967533/ukraine-weapons-report-obama
Feb 3, 2015 - It warns that no military assistance from the US would allow the Ukraine to
actually defeat Russia in a direct conflict. "Even with enormous ...
There is little question that it would help Ukraine militarily if the US provided this kind of
assistance. During a war, after all, weapons and equipment come in handy. But what that would
do to Russia's incentives is less clear. Would US weapons make the war more costly for
Moscow? Or would increased US assistance provide an opportunity for Russia to become more
openly involved in the conflict, and thus increase its control over the situation? The former result
could, as the report argues, help force Putin to a compromise. But the latter result could have the
opposite effect from what the report's authors intend.
Top NATO general warns of Russian reaction to arming ...
www.cnsnews.com/.../top-nato-general-warns-rus...
Cybercast News Service
Feb 5, 2015 - He and other U.S. leaders insist there is no military solution to the conflict, ..... You
say, ""he explains that to defeat Russia militarily we must first ..
In a newspaper interview, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said giving the
Ukrainians arms to help them defend themselves could have unintended and fateful
consequences.
"Weapons deliveries would be a fire accelerant," von der Leyen was quoted as telling the
Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily. "And it could give the Kremlin the excuse to openly intervene in
this conflict."