"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat
it [...no matter how much they rant on mass or social media]."
--
George Santayana.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored
by little statesmen and philosophers and divines [...and bloggers]."
--
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
By now, in the unfolding
developments in Ukraine, it is almost certain that President George W. Bush
would have deployed 10,000 troops from Germany, with or without N.A.T.O., into
the Crimea and the Eastern half of Ukraine to create an immediate trip-wire,
pending replacement by U.N. troops. Since the military does planning scenarios
out the kazoo, such a deployment could roll out post-haste.
The difference between
Ukraine and the Russian land grab of Georgian territories in 2008 is that the
borders in Georgia had been disputed for many years; not so in Ukraine.
Second, Ukraine is a larger nation firmly embedded in Europe. Finally, U.S.
forces were unavailable due to engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008. Nevertheless, President
Bush cut in front of P.M. Putin in the V.I.P. seats at the China Olympics of 2008 and ripped an armpit so savagely into Putin that other leaders scooched away on the
bleachers. Putin stopped the invasion immediately, though he had gained control
of the two disputed territories.
This nation, Ukraine, clearly responded to Senator McCain's call
in the streets of Kiev to stand firm for liberty. The people drove the wannabe
dictator out. The courage of Senators McCain (R-AZ; raz the taz) and Murphy (D-CT)
in December brings out in stark relief what increasingly looks like a nightmare
of appeasement. Don't believe me? (Wish
I did not, either.):
First, inaction to the
slaughter in Syria and watching on as radical elements hijack the opposition.
U.S.-led reaction? Nothing. Could the U.S. do something?
(from six months ago).
Second, emerging civil
conflict brought on by a power grab at the expense of Iraq's fragile democracy by President al-Maliki in 2010 in Iraq. U.S.
reaction? President George W. Bush started this war of choice; otherwise nothing. President Obama
could have travelled to Iraq, as President Bush almost certainly would have, to
demand the peaceful transition of government to the rightful winner of the election (Iyad
Allawi) but did not. Result? Sunni jihadists coming in from Syria, where
President Obama has already displayed a passivity perceived as an appeasement of
terrorists free-lancing throughout the Arab Spring. The illegal President
al-Maliki is now running for cover to Iran, at the expense of moderate
shi'ites.
Third, the internal
collapse of Venezuela. Admittedly, this crisis is not a result of a widespread
perception of an impotent leadership in the U.S. The non-response thus far by
Washington is neither constructive nor surprising. Decisive action to advocate the creation of an
interim structure toward a national reconciliation could win a great amount of
goodwill in Latin America for the United States right now. But we will see nothing as this President focusses on the longer-term implications of his legacy; sadly, President Obama has checked out.
The one instance of
action, Libya, proved incredibly stupid. We bombed into régime-change and to death
a dictator that had suspended W.M.D. and tried to establish links with the West.
Preventing COL Khadafi's tanks from blowing Benghazi away was one thing. But
hunting him down and killing him sent a clear signal to Presidents Assad
and Kim Il-Jung and their brutal buds that there is no way out once the trouble
starts; ergo, fight to the death. Why Libya? Because we were appeasing the residual
colonialism of Italy. Thus, by killing Khadafi, we made sure that the option we
are using in Syria, appeasement, is the exact wrong one. Please! Less
people-pleasing and more principled people!
Letting the Russian
forces capture significant parts of Ukraine -- a country with well-defined
borders beyond dispute and clearly desirous of her sovereignty -- over excuses
of protecting Russian nationals sounds quite similar to Nazi rationalizations
for the Sudetenland and the eventual dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1938.
Lastly, let us remember the suffering historically endured by the Ukraine:
- the six million people starved to death by the brutal collectivized farming of the U.S.S.R. during the 1920s and early 1930s, a figure on the level of the Nazi partial genocide of the Jews; and,
- the four million (25% Jewish) more murdered by the Nazis for blood-sport.
So, to those who defend President Obama by vilifying President Bush: whom would you trust right
now in confronting clear cut aggression in the Ukraine, ¿President Obama or
President Bush? The hardest part in writing this essay is knowing that
deploying troops to the Ukraine would not mean war; it would mean that Russia
-- and other would-be aggressors enticed by Western dithering -- could not
count on getting away with land-grabs. Though we are cautioned on the
destructive power historical analogies through the misuse of the domino theory in
Viêt Nam, at a great and terrible cost to 58,000 American families and millions
in Viêt Nam, the lesson does fit in this particular context.
A couple of frosty e-mails that I have received say in effect, "You wanna mess with Russia?" Of course, I do not. What I propose is risky; less so, in my mind, than inaction in the face of an in-substance declaration of war by Russia against Ukraine (by the Parliament authorizing a military intervention in the Crimea). There are three basic assumptions underlying my view.
ReplyDelete1. N.A.T.O. would likely support the push-back; Chancellor Merkel and Poland remember Soviet hegemony all too well.
2. If N.A.T.O. opted for temporizing, the U.S. could proceed alone since U.S. troops are in theater.
3. President Putin is a bully and modest push-back would suffice for him to back off, if President Obama offered a way out so his Russian counterpart could save face and Ukraine's sovereignty be preserved.
President Obama can be a statesman; he has shown that. What he could offer to President Putin is a suggestion that Ukraine join both the Russian trade federation and the European Union. If nothing else, such a compromise, without undercutting Ukraine's sovereignty, would quickly smoke out the intentions of President Putin, the Russian Parliament, Prime Minister Medvedev and the rest.
If the Russians were to retaliate by cutting N.A.T.O.'s supply lines into Afghanistan, that would be highly risky for them because, once the West left precipitately, many foreign fighters would head North to the Caucasus. The West can forestall that retaliation by stating that Russia's cutting of supply lines would lead to a hasty transition government, one more more likely to fall under Taliban control; that N.A.T.O. could no longer guarantee the interdiction of jihadists to the North for "bear hunting" season. Possible signal? Geopolitical blackmail goes both ways.
0n this idea of Russia issuing passports to Ukrainians of Russian descent, the new and legitimate government of Ukraine can say something like, "That is okay. But these people who accept that U.S.S.R. passport will have to pay $1,000 each for dual citizenship visa." Parliament can pass an authorizing measure immediately. If that were (as would be likely) unenforceable, the U.S. could freeze all new visas to Russians for entrance into the U.S., pending determination of 'true national identity' of the holder.
Finally, one ultimate solution might be a nested autonomy for Eastern Ukraine where citizens have free entrance into Russia but remain Ukraine citizens living on Ukraine soil. That would only work once Putinites backed off this aggression to avoid unintentional reinforcement of school-yard bullying.
Mr XYZ's most sobering thinking refers to possible moves against Odessa and Mikolayev. The verbal harrumphing and a pretty tough press conference for the Putonista in Russia may dissuade immediate action. The world will likely reject the legitimacy of the 'referendum', especially since the rented / bussed-in bullies have raised cackles all the way to London (implying that such an election may be as or more fraudulent than the 2012 elections). I am also tacking on two friends -- one a good friend of XYZ -- and a friend of mine, a native Syrian and Californian of many years coming off of five years in Iraq and Afghanistan (on a PRT in one of the most heavily contested provinces), presently agonizing over relatives and his homeland.
ReplyDeleteTo me, at least, the Crimea and Syria are quite closely linked. Although ‘Crimea River’ seems more immediate, the situation in Syria is the more dire and the ongoing silence toward it increasingly untenable from a humanitarian view. As always, I fault the President’s logic in rhetorically reducing the options in Syria to a bogusly binary choice of invasion, which nobody wants, and doing little to nothing other than humanitarian aid, which is where we find ourselves now, striking a note of appeasement in the face of a deepening carnage by a gangster régime and the opposing blood-drunk extremists alike. To me, such sophistry so long pursued sounds more like moral casuistry. Back to the Crimea and the public relations ploy of a referendum.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding ongoing bickering among diplomats and leaders as well as resolutions condemning every step of this ongoing (mis)adventure, the referendum will likely proceed. Yet the Russians will still be in the Crimea, or massed on the border waiting for the West to take the pedal off the metal, at which time the Russians will recognize the referendum and march quickly into Odessa et al. as the final roll-in of an anschluß.
That is to say: what Mr XYZ says in his intelligent analysis about possible next steps towards Odessa and Mikolayev is at best sobering and at worst probable. Mr XYZ's prescription of a no-fly zone enforced by the carrier group of the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush -- with a public request from Ukraine and the consent of Turkey -- may be the push-back people have been searching for this past week. I would second that with the deployment of Special Forces as police trainers in the West of Ukraine plus:
> immediate announcement of the previously cancelled missile defenses to be placed in Poland and the Czech Republic;
> at least interim membership of the Ukraine and Georgia into NATO for two years, annually extendable by up to two years with the availability of the extension of that interim membership not to be unreasonably withheld;
>full membership by our two best allies in the Near-East region upon their meeting the requirements;
> a referendum for the Crimea to be available in five years, provided fair and compelling petitions are submitted to the International Court at the Hague and to the United Nations Security Council, provided that Russia withdraws immediately and stays out as a condition precedent not only to the referendum but to the framework (with a rolling five year time horizon to start upon withdrawal);
> continued status of the Crimea as an autonomous republic (implyng the falsity of the Russian pretext);
repealing all laws proscribing a national language (i.e., Ukranian, Russian and 10%ers) to allow the market to make the country bilingual, trilingual, whatever (as has occurred in the U.S. with Spanish); as well as,
> a suggestion by President Obama to Presidents Barroso (E.C.) and Putin that both the Eurasian Economic Union and the E.U. consider extending simultaneous favored trading partner status and eventual admission to the Ukraine (since the eurasian trade bloc will not have a competing currency in place for several years).
CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS COMMENT:
ReplyDeleteThe difficulty I have with sanctions is that the oligarchs and political élite in Russia (and likely among the richer Russians in the Crimea) have enough money and resources to withstand sanctions while the common people, who really have no stake and no complicity in the behavior or their tyrannies, are the ones who suffer. The world learned this fact of strife in the Balkans and, more acutely, with Iraq in the years before the American invasion. On the question of planning, of course this was planned in advance. Russian uniformed military planners are likely to be much like their U.S. and NATO counterparts (i.e., planning out the kazoo, including what to do with rogue asteroids!).
The Putinista simply dusted off and gussied up a plan and proceeded. I still believe that President Obama has been viewed as an appeaser after:
1) doing nothing in Iraq in 2010 when Prime Minister al-Maliki undermined the democracy while we still had 50-75,000 troops in Iraq with which to apply pressure (by threatening immediate withdrawal when Prime Minister al-Maliki was not yet consolidated in his power);
2) the red-line farce (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxxwfaIAl_Q // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS06ArjKONQ) in which he should have taken responsibility either for a mistake in being too bold with his rhetoric or stated that the crime required more investigation;
3) taking no action in Syria -- no fly zones to protect minorities from both Al Qaeda and other lslamic nihilists as well as the government now slaughtering people (mainly Sunnis) with buck-shot bombs -- other than humanitarian aid with much of it not getting through to the beneficiaries, according to Kilcullen, since there are no policing forces to maintain order of the fluid refugee camps; as well as,
4) no pre-emptive push-back, or verbal warning, as the Russians built up forces along the border or mobilizing on the bases.
As stated earlier, the U.S. participation in Libya was not handled well and sent the wrong message to tyrants; that is, clean up one’s act or no, the U.S. would kill despots as it pleased and so thugs might as well slug it out to their deaths as the Arab Spring progressed. President Obama let himself get dragged into an Italian agenda (of colonialist euphoric recall) beyond taking out the tanks closing in on Benghazi.
The issue about Syria is the prime motivator for President Putin because all the White House dithering has managed to do is assure the mass murder of more Syrians while deterring moral push-back by President Obama. The more muted the response, the more the slaughter with seeming impunity. The more the slaughter, the more muted the response and so on. It does not take a PhD in psychology to figure out that the Putineer figured he could get away with this land-grab as he watched the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet fail to lead in a situation far more distressing than his re-taking the Crimea back from Ukraine after sixty years after Kiev’s favorite-son bestowed the peninsula upon his homeland.
Friends and family, I really try to be fair to President Obama and feel the vitriol of my fellow Republicans has weakened his hand considerably; yes, there is a latent racism to at least some of this vituperation and I detest that aspect of it. Yet there are times where the risk of reinforcing this aggression by inaction outweighs the risk of miscalculation of taking the next right step vigorously. The President looks more like an empty suit with each day of muted response.
Response to an interesting article in the "Small Wars General": http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/open-letter-to-president-obama
ReplyDeleteAs always, an interesting letter followed by more interesting comments. The evident care with which this letter is worded, together with back-and-forth in the comments, indicate the anxiety clearly felt that miscalculation could have dire consequences. No one wants a war with Russia. As with any complicated situation like this one, "all of the above" is a great starting point for understanding what is driving Russia's aggression. My personal preference is that there are three prime motivators.
First, President Putin feels he must take the focus off of the problems in his house and focus the 'fervor' elsewhere. In this respect, I felt, as a college student in early 1980, that one reason why the U.S.S.R. had invaded Afghanistan was to send a message to the large Muslim minority not to take their cue from radical shi'ite and sunni Muslims creating havoc in Teheran, Islamabad and Mecca. The Putinistas are not only distracting the captive populace from the sorry state of Russia under their man's leadership but also letting the pro-euro activists know that they will be crushed if they step out of line (by saying in effect, "Hey, if I am willing to take this public flak over Ukraine for its uppitiness, imagine what I will do to you away from international accountability...").
Second, the regime is pursuing this aggression because it wants to. The Russian mob may be mobsters and the oligarchs may be pillagers but I doubt that the Putineer is alone in "going bed dreaming of Peter the Great and waking up thinking like Stalin..."
Third, Russia believes it can get away with it. That is obvious; people know why I think this unhappy state of affairs has unfolded. Yet this 'why' is open to the lively debate already taking place on web-sites like this one, over dinner tables and in hallowed halls.
Here's the catch: all of the proposed costs -- whether on elites or on an innocent population -- are too far in the future. The 'now' doesn't give a damn about six months from now. Even this letter from these muckety-mucks, with its reference to ramping up support for Georgia in September 2014, is (in view of a day-by-day time horizon) irrelevant to the 'now'.
If the U.S. and the West are serious about preventing further land-grabs and a re-play of 1938, the United States will have to do something now (together with Germany and Britain), lest a possible perception of dithering be interpreted as a window of opportunity to take parts of Georgia and Moldova while the "gettin' is good".
Yet that concern of timing then begs the fear expressed that regions of 0.5 to 2.5 million people could drag the world into war as great powers are snared in a web of alliances too brittle for everybody's good. One President, like him or no, who really understood this double-edged sword of Damocles -- with one side of the blade being appeasement and the other miscalculation -- was President Kennedy. That is to say, there is a middle course:
> at the invitation of Ukraine, enforce an imperfect aerial blockade over Eastern Ukraine outside of the Crimea, particularly Odessa and other key cities;
> bring the carrier fleet engineering that overflight into the Black Sea, with Turkey's consent, to maintain a 'patrol zone' of fifty miles off of Sevastopol; as well as,
> sponsor special forces exercises immediately in Kiev and elsewhere in Western Ukraine (for any type of practice; does not matter).
PART-2 of commentary on an 'Open Letter to President Obama': http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/open-letter-to-president-obama
ReplyDelete===================
The no-fly-zone and naval quarantine will not be comprehensive; we need, rather, to focus on presence rather than perfection. It does revert to one Cold War idea: the trip wire. Now these ideas of mine may need major re-doing to enable what is possible and plausible. One gets the general idea. It re-sets the context of pushing back on Russia without firing a shot. With that breathing room established for all parties, the international community can act to resolve outstanding issues in the Crimea, Transniestra and South Ossetia.
There are legitimate historical questions underlying the claims over these disputed areas. A referendum would make sense in each case, if there were a compelling sentiment in the region in a less contentious time, expressing its desire through a petition to some international body to be validated, followed by a referendum monitored for authenticity.
The situation in Crimea reminds me an awful lot of the Falklands hassle of 1982. I was out of college an interning for a non-standing Senate policy committee. One morning, the gracious foreign policy expert gave me a pile of C.R.S. reports and others texts. She asked me to come up with an idea of why the Chairman should support Great Britain -- by lunch.
Going in, I was all in favor of Great Britain. Over the next two hours, as I read through material, I came to be sympathetic with the historical claim of the Argentines. Yet, it was obvious that the invasion was occurring because of the impending collapse the repudiated regime of a militaristic dictator (hmmm...familiar?) in Buenos Aires trying to buy time, through reclaiming 'the Malvinas', perhaps to 'disappear' the opposition leaders.
Who knows?
We do not know because Great Britain was willing to risk an all-out war with Argentina to maintain her hold on those islands. The Malvinas indeed should revert to Argentina. Some day they will, but in a manner consistent with cross-border comity within a community of nations willing to abide by an international rule of law. I submit to you that the disparity of power between the U.K. and Argentina in 1982 may be analogous to that of the U.S. over Russia today.
P.S. I have heard or read that roughly 41% of Crimeans favoured secession a year or two ago (i.e., a less contentious time) -- about the level of Quebecois who have historically wanted to secede from Canada; not an overwhelming mandate. Gee, what would happen if France grabbed Quebec? How long would that last? As long as the Falklands were officially re-christened as the Malvinas. Why is this situation in Ukraine significantly different? Four letters: F-E-A-R.
COMMENT #6
ReplyDelete===========
Call me incorrigibly prone toward 'simplistification'. Carl is right. Outlaw-09 is right. My guess is that Eastern Ukraine is gone by the end of the month and all of Ukraine by the end of the year. Let's revise history just a detail or two. September 1939: the deteriorating peace has given way to blitzkrieg. Already, special forces of Germany -- the Eisengruppen -- are running amok, assassinating Jews as sport.
The valiant Poles put up a fight but are hopelessly outgunned. The United Kingdom and France have declared war with no action to back it. Desperate to preserve their homeland from the invaders, the Polish government appeals to the heavily listing League of Nations for support (peace-keepers). With millions of Poles living in the United States, pressures mount for the global 'arriviste' to do something for the old country.
U.S. President, Cactus Jack Garner, taking office after the untimely death of President Roosevelt, believes that European problems are European. Despite the pleading of a few internationalists, President Garner refuses to aid the Poles. He is determined not to get drawn into another European ground war. President Garner recognizes that Hitler is an aggressor. So he offers left over K-rations. No guns. No hits. No errors. Nobody left.
Nobody left to stop Hitler. Within two years, the Nazis have fulfilled most of Hitler's geopolitical aspirations of gaining Europe's bread-basket in Ukraine and Belarus; the oil fields of Bessarabia (Moldova); lebensraum in Poland; as well as, a western buffer in a humiliated, dismembered France. The offer of K-rations becomes a joke of history: the 'great biscuit blitz'.
President Garner is forever derided as the commander-in-chef and President butterball; he has mis-read axis intentions. Had Cactus Jack, Chamberlain et al. judged possible moves by the axis based upon capabilities rather than intentions and solemn pledges by Hitler, far fewer than 50+ million would likely have died, including grotesquely high numbers of jews, gypsies, slavs and chinese.
NOW LOOK AT RUSSIA. Our civilian leadership is seeking solemn promises from President Putin and refuses to push back on Russian capability well positioned to re-conquer a far weaker Ukraine, whose internal resistance has been undermined by looting of the expelled President Yanukovich. Russia is on the threshold of getting its needed bread-basket, locking up precious oil and gas stocks.
Ukraine needs help. And President Obama has offered up MREs. No defensive weapons, ammunition and supplies. No national guard training in Western Ukraine. No aerial protection of eastern Ukraine. Now that KIEV has requested peace-keepers and now that Russian leadership is counting on the WEST to prevent civil war, the hollowness of the current U.S. response is screaming in bold relief.
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2014/04/13/russia-were-counting-on...
Seventy years from now, the mere offer of MREs in the face of an oncoming invasion will be remembered as a twisted joke. Such neologisms as 'Obamanation' will emerge. The call for peace-keepers, however, provides an indirect invitation to you all in the Special Forces. Two or three companies could go to the troubled cities of eastern Ukraine to train first responders in maintaining order in the urban centers.
The dispatch can be under the cover of "assuring safe-passage into the country of neutral peace-keepers". AGAIN, there are two keys here. First, this dispatch of Special Forces bridges the deterrent needed for sanctions and other measures to make themselves felt. Second, Russia has thrown a clear gauntlet. Russia does not think the WEST will act to "prevent civil war." Russia will then invade Ukraine to prevent the civil war the West is unwilling to prevent. The problem is that, once the civil war has been prevented, Russian 'peace-keepers' will not leave.
by Ned McDonnell III | May 6, 2014 - 9:25pm reply
ReplyDeleteOutlaw-09,
Of course, you are correct in pointing out that this process has been going on for a while and is, therefore, unmistakable. If terrorism is the tactical choice of the weak, then irregular warfare is the strategy of the militarily marginal. There are many factors at play here. Taking the time to figure them all out is coming across as appeasement and leads us into to driving a car by looking at the rear-view mirror. In fact, I less charitably believe that the substance of current inaction owing in part to an absence of U.S. leadership manifests the classic illusion of appeasement: if one ignores the problem, it will go away.
Well nothing is going away as you document ably and steadily. Time spent now temporizing over details EQUALS appeasement of containable aggression; like somebody running in place in front of an airplane lavatory door that, in reality, is unlocked and says unoccupied. Russia gets stronger and bolder with each intermediate success (or western forfeiture). Your string of writings, increasingly ominous and very much along the lines of what Carl perceived as a window of opportunity wide open until 2017, is 'sobrifying' (sobering and terrifying).
Truthfully, I have the subtlety of a sledgehammer. My inclination -- building up deterrence the N.A.T.O. / E.U. eastern flank (as MoveForward skillfully argues); direct intervention of 5-6 of U.S. SOF and National Guard companies (with their patches on) in Ukraine; no-fly zones in eastern Ukraine; and, a naval quarantine of Crimea -- has no chance of occurring, though such a response would already be late and also overlooks what you have passionately advocated: an irregular / informational warfare response.
The flurry of articles speculating that the next region in the Putineer's cross-hairs will be Latvia, eastern Ukraine, all of Ukraine, the rest of Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan demonstrates the growing urgency of a credible response by the U.S. and N.A.T.O. This uncertainty of the next Russian unrest stop indicates, to me at least, that President Putin is looking for weak links in current areas of opportunity. We have seen this situation and this 'new' 21st century warfare before in Czechoslovakia and other neighbors in the late 1940s. We know these things; we can do better.
We have people in the North America and Europe who can get this done and done now. President Obama himself said "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" and so he should be saying, "Presence and progress, not perfection". If standing by our commitments leads to a bigger war, then the U.S. and E.U. can say, "We did not start this war, but we will finish it..." Of course, moderate counter-measures are far less likely to precipitate a larger war than the increasingly bitter, and futile, dithering of the West.
by Ned McDonnell III | May 7, 2014 - 11:19am edit reply
Check this out from yesterday's hearing.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4497709%2Fconnecting-blots-goes-syria-goes-ukraine
Chairman Menendez's stony silence to Senator Corker's rhetorical question is telling. It takes three minutes to place the responsibility of the trend of appeasement firmly on the Obama Administration, most likely on the President himself.
COMMENT #8: Response to Comment #7 on current warfare techniques of Russia
ReplyDelete=====================
by Outlaw 09 | May 7, 2014 - 12:13pm reply Flag as offensive
Ned---take a long read of the eight Phases of the Russian strategic UW strategy (New-Generation Warfare) that is playing out in the Ukraine---we do not have at the national level a equal strategic UW strategy which SWJ writers like David M, Robert J and Bill M have mentioned over and over that we need.
Once one has a national level strategy then it is easy to develop a counter UW strategy---when both are not in place then one "swims" as we do now as there is no confidence among the decision makers that anything will work anywhere in the world where there is UW tied to political warfare on the loose.
Here are the first five strategic UW phases that Russia is currently using in the Ukraine with great effectiveness.
NOTE: Although Putin pulled a few rabbits out of the hat today that makes one wonder just how is the Russia economy really doing and is he serious now about de-escalation or just conducting a supporting role in say Phases One, Two, and Four in order to gain more time for activities on the ground to work through to his favor? OR is he concerned that the forces he unleased are not responding to his control/words and that alone will trigger further sanctions that will indeed hit him hard and potentially collapse the economy around his ears. There is something going on that needs to be watched closely just not sure what it is.
First Phase: non-military asymmetric warfare (encompassing information, moral, psychological,ideological, diplomatic, and economic measures as part of a plan to establish a favorable political, economic, and military setup).
Second Phase: special operations to mislead political and military leaders by coordinated measures carried out by diplomatic channels, media, and top government and military agencies by leaking false data, orders, directives, and instructions.
Third Phase: intimidation, deceiving, and bribing government and military officers, with the objective of making them abandon their service duties.
Fourth Phase: destabilizing propaganda to increase discontent among the population, boosted by the arrival of Russian bands of militants, escalating subversion.
Fifth Phase: establishment of no-fly zones over the country to be attacked, imposition of blockades, and extensive use of private military companies in close cooperation with armed
opposition units.