'Ambiguous Warfare' Providing NATO With New Challenge

<blockquote>Move Forward said we don't or didn't supply Ukraine with enough arms or training JUST AFTER I posted that Ukraine is a TOP TEN ARMS exporter</blockquote>

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/ukraine-worlds-4th-largest-arms…

They were number 4 at the time of the above linked 2013 article. However, note who buys their weapons. Europe and the Americas (countries with the most modern weapons) bought only 9% of the total while Asia bought 47% and Africa 23%. India, Iraq, China, and Russia are listed as their primary customers although they had contracts with 78 countries at the time.

What kind of arms do they export? Are they modern, top-of-the-line weapons or small arms and peripheral parts of systems like Russian helicopters and missiles. If their arms are exported, they aren't exactly available to the Ukraine military are they. They are paid for and used by other countries who can afford them. Ukraine very well may not be able to afford sufficient numbers of their own modern weapons.

We know Ukraine asked for jamming support to suppress Russian air defenses like the Buk system. A number of Ukrainian aircraft were downed by Russian equipment in June and July and the MH17 shoot down occurred on July 17...a full month and a half after the article you posted earlier that was supposed to be evidence of relevant <strong>current</strong> events. I also will post about your other comment about that article's relevance in your response down there.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about exports of weapons to Russia:

<blockquote>In March 2014, during the 2014 Crimean crisis, the company barred all exports of weaponry and military equipment to Russia.[10] Yuriy Tereshchenko, the then newly appointed head of the company, stated on 29 March 2014: "With its act of aggression, Russia had broken the regular order of life".[11] Tereshchenko also claimed: "There are some types of weapons that Russia cannot make without Ukraine’s components. Among them are aviation radars and beam holders for some types of missiles. This is a long list, not one, two or three items”.[6] Jane's Information Group believed (on 31 March 2014) that while supply may be slowed by the Ukrainian embargo, it was unlikely to do any real damage to Russia's military.</blockquote>

Not even close? You said the quote below implying some sort of parallel between us disbanding the Baathist Sunni Army after OIF and Ukraine letting some police go...as if that led to subsequently successful Russian and separatist aggression.

<blockquote>Bremer II and the disbanded Iraqi Army.</blockquote>

What weapons do you think a police force has to stop a Russian tank? How does a police force deal with shelling from the Russian side of the border into East Ukraine? How does a police force deal with Russian jets and air defenses?

Now I will agree that the number of U.S. police to cover large U.S. states in terms of both area and population like Texas and California is a good counter to those who argue for a light ground military footprint. After all, the U.S. is peaceful and its crime rate relative to places like Afghanistan and Iraq is minor...yet we still need large numbers of police. There are 70,000 in places like Texas and California and over one million active police officers nation wide. We don't build up and subsequently reduce police forces like we do on a recurring basis with our Army. Crime does not end. Conflict at whatever level affecting the U.S. never ends given human history.

Why the double standard? Why does law enforcement primarily involve boots on the ground instead of naval and air police? Why do we keep full time police forces protecting us in the peaceful U.S. but cut our ground military and withdraw them to the U.S. instead of leaving them in safer overseas places where they can deter and stop wars of expansion and terror?

Madhu, you emphasized this part of your quote from a <strong>3 month old article</strong> that no longer is relevant:

<blockquote>The conflict with Russia remains a threat, but the bigger and immediate threat is the proliferation of militias, gangs and separatists in eastern Ukraine, where effective action by a competent police force loyal to the state and the nation could have prevented the tragedy that is unfolding there now. Many law enforcement personnel were cashiered en masse following the revolution. That has created a security vacuum and, one suspects, provided plenty of able recruits to help fill the separatists’ ranks.</blockquote>

You think more law enforcement personnel would stop Russian tanks? Other fun facts and quotes from Putin offer a different take:

"If I want to I could take Kiev in 2 weeks"

"I want to remind you that Russia is one of the most powerful nuclear nations"

"New Russia"

These aren't the comments of someone attempting to peacefully secure a sphere of influence. Crimea and Buk air defense missiles should have taught us that. A comment by a foreign minister that satellite photos of hundreds of <strong>Russian</strong> vehicles were from imagery from a video game was equally illustrative of convincing their own folks that Russian aggression is nothing more than a humanitarian rescue of fellow Russians.

When Russia takes actions like this and ISIS cuts off the head of another journalist, it simply means that those outside the U.S. no longer respect the U.S. or NATO. They do not fear that any meaningful deterrence, assistance, or combat action will occur in response. We apparently lack a strategy to do so and our leader would prefer to vacation and attend fund raisers rather than develop such a strategy.

We don't provide adequate weapons or training to Ukraine or moderate Sunnis.

We don't impose meaningful sanctions because Europeans won't support them just as they looked the other way at Hitler's initial aggression.

We don't strike ISIS in Syria despite clear means to do so from the air with no ability for Syria to interfere with our stealth air fleets and ample UAS/RPA that could function effectively once air defenses our suppressed.

Added to:

John Zambri asked this question of me also -- re: the relevance of boarders -- at my comment further down this page.

So let me address John's question here in much the same way that I answered Sparapet's inquiry ("what is the purpose?") below:

Our national leaders increasing seem to see "the preservation of national borders" as relevant IF such endeavors allow us to better accomplish our -- and NATO's -- post-Cold War "purpose," to wit: the provision of our way of life, our way of governance and our values, attitudes and beliefs to outlying states and societies.

Given (as the past 20 or so years seem to indicate) that "the preservation of national boarders" HAS NOT been of benefit to us -- re: this "purpose" of advancing our civilization -- we have now began to think that this concept (much like sovereignty?) may need to be (1) discarded rather than (2) retained and fought for.

So now, and within the context of what works best for advancing modern western civilization, such things as "allowed balkanization" are being considered. (Better cost/benefit analysis? Better ways, ends, means computation?)

This helping to explain our so-called "lack of resolve" -- re: the Ukraine -- and elsewhere?

As to who should been seen as "the aggressor" -- and who "the defender" -- consider this article in the September issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine by John Mearsheimer entitled "Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault:"

"Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics. They tend to believe that the logic of realism holds little relevance in the twenty-first century and that Europe can be kept whole and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy."

If a treaty ally is attacked and we don't honor our obligations then questions about whether we can be counted on are appropriate. A military response (we're already responding diplomatically and economically) to an attack, transgression, etc. on another country's sovereignty that is not an ally is made case by case based on our interests, not a standing obligation to promote state borders as sacred. Seems you're making an argument that the world needs a global policeman to enforce international norms of behavior, and if that doesn't happen the world will become increasingly chaotic and dangerous. In my opinion, that argument has some merit, but I don't think the American people will support it, so its feasibility is questionable. I'm not arguing whether we should or shouldn't intervene, but if we do so, then the logic must be sound and the political objective achievable via military means.

At what point then? At what point do the boarders become relevant? Important enough for some substantive - definitive (dare I say kinetic) - response? When Russian Armour Tank divisions roll into Poland? Chech Republic? Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, France...UK? Seems reminiscent of a little spat we had 75 years ago with a funny looking little turd with a funny looking mustache. I agree, we can't go willy nilly or emotionally half cocked into the geopolitics of the matter, but if the boarders do not matter in the Ukraine, then they don't matter at the waters edge of the continental U.S. Perhaps you're on to something. Our southern boarders don't seem to matter much either. My friend this is not an attack on your position or reasoning, but I see this as something - a problem much deeper and ominous. Some would say that the idea of Russian tanks rolling west is folly, but the same was said when Germany rolled tanks east and west. The same would have been said on September 10th, 2001 of the Al Qaeda attacks. We have lost something as a country. We have lost something of our standing in the minds of these...provocateurs. We don't instill pause in the minds of our adversaries, which says a great deal about our resolve and our concern of the interest of ally's, which are our interest if not in the very near term, certainly in the long term. Can we be counted on anymore?

It's tough to be objective when one trades in ideology. The impulse for action is also difficult to resist, or even moderate, when a sense urgency sets in. That's why psychologists warn people not to act when grieving. It doesn't lead to good things.

There is no such thing as ambiguous war. If one feels the situation is ambiguous, one must also feel that his presence and role in the situation is undefined. Which means one is where one did not 1. plan to be 2. want to be or 3. foresaw being. In all three scenarios, the ambiguity is in one's head.

The only ones afflicted with ambiguity are those who are perpetually surprised that the world doesn't conform to their ideologies. Ambiguity is easily avoidable with a coherent strategy, even if it is a secret one. You might have difficulty deciding on a course of action and even more difficulty executing one. But none of that bears any weight on the subject of ambiguity, which is borne of an absence of purpose.

The Cold War had an anti-communist purpose that was animated by a two-fold strategy of containment and victory without escalation. Current anti-Russia strategy (if one can be found) that seems to have a lot of fan-boys is containment and decisive victory through escalation. But what is the purpose? Preserve national borders? No one is THAT committed to that purpose, we have in fact stepped in only ONCE with that purpose in mind...Gulf War I. And even then it was out of fear of an ally, Saudi Arabia; Kuwaiti borders being necessary but not sufficient condition for our involvement. Prevent Russian expansion? OK, but if it's local and in countries whose borders we don't care about THAT much (e.g. Crimea, Abkhazia, etc) then is it worth it? Topple Putin? Well, there are probably lots of different ways to go about that without resorting to open war.

So WHAT is the purpose?!