Thats what Putin did in eastern Ukraine this summer. First he began quietly supporting the separatist rebels there, then arming them. Then an awful lot of military-trained Russian nationals started slipping in, as Moscow had done before when invading and annexing Crimea in March. In July, in the weeks before boneheaded rebels shot down a civilian airliner and killed 298 people, Russia began shipping them high-grade military technology, including surface-to-air missile systems. Shortly after the airliner shoot-down, Russian artillery in Russia began firing at Ukrainian military forces in Ukraine — an overt act of war. Then NATO said it caught Russia sending an incursion force across the border, which Ukraine claimed to destroy. Later, according to the rebel leader in Ukraine, 30 Russian tanks and up to 1,200 Russian-trained troops did manage to cross. By August 22nd, Russian artillery units were reportedly crossing the border into Ukraine, and a few days later, Ukraine captured rebels who admitted to being Russian soldiers sent under formal order. Russias meddling in eastern Ukraine became a stealth invasion, which has become an overt invasion. But it was all done just gradually enough, and with just enough uncertainty around each incremental escalation, that Russia has managed to invade a sovereign European country, in the year 2014, without sparking any larger war or the credible threat of any substantial response beyond sanctions. Thats not to argue that Western countries should have responded with more sanctions (even that took substantial cajoling from the US), but the point is that Putin shrewdly prevented it from happening by playing on the vulnerabilities of Western democracies: short attention spans, rapid war fatigue, and the often-unwise pull of popular opinion.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 11:26:12 +0000
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