Escalation

Full blown WW3 inches closer

Putin sent dozens of drones over Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria over the past few days, causing people in those countries to be under air raid alerts, damaging homes, and causing other far-reaching consequences.

The reasons for him doing so are confusing and complex. I will attempt to elucidate them below. Battles are not wars, one can lose battles and still win the war, and Russia is still losing this war, but this week Putin won another battle with the west.

Many people are baffled as to why Putin would risk of these acts of war against NATO countries. For that is what these were, acts of war. Particularly since virtually the entirety of the Russian armed forces are tied up in Ukraine, or have been killed, maimed, or destroyed in the battles there over the past three and a half years.

And yes, there is no doubt this was a deliberate attack. These drones were fitted with Polish cellular phone simcards to enable them to navigate via the Polish cell tower networks, they weren’t aimed at Ukraine, and for the first time, these types of drones were equipped with auxiliary fuel tanks to enable them to have the range to reach Warsaw and Gdansk. Although this time, most of the drones were decoys (that emulate Shaheds) and ones gathering electronic intelligence for Russia, and most of them did not contain warheads, this is of little comfort to those people whose homes were damaged. Given the lackluster NATO response to these provocations, I expect them to continue, and slowly escalate into occasionally large drones with warheads “accidentally” “straying” into NATO countries and somehow hitting things like military bases and factories.

This was a test by Putin, who gambled that the west is too weak to respond to this in any meaningful manner, and unfortunately, he was correct. Strongly worded statements do not stop bullies. Putin knows that the west is too weak minded to respond in kind to his attacks, striking drone bases or production facilities, much less properly equipping Ukraine to do so, and so confidently attacked or even just significantly increasing sanctions. Or hell, even just shooting the damned things down, for the most part.

While it seems utterly insane that Putin wishes to engage NATO countries in warfare when his army is fully engaged losing to a much smaller army only half equipped with old NATO cast-off equipment, as much as Putin isn’t the genius that so many used to make him out to be, and makes serious mistakes, he still plans for the future. And for him, that future is once again bringing under Russian rule any area that at any time in history was occupied by Russia. While to us, right now, this seems a far-fetched and impossible goal, he has converted Russia’s economy to a war-time one, and is very busily indoctrinating the next generation Hitler Youth style, on a massive scale.

Although Russia is currently on a trajectory of catastrophic economic collapse, the speed at which that comes about is dependent on sanctions. Unfortunately, the success of those sanctions to a large degree depends on the United States, which is currently ruled by a fascist regime beholden to Putin. Already, the United States has lifted sanctions on Belarus, which is just a puppet state of Russia, a part of Russia in all but name at this point, and very surprisingly, the United States has begun to import eggs from Russia, which deserves to have more said about it, but will have to wait for another post. Lifting sanctions on Belarus opens a conduit for sanctioned goods, like parts to manufacture drones and missiles, and things to buoy up Russia’s economy. Although I dearly hope that the American congress abides by the bi-partisan wishes of its people, who overwhelmingly still support aiding Ukraine and see Russia’s evil to some degree, Putin is gambling that all the Kompromat he has on American politicians and his ownership of Trump will mean the eventual lifting of sanctions on Russia, buying him more time.

How much time? European countries are gambling that they have another five years to rearm and prepare before Russia invades one of the NATO countries, forcing them into direct warfare. Whether they will have that time or not remains to be seen, and is not something I can predict, there are too many variables at play.

What I can say is that whether anyone recognizes it or not, we are all in the beginning stages of World War Three and Russia will continue to escalate its attacks on the rest of the world. The parallels with the west trying to sacrifice some of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany to buy time to rearm are painfully obvious, with talk from some quarters of having Ukraine sacrifice some land for ‘peace’. Everyone should know by now that no agreement with Russia is worth anything at all, and all such a ‘peace’ would be would be an opportunity for Russia to catch its breath to rearm. Luckily for Ukraine, Putin’s war-time economy, and the disaster that would occur if he brought all his troops home means that he isn’t truly interested in any peace, so those despicable voices in the west urging Ukraine to surrender for a useless peace won’t be heeded anyway. At this point, I’d be more tempted to equate our timeline with September of 1939, when France and England sat by while Poland was invaded, so they could prepare their armies.

Russia’s testing of the west this week was a big win for them on many different levels.

First of all, Russia tested NATO’s air defenses over Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, and those defenses were found sorely lacking. Despite aerial assets being scrambled from as far away as the Netherlands and Italy, and all those disparate units working together effectively, allied defenses brought down barely twenty percent of the drones invading their territories, and drones came within a few miles of Poland’s capitol, as well as the critical port of Gdansk, and many drones reached a large allied military base in Poland used by NATO. Two dozen big drones flew for hundreds of miles over NATO territory. This on a night, like many, when Ukraine downed the vast majority of the drones attacking it, far greater than the number that penetrated NATO airspace. This was a paltry, ineffective showing of NATO’s air defense abilities, particularly since very expensive missiles were used to take out cheap drones mostly made of foam. Nearly four years into the war and NATO isn’t fielding a cheaper response to an upscaled version of this:

fitted with a moped engine and a bomb. Of course, the true calculus is what you prevented being destroyed, whether that is people’s lives, homes, power transformers, factories, schools, hospitals, museums, or anything else Russia might target, but there are cheaper ways to do it than flying F-35’s from the Netherland’s, aerial refueling them, and them taking out the drones with missiles. One of the few wins of this battle has been that some NATO countries are now going to be learning from Ukraine how to combat Russian drones. Took y’all long enough.

Of course, scrambling aircraft from half of Europe to respond to a few dozen Russian drones meant that Russia most likely acquired some valuable intelligence about allied response times, capabilities, frequencies used, etc. To be fair, initially, Russia aimed more than 50 drones at Poland, but half of them turned back at the border, after causing the scramble.

The bigger goals were to test NATO’s resolve, and try and slow aid to Ukraine though, and in those regards Russia again succeeded. NATO’s response was tepid at best, and what little it does materially consist of is indeed moving some air defense resources to Poland rather than passing them on to Ukraine where they would save lives, and Ukraine would actually use them to destroy Russian military ability. Of course, despite the west protecting Israeli airspace with its fighters and air defense systems when it was attacked, there still isn’t any real talk of closing the skies over Ukraine.

Russia immediately followed up its big incursion into Poland by once again flying drones into Poland and Romania the next night. Because why not? The west didn’t do anything about it and isn’t going to do anything about it. We don’t know when the drone found in Bulgaria arrived there, apparently NATO never even saw it, just discovered the crashed wreckage later. NATO and Romania let a Russian drone wander over its territory for almost an hour, before letting it go on to Ukraine to attack there, in stark contrast to the west shooting down missiles and drones headed for Israel. Amazingly, Romania put out a statement telling its people that they were never in any danger, although I find it hard to believe it flew over their country for 50 minutes and didn’t pass over a single home. This of course was exactly the wrong message to send for a variety of reasons, but here we are.

Russia is hoping to prove that NATO is toothless. That despite its potential military might if united in war, that the west lacks the resolve to respond. Putin is slowly turning up the heat, and Europe is the frog in the water. Bombings and fire sabotage of military bases and factories apparently aren’t casus belli, nor is Russia repeatedly putting bombs on planes, or cutting undersea international communication cables, or any of the other acts of war Russia regularly perpetrates against the west.

Some people seem to think that Russia would have required some sort of backing from China for Russia to do this. I disagree. There was very little risk for Putin to do this, he knows that the west isn’t ready, or willing to go to war over something like this. Russia is deeply in hock to and reliant on China at this point, but hardly needed Chinese permission for this.

Some people have suggested that Ukraine attack Moscow in response to this. I had to laugh at that. Ukraine has been attacking military targets in Moscow for quite some time now, apparently that isn’t well reported in the press. Virtually every night a hundred or more large drones or missiles fly from Ukraine deep into Russia to attack oil infrastructure, war factories, and military targets. Also, if you want Ukraine to attack Moscow, or distant drone factories, give us the tools to do so, without restrictions on their range. Finally, why should Ukraine be striking Russia for NATO countries? We have our hands full with this war, if Russia is attacking you, it is up to you to stand up to them and strike against them yourself. Some sort of material response, be it sanctions, or something firmer would be a better long term deterrent to Russia attacking you then trying to use Ukraine as a proxy.

Why now? There are a number of good reasons Putin chose now for this test of NATO’s resolve and abilities. For one thing, he could really use a win at home. Not only has his vaunted summer offensive accomplished virtually nothing, in fact, Ukraine just scored two battlefield successes, pushing Russian forces back from Sumy, and surrounding Russian forces near Prokrovsk, but the Russian economy has taken a precipitous nose dive recently, so much so that they cannot hide it and are starting to admit a recession, and the near nightly long range Ukrainian strikes at Russian oil infrastructure are causing fuel shortages throughout much of Russia. Some estimates have 42% of Russian refining ability offline right now, and that is only going to get worse.

(The much ballyhooed penetration of Ukrainian lines recently is now three pockets of trapped Russian troops continuously baiting relief forces to try and come free them and be destroyed in the process. More on that in another post soon.)

The fact that Poland just brought up reparations for Russia invading them in 1939 again, and it is the anniversary of Russia having done so this month are useful to Putin as well in the timing of these attacks. In addition, Russia is holding military exercises in Belarus, in conjunction with the Belarusian armed forces, and the additional pressure that this attack makes in combination with that, and the increased tensions between Russia and their neighbors during this is useful to Putin. Finally, because of those exercises, the Russian military no doubt was able to move electronic listening equipment close to allied borders to garner what information they can from the NATO response.

As part of the overall effort to weaken NATO, Putin is hoping that drones flying over those states, and people having to endure air raid alerts are going to frighten them into thinking that they need to do whatever they can to stay out of the war, and that that means not supporting Ukraine. Appeasement. Hopefully, people will see through that, because kowtowing to a bully just means they are going to beat you more. Showing weakness to Putin always emboldens him further, as is natural, this is Russian culture. They don’t believe in negotiation, negotiation is something you do when you are weak to buy time in their minds. Time to go stronger to attack again. This is their culture, might makes right, and they deserve whatever they can take from everyone else because they are weak. This is what they believe. This is Russian culture. Learn this. Accept this. That is reality.

Russia will only be stopped if they are defeated. Germany and Japan wouldn’t be the countries they are today if they hadn’t been defeated. We saw what not decisively defeating Germany led to after World War One. We see what not showing the South it was defeated after the Civil War has led to. The world can either continue to support Ukraine, and increase that support to what it needs to be, and maintain and increase sanctions on Russia until Russia collapses economically, or the world can expect Russia to continue to degrade western states and undermine NATO’s response until Russia feels emboldened enough to attack one of the Baltic states, causing full blown active warfare between all of Europe and Russia.

Currently, the world is on the path to the latter, hence, most European nations frantically rearming and expanding their militaries and reintroducing conscription. I can’t say exactly what it will look like when Russia attacks a NATO country, but despite losses, Russia probably still has a thousand tanks it is currently husbanding, and I could see Russia slowing operations in Ukraine to free up enough troops to attack a Baltic state, and perhaps initially overrun much of it. Putin schemes and plans, and clearly Russia’s rhetoric in wanting to restore its empire is more than just rhetoric, it is the desire of its dictator to achieve the legacy he wants, and much like Hitler at the end of World War Two, Putin’s grasp of the true strength of his military is most likely deeply flawed by yes men telling him what he wants to hear. Like Hitler in the lead up to World War Two, he is becoming increasingly emboldened by his enemies endlessly bowing to his wishes and him eventually getting what he wants. He is expecting more of the same and as crazy as it seems to us to even consider starting a war with a NATO country, he is continuously being urged to do so by their actions, and is likely out of touch enough with reality to eventually cross that line, even though the reality of the situation is that even without the help of the United States, that will mean the rapid destruction of Russia’s remaining military and they will lose badly. NATO’s military leaders and most of its political leaders are expecting full blown war with Russia in the near future and investing vast amounts of treasure and their people’s time in preparing for this. Sadly, they appear to lack the will to engage in stronger measures earlier to prevent things from reaching that point.

Eventually, this war will be won by the west. Russia only has the GDP of Spain and Portugal combined, and is taking on all of Europe. Along the way though, we may lose a lot of battles, like the one this week where Putin tested NATO defences and resolve and found them sorely lacking.

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