Q
Perhaps those who know about war will accept that it is impossible to enumerate its types. Risking a reprobation, in the case of Ukraine three basic species could be accepted: the diplomatic, the military and the economic.
The diplomat has been nothing conducive starring personally by its presidents, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, with Macron as reinforcement.
The first is aware of the traditionalist foreign policy of his country, which since the disintegration of the USSR has pushed the borders of Western Europe towards the East, adhering in 30 years to the former Soviet republics to Western political-military organizations, the European Union , NATO. It has been a clear threat to Russia that she is stopping by firing on innocents.
The US, with its supporting countries, has not only moved political borders to the East, but has also installed its nuclear missiles in the territories thus gained. He thought he could also do it with Ukraine, but…
Militaryly, Biden was wrong, just as he was wrong with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Having so many internal and external fronts, he opened one more, the most delicate one. Russia is not Iraq. The US got into a mess and didn’t know how to back down in time. He left Ukraine isolated, abandoned to its fate. NATO washes its hands by sending it weapons so that it can fend for itself.
Putin is a steppe wolf, a tsarist-style autocrat. He leads the entire apparatus of power in his country, including Parliament, in his favor. He once again disregarded international treaties, remember Georgia, Chechnya, Crimea and now Ukraine.
He knows what he wants and starts playing dirty with attacks that are still limited today and thus alarms the world. Who did not foresee that all this was possible was a sucker.
The Russian made a calculation of consequences that may be accurate. NATO says it is drowning it, independent experts doubt it and warn negative results for the allies.
What he was right about and what defines what we are experiencing was his certainty that the European Union/NATO would not take risks with a massive use of their powerful armies. Today they are obsolete. He has the perverse sagacity that his opponents did not appreciate. He is a ruthless Russian.
He knows that no one would risk seeing scenes from the two world wars repeated. It is a forward thinking brain. Cruel, he has cramped the opponent leaving him with the most powerful armies immobilized from him.
Its objective is to recover territories of the USSR, an expression of the old Tsarist Russia. There is much of it as an explanation in the history of at least 500 years.
That explains why in a current conception Putin goes further: he tries to create a security cordon to the west and south of his country in the most reprehensible way.
He has in his mental file the US missiles secretly installed in Turkey in 1962 that the then USSR forced to withdraw. Or he rescues memories on the same subject, recalling the US demand that same year to repatriate the Russian missiles installed by the USSR in Cuba. So see that the story is not new.
The differences are the same, the argumentative reasons similar, the mutual threats equivalent. The risks are terrifying. What is new is that NATO’s very strong armies would not be used if it implied great national damage to its members. This leads to a new conception of military power. The current must be reviewed.
It seems that the risk of unleashing a generalized war is unthinkable, one that, more than large human contingents, was carried out by high-tech weapons: aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, transcontinental and tactical missiles. All this acting against objectives that mean the death of millions and material destruction. Consequences suffered for a century.
That form of warfare is inconceivable. None of the opponents has even remotely hinted at it as possible. It is unthinkable to endure another great war like 1914 or 1939. A war that, if generalized, would not be in Texas or Oklahoma, but in the fields of Germany and France. In short, nobody wants another globalized war that would lead to a very worrying universal prognosis.
Because of this unthinkable phenomenon a month ago, it is essential to analyze the lesson of why NATO did not commit its troops. It is required to think from the fields of diplomacy, politics and military science about what armies, what characteristics and above all, with what missions will the armed forces of the future of each country be.
Current armies can be studied that have a traditionalist design, more typical of experiences that were foreign to them: World War II, Korea. There are gaps between your profile and current realities.
There is a lot of history to study to nurture the conviction that certain countries urgently need doctrinal, legal, organizational, educational, programmatic and budgetary adjustments. Task that demands certainty, commitment and effort to understand what seems to be the end of an era.
