Why would we care about Ukraine? Why would we care about Taiwan? There is the balance of power issue and defending democracy in Ukraine; and then for Taiwan, if you don’t care about democracy, then you’d better care about microchips, since the most advanced ones used by us Americans are manufactured in Taiwan.
Which brings me back to Ukraine and all the signals that the United States government is giving about what is likely to happen with a Russian incursion or, at worst, a total invasion of that nation. If I’m Russian President Vladimir Putin, why would I stop with just an incursion? If the West is going to impose economic sanctions even for an incursion, you might as well go for the whole enchilada.
The danger for Russia is a long, drawn out Ukrainian war of resistance, similar to what they experienced in Afghanistan. To say they did not learn from that experience belies the fact that the English had two goes at it, the Russians and then the Americans. Each must have thought, “We can do this!”
Kiev is a city of around 3 million people — larger than the city of Chicago. Having participated in urban warfare training back in the day, an attack on a city of that size will eat everyone’s lunch. The attackers with tanks and artillery don’t have the huge advantage of being on the open battlefield and a determined force of committed defenders can kill a large number of attackers, aka Stalingrad in World War II.
Which brings me back to cyber warfare. Once fighting starts, the end result is very unpredictable. Germany didn’t think that England and France would honor their commitments if Poland was attacked in World War II. Miscalculation is the mother of mistakes in wars. The idea that an invasion can be kept to an “on the ground” regional conflict is an optimistic one at best. When the western powers strike back with economic sanctions, the next move is Putin’s. I predict he will pull out his cyber card and lay it on the table.
Fresh drinking water, wastewater, electrical power, fuel pipelines, banking, telecommunications, transportation systems ... all are cyber vulnerable and not a single shot has to be fired. The only deterrent I can envision holding Putin back on that is MAD (Mutually Assured Disruption) for when we strike back.
Then, maybe there will be a space war, what with the Russians already having demonstrated they can destroy a satellite in space.
When the news and the Pentagon report that Russian vehicles are moving out of their motorpools and heading to what are called assembly areas, know that “the game is on!”
