Clancy sets up a similar scenario with China in The Bear and the Dragon. In that case we squeeze China too hard and they go after the Russians’ oil fields. I only bring this up to share his analysis of the politburo. They don’t see reality like we do. They see what they want to see. And they just might go to war with foreigners if its between that and facing social unrest at home.
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It’s a continuing short-coming. Thinking like Americans when facing Russians and Chinese.
A President facing the financial crap that Putin faced, due to sanctions, would have had so many billionaires hyperventilating that they would have been anxious to make a deal.
Putin on the other hand, could always just kill an oligarch who was too much trouble. Financial warfare has not worked very well to make him change course.
Putin defanged the oligarchy. That is why our oligarchy hate him so. Clancy had something to say about this too — The oligarchs are a euphemism for Russian organized crime, I think we all know this. The point was that the mob in Russia was particularly pernicious because they weren’t small time criminals who got lucky or smart, but former KGB and Speznatz men fresh out of a job but with all the tradecraft skills and decades of experience. Made a lot of sense.
I’ll post to you since you understand Clandy and I don’t think this crumb is big enough to alert the *all thread.
Clancy discusses and explains, in The Bear and the Dragon, that Fox-Two refers to an infrared heat seeking missile often deployed because the enemy has no way of locking onto the radar signature. He also specified that Fox-One is an AMRAAM missile, nut now Wikipedia corrects me and tells me that an AMRAAM is called Fox-Three. Wikipedia tells us that Fox one Indicates launch of a semi-active radar-guided missile (such as the AIM-7 Sparrow).