Posted on 07/25/2014 6:33:20 PM PDT by tcrlaf
As American officials fire off diplomatic salvos at Russia in response to that nation’s purported actual artillery salvos into Ukraine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said recently that among other actions, the U.S. military is dusting off decades-old plans, just in case.
“We’re looking inside our own readiness models to look at things that we haven’t had to look at for 20 years, frankly, about basing and lines of communication and sea lanes,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, America’s top military officer, said at the Aspen Security Forum Thursday evening. “What the military does when faced with these crises is – our job is preparedness, deterrence and readiness.”
In addition to its own plans, Dempsey said the U.S. military is having “conversations with our NATO allies about increasing their capability and readiness” and that there’s a “very active” ongoing process and debate about how best to provide support to Ukraine.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
No, it’s not a big breakthrough message...
It’s just one of many more to come.
I would expect the next message as they ramp this up, to be more subtle.
I would expect some arms shipments to our NATO allies. That would be one possibility among a thousand ideas..
Since WWII, war fighting and intelligence have co-mingled and in fact much of it is intelligence activity now. You keep dismissing it, but what Dempsey is doing is part of the intelligence efforts. Call it psy ops, call it propaganda, disinformation, call it whatever you like.
But the cold war lamp has been relit. From here you will see hundreds of other moving pieces, most of them you will not notice as you did not notice this one. Some will be quite obvious, others nobody but historians will ever talk about.
With some luck and intestinal fortitude, we might get it done.
Frankly, I don’t know how this will go. But I, as always, am prepared for anything.
Don't know ... Maybe you did know my boss and did know the system. The system (worked in) had a motto. You want the possible, then here it is. You want the impossible, then we'll need twenty-four hours.
I’m not dismissing Intelligence, I was part of a company assigned to them when I was a part of NATO.I worked in the Intelligence area including with other NATO forces besides American it was what we did.
I just speak a little less dramatically than you.
“Russia was a massive Empire, that is why it was a cold War, it was so incredibly powerful and huge that it threatened the world.”
That’s bunk....They were never massive. They had inferior equipment, lot’s of friggin useless tanks and not that many bombers. We out numbered them by far. We also had more nukes. I was in Europe at the time.
I was not there to fight the battle, I was there to allow our forces to retreat across the Rhine river because we did not expect to be able to hold off the assault forces from invading Germany (not enough troops) and the plan was to fight, retreat, fight and allow enough time to position our air assets to take out the tanks and troops.
But we also knew we could beat them senseless given time. We also had tactical nukes positioned to take out as many tanks as possible. But tanks were not going to win the war and to be honest they are not very effective any longer. A relic of the past.
Putin still has a lot of tanks....lol They still don’t have a lot of bombers, way fewer subs.. They have a narrow view of their goals and they still want Germany, Poland, and all their old satellites back. The nuclear deterrent is to keep us from messing with their actions if and when they take them.
They don’t need a lot to take Europe. They have what they need.
The key is to keep us out of it. That will keep NATO out because we supply it.
How much you want to bet that the border crisis is connected to Putin’s actions in Eastern Europe?
Maybe you never thought of that. My guess is that he has something on Obama as well.
Well, I’ve got to go.....I have done all the “critical thinking” I plan to do tonite.
“I just speak a little less dramatically than you”
People on the internet are always giving me hell about how I write and phrase.
It’s how I write. I am not making any effort to be dramatic.
So it might be a good idea if you remember that because it will save us a lot of time and bandwidth in the future.
I was in Europe at the time as well, and I totally disagree with your dismissal of the massive Soviet military and Warsaw Pact forces, I never licked up that view from our forces or those of our allies.
I’m glad you agree about having to go nuke to stop them, and if you don’t think the Soviet Empire of European forces and geography and structured on attack was powerful, then you must agree with me that Russia is weak and impotent today.
“Quantity has a quality, all it’s own”
Also having spent some time in Europe during that period, I know that WE would likely have been the ones to go Nuclear, first. In fact, it was the doctrine.
That said, the politics of Europe are far different now, than then. There is no “Combined Front” anymore, and the axis of interests aren’t the same, either.
Belgium or Britain, for example, aren’t going to cancel a Social Program to buy 15 new fighter aircraft, the handouts crowd just won’t stand for it. And you can bet the Russians know it, too.
I was in Germany from 1970-72. We did not have enough divisions there to stop what the Russians had piled upon the other side of the border. We could only slow them down, but they never could have won or kept the territory for very long. We knew that. That is why I was there.
Today it's a different ball game. If Russia wanted to they could blow through Europe because there is really nothing to stop them conventionally.
Europe has relied on us to protect them and thus have virtually no military defense. They could not afford it because of the socialism.
Containment policies regarding Russia, are as I said, largely one of intelligence assets and proxy engagements. Ukraine is one of those proxy engagements or soon will be.
The question I have is if Obama is up to it, and I think he is not. I think the US is going to lose this one. It may rise to the occasion on the next one depending on who it is and depending on the rest of Europe.
Right now, I don't see much Churchillian rhetoric coming from those that will eventually be affected by Russia's dominance of the region.
Taking all that together, with the sad state of affairs in the US, I don't believe that our bluff will work with Putin, and bluffing is not something we have a habit of doing. If I am wrong, and Obama surprises me, I will give him creds for it, but I think he's pussy. I think that at best we will remain in a cold war posture until someone with some gonads and sense of US identity is in the Whitehouse. This one does not have that.
I agree that it was us who probably needed tactical nukes to stop the overwhelming attack energy and capabilities that the Warsaw pact was built on.
This isn’t relevant but during the Vietnam war, I was Field Artillery and had a nuke clearance, we knew what that was about, and I still assumed that during the 1980s when I was doing something entirely different when we all anticipated dirty battle fields and our electronic gear was EMP protected.
In other words that was always the assumption, it isn’t insider stuff, we just couldn’t stop them with conventional forces (probably). Remember the Neutron bomb, it was developed for fighting in the West.
“I agree that it was us who probably needed tactical nukes to stop the overwhelming attack energy and capabilities that the Warsaw pact was built on”
Ansel you actually listed the primary reason why we saw the “pact’ as a serious military threat from the German side.
We had the bulk of our forces in Vietnam. We had troops and equipment scattered all over the planet. The “Pact” had all of their men and all of their stuff lined up against us,a inferior force in numbers.
Russia and that “pact” were not as big as they seemed.
Did you see her school those people while defending Israel in their war against Hamas.
Let me carry that thought on a bit before I go.
Situations have radically changed since then. We have now far fewer forces, less equipment, but better.
The Russians have crap. But they have enough crap to do what they want to do. They have no real opposition so they could do it if they wanted to.
I’m not sure that they want to just yet. I think they are testing the waters. How the test goes will determine Putin’s future planning. I don’t see a shooting war with the US. Just don’t see it happening.
But I do see in the relatively near future a combined move with Russia going after another chunk of eastern Europe, and at the same time, China going after what they want, which would be Taiwan and some current Japanese islands.
Based on what we do, they will adjust and either keep pushing of hold up for a bit and let things settle. If there is no price to pay, they will start up again.
It might be possible that by that time, the US will not be able to respond. For a variety of reasons, most of them domestic.
It’s a dangerous world, and Obama has really screwed up the US. Our weakness domestically is what has awoken the Bear as well as the Red Chinese.
Yeah...we need to put her in the Oval Office....lol
That Pact was massive and powerful they had 6,000,000 men under arms in 1988, against our 4,500,000, 230 Divisions against 121 Divisions, weaponry was similar, yet you gloss over that and have a neat little plan where it all works out in the end.
I don’t know why you keep saying the things you are saying.
We maintained steady forces in NATO, we didn’t transfer them to Vietnam, we increased manpower to get EXTRA troops for Vietnam, and NATO was more than just the U.S. anyway.
You also seem to have some particular year, or years, that you keep relating to.
Well, I know the Russians. I know what they want, I know what kind of people they are and how deep their bench is.
As I said, they would have overrun us in Europe in 1970, but it would have cost them a lot, and by the time they got to the Rhine river, they would have been in full retreat or decimated because we would have won the air war.
We would have also landed marines on their flanks and taken their ports.
I don’t know where this fear of the big bad Russian comes from. Maybe they have been successful with their propaganda. But in 1970, we were worried about the stuff getting started and the cost in lives, but there was no fear of losing to them.
I never said people from Europe were transferred. There was no need.
The two missions were totally separate.
There it is over and over, “1970”, 1970 and your personal connection to the Cold War, frozen in time.
The war in Vietnam was over in 1974.
The military pared down it's force requirements. And the manpower and equipment went with it. In fact my division was mothballed. The 3rd Armored.
The Cold War that you seem to be so worried about, was not even close to being as hot as it was in the 60s and early seventies.
When I was in country we went on full alert multiple times.
We deployed twice.
It was not a drill.
I was in the 1973 alert, and you have no idea what you are talking about in that regard to the Cold War, you have no idea evidently that by 1979 some of us saw 1984/85 as the window that the Soviets had to make their move, thank God for Reagan, he did everything he could to erase that window of opportunity.
The tension in the early and mid 80s was intense, Reagan destroyed that window that had been so predictable in the late 1970s, and the Soviets knew it, it wasn’t long before they went a different route that ended in their destruction.
The MI people can attest to that 1984 fear, you don’t know how hot things were.
OK......You want to talk about your experiences in 1970?
I know what it was like in 1980..The cold war never crossed my mind. But it did from 1958-1975.
By the time you were in Germany, near war events had ceased. Our subs were no longer sinking or ramming each other and full SAC alerts were unheard of.
Freeking Brezhnev was premier of Russia..
He was from the start a political puppet of the Politburo. Never made a decision. The Politburo wanted a era of perestroika. (Glasnost came later)
It was a policy of peace, or the Russian version of it.
More importantly, Brezhnev had a medical condition that at time rendered him useless. About all he could do was wave at the crowds.
From a strategic standpoint, when you were in Europe, the big bad bear was already in his den getting comfortable..
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