The events in the next few weeks will evidence whether EU-NATO can be "reinvigorated" as Schindler suggests in today's blog, Deterring Putin, Part I. His article from yesterday, Understanding the Crimea Crisis, is more interesting for a number of reasons.

The first is:

As I write, the Ukrainian region of Crimea is being absorbed by Russia, more or less openly. This represents a blatant challenge to the post-1991 European order, make no mistake, and so far Vladimir Putin is winning. After a sudden increase in Russian military personnel on the sensitive peninsula, more than 6,000 troops, mostly Special Operations Forces (SOF), Moscow has pulled out all the stops in waging what I have termed Special War: provocations, espionage, black and white propaganda, and the use of deniable SOF, often under false flag. None of this is new to the Russians, indeed it’s second-nature to the Kremlin, and Crimea today can best be viewed as one huge operation by Moscow’s powerful military intelligence, the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), which controls not just defense espionage matters but SOF too, what the Russians term SPETSNAZ.
One should then read Schindler's, The Coming Age of Special War (September 20, 2013); and also his reference to Wiki's Active Measures, as one facet of the SW diamond. What he says is not new (he doesn't claim it is); and can be found in these samplings of the literature: Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare; Beaufre - e.g., Introduction to Strategy and Deterrence and Strategy; Liddell-Hart, Strategy: the indirect approach; and Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace.

Schindler's conclusion is pessimistic on US capability to enter the SW lists:

Special war works when competently handled. It’s very cheap compared to any conventional military operations, and if executed properly it offers states a degree of plausible deniability while achieving state interests without fighting. The United States at present is not ready – organizationally, legally, politically, or culturally – to compete in special war. But getting proficient in special war will soon not be a choice, but a necessity. We’re already losing at it, whether we realize it or not, and the current trajectory is worrying. Over 2,500 years ago Sun Tzu, an early advocate of special war, argued that the acme of skill is not winning battles, rather subduing your enemy without actually fighting. It’s about time the Pentagon caught on.
--------------------------------

The second point is EU-NATO (laid out in more detail in today's article linked in the opening paragraph), whose direction (up or down) will be determined by its actions and/or inactions in the near future. Schindler may be right about what the US and EU nations will do to deter Putin; but I'll wait until the check is in the mailbox.

--------------------------------

The third point includes the USG foreign affairs mindset (which goes beyond this event, in matters large and small), which often stumbles over its own feet (links to two other Schindler articles, link1 and link2; the first being about my "buddy" Samantha Power); and, as proponents of more delicate matters:

... they have quite literally nothing to say when old-school conventional threats emerge and enemies – yes, enemies: not rivals or merely misunderstood would-be partners – emerge from the darkness with conquest and killing on their minds.
but also, the third point goes to the urbane Worldview held by many people in the US (people from EU states can judge whether it applies to their countries or not):

In the present-day West, it’s commonplace to have a laugh at Vladimir Putin’s weirdly macho (and more than a little homoerotic) posturings, and I’ve done it too – how not, among the panoply of martial arts, bears, and countless shirtless adventures before the cameras? Yet in Russia they love this stuff, without a laugh-track. They are not yet as post-modern as we are, and they find reassurance in an old-school leader who talks about – and more importantly demonstrates – strength in a dangerous world.
To these folks of refined delicacy, "Suvarov's" love of the infantry spade would be too remote to seriously contemplate:

The spade is not only a tool and a measure. It is also a guarantee of the steadfastness of the infantry in the most difficult situations. If the infantry have a few hours to dig themselves in, it could take years to get them out of their holes and trenches, whatever modern weapons are used against them.
...
This is a book about people who throw spades and about soldiers who work with spades more surely and more accurately than they do with spoons at a table. They do, of course, have other weapons besides their spades.
One should ask himself, Am I an Athenian or a Spartan in Thucydidean terms ?

Regards

Mike