Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
Using your logic the Nazis were only a threat to Poland, and the Japanese were only a threat to China.
Apples and oranges, really, or more like apples and baseballs. Despite the round of Putin-worship we're seeing lately, Russia's success in the Ukraine is less about Putin's genius or some uniquely devious scheme for "New Generation Warfare" than about circumstances unique to the Ukraine. The Ukraine was beyond low-hanging fruit; it was fruit on the ground. The revolution had left the country effectively ungoverned; the armed forces were of varied loyalty and barely functional. Russia had a military base in the Ukraine and could tap into a large and disaffected ethnic Russian population with an active perception of threat. Crimea effectively dropped into Putin's lap, all he had to do was reach out and take it. I suspect that he really doesn't want Donetsk; if he did he'd have taken it already.

Will these enabling circumstances be repeated elsewhere? Probably not, unless a pro-Western revolution breaks out in Belarus (not very likely any time soon). Russia's aggression in the Ukraine was as much an act of opportunism as anything else: Putin didn't create that opportunity, he just took advantage of it. It's not likely that he will be given or can create that opportunity elsewhere. That's very much unlike the aggressors of WW2, who created their own opportunities and were able to repeat them.

Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
Russian aggression unchallenged in the Ukraine threatens our interests globally in subtle and not so subtle ways by changing international norms. Others are watching to see how they can employ their military and paramilitary in creative ways outside accepted international norms.
Those "international norms" have been ignored forever by anyone with the opportunity and the incentive. We generally don't notice, because it's so often us that's doing the ignoring.