Originally Posted by
Azor
Points taken, however, I would still say that Russia watchers are conflating capability with intent.
Firstly, First Grozny notwithstanding, Russia has always had the conventional capability to defeat Georgia, annex Crimea, set Donbas on fire and deploy a small expeditionary force to Syria. We can argue over how much clumsier mission execution would have been if ordered by Yeltsin rather than Putin, or in 1999 vs. 2009, however, these activities were always possible.
Secondly, we have the issue of intent. Yeltsin had a strong interest in Transnistria, Tajikistan, Abhkazia, South Ossetia, Crimea and Serbia. With respect to NATO expansion, only 3 new members were added during Yeltsin's tenure, of which only one (Poland) bordered Russia. In comparison, 9 were added during Putin's reign (not including Montenegro), of which 3 bordered Russia, and of which two effectively sealed off the western coast of the Black Sea. I think that you would be hard pressed to find an analyst who would suggest at any time that the Black Sea Fleet every would have vacated Crimea, or that Russia would allow the Russian-speaking enclaves in the former Soviet Union to be forcibly assimilated by their host countries.
As far as nuclear weapons go, Putin's doctrine is not markedly different from that of the Soviet Union, other than telegraphing that it would use nuclear weapons to stave off conventional defeat and invasion. Certainly, the nuclear saber-rattling is worse than even at the height of the Cold War, yet Putin has found that reforming the Russian military has been a much harder and more glacial process than he initially believed. Russia currently has only 100,000 professional soldiers that it can really rely upon, including Internal Troops/National Guard Spetsnaz units, and many time zones to spread them across. It is sufficient to crush Georgia, deter Ukraine's ATO and overrun the Baltics, but not enough to conquer Poland, occupy all of Ukraine, or defeat NATO's RRF when it surges into the area. Therefore, this posturing is intended to mask conventional inferiority. The notion of nuclear "de-escalation" is ludicrous as neither NATO nor Warsaw Pact/Soviet planners ever believed that there could be a limited nuclear war. If NATO is as weak as some of these analysts claim and lacking in tactical nuclear capabilities, then Putin is faced with a dangerous redux of the New Look/First Offset, whereby NATO would be forced to defend the Baltics with strategic ballistic missiles. In addition, NATO accepted for decades that it could not hold West Berlin or all of Germany against a Warsaw Pact onslaught, but now the temporary loss of Narva is unacceptable?
Thirdly, Putin's regime is inherently less stable than the institutionalized CPSU, meaning that Andropov-esque decision-making becomes even more dangerous. Nevertheless, analysts are interested in hyping the Russian threat to NATO in order to provide more funds for the US Army (largely without a mission now save air defense) and the shrinking NATO establishments. They are less interested in studying Putin's behavior, which would indicate that he has greater interests in Belarus and Kazakhstan than any NATO member states, and that while he will intervene to prevent a state becoming a NATO member, he does not want a conflict with the United States.
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