Those who fail to learn from history...

[davidgillon]

I think Vlad Putin has just rebooted the Cold War. Any of the ex-USSR and ex-Warsaw Pact nations now has to consider that Russia may well do the same to them as it's trying to do to Ukraine. Which they'll need to respond to by bolstering their militaries. And in the former Pact nations and the Baltics that military response is a collective responsibility of NATO under Article 5, So we're likely to see reinforcement of the forward-deployed forces in the Baltics, Poiand and Romania.

So Cold War 2.0 starts today. And the first one ended so well for Russian.

Equally if Russia wins in the Ukraine, it finds itself occupying a modern Western nation with half-a million* trained and very disgruntled ex-Ukrainian soldiers scattered  through the nation and the Western intelligence services no doubt being perfectly willing to smuggle weapons to any resistance groups that form. So Putin's potentially also rebooted Russia's Afghan experience. And that ended so well for Russia.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.**.

* Probably many more given Ukraine runs a conscription based military.

** The Churchillian variation.

Comments

[sovay]

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

It's the part where those of us who have learned are still forced to suffer it that's been driving me up the wall for years now.

[davidgillon]

This, absolutely!