After gaining the element of surprise and fanning out to seize the key infrastructure of Crimea and sending in perhaps 7,000 reinforcements, the Russians have been oddly passive.
I noted that the Russians oddly held back from marching on Tblisi in the Russo-Georgian War of 2008.
Yes, the Russians had a tougher time of the invasion than they perhaps expected. But the Russians should have been able to bulldoze their way up the road to the Georgian capital even if the casualties would have been higher than the Russians wanted.
But Russia lost 25 million people to defeat Nazi Germany. Would a couple hundred casualties to completely defeat Georgia have been too much?
In the end, after fighting a brief war with Georgia, Russia emerged with what they had before the war--control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Remember, Russia already had troops in those two regions. The two regions declared their separation from Georgia after the war, but nobody recognizes that loss.
Is Putin's bare-chested, rifle-toting, tiger-wrestling personae all a fraud? Is he really quite cautious?
The Russians could be gearing up for a real offensive. But I think we have to consider whether caution is why Putin has recoiled from exploiting his surprise deployment into Crimea by completing the ejection of the 20,000 mostly non-combat Ukrainian forces holed up in bases around Crimea?
If so, how do we exploit this?
If Putin would be happy to end up with what he controlled from the beginning, perhaps the Ukrainians could propose that Russia keeps their Sevastopol lease to 2042. Shoot, before the invasion, I thought the new Ukrainian government should remove a pretext for war by ratifying the lease that Yanukovich agreed to sign.
We could also exploit the fact that Russia doesn't seem to want to open fire on Ukrainians. Send in a task force to the Black Sea of a Coast Guard ship or two (they are armed, remember), an intelligence-gathering ship, a hospital ship, and supply ships. This flotilla would resupply those enclaves--by helicopter if necessary--and fly out Ukrainian troops in need of medical attention to the hospital ship. One of our destroyers, Truxton (television news just said this is the unidentified American Navy ship I earlier said was heading for the Black Sea), could be in the background, making port calls in Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine outside of Crimea.
If we headed for the Ukrainians cut off at Feodosiya, that could be our base of operations. Ukrainian helicopters could fly supplies we land there out to their outposts.
Those same Ukrainian helicopters could carry troops in need of medical attention to Feodosiya where our helicopters would fly them out to the hospital ship.
Or there could be a better place. I suggest Feodosiya since it is guarded by Ukrainian marines and is on the coast.
This kind of pressure and demonstration that Ukraine isn't quitting would compel Putin to escalate to shoot at Ukrainian forces trying to supply their people in Crimea.
Heck, try sending unarmed ground supply convoys, too, and dare the Russians to stop them--on live feed to the world.
And Kiev should start putting some Ukrainian troops at the neck of the Crimean Peninsula, just in case.
Remember, Putin could also count it as a win since that base on Ukrainian territory will prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. As I understand it, NATO rules cover that.
For us, having Ukraine in NATO is a bonus. Having Ukraine--rightly worried about Russia--cooperate with NATO is probably just as good. And NATO could change the rules if the Russian threat changes, recall.
Much of Russia's national and military power (other than nukes) is bluster and bluff. I wonder if the invasion is, too.
Is Putin's public image just part of that Potemkin Great Power?
UPDATE: We don't need to go to war over Crimea. I did not think we needed to go to war over Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008. So I'm not arguing that President Obama is showing weakness by not wanting to fight (although I think it is foolish for Kerry to bizarrely insist that all options remain on the table).
And while we don't need to go to a Cold War with Russia, we need to end the reset and punish them where we can--and avoid rewarding them (Hey France! Still selling amphibious warfare ships to Putin? Yeah). It doesn't mean we cut off all contact any more than we did with the USSR even as we opposed them at a far higher level.
Remember, Putin doesn't want a Cold War. Sure, his state propaganda makes much of NATO plots. But he knows that this is ridiculous. He gets great mileage from railing against a non-existent threat as if it is a real threat. That's the safe thing to do, rather than rail at powerful China on his weak Far Eastern border, no?
I know Obama fans say Bush did nothing about Georgia. That can't be true, otherwise there would have been no "reset" to restore relations with Russia that the Obama administration believed Bush had wrecked. And Bush did scale our relations back. We can do the same, with the carrot of lessening our isolation of Russia if Russia pulls back into Sevastopol and accepts the limited objective of confirming what they already had.
UPDATE: It is possible Putin is winning (tip to Instapundit). But what I object to is the tone of Obama policy critics that assume Putin has already won and there is nothing we can do about it. I do not assume Putin has achieved his objective and don't think we should give up ejecting Russia from Crimea outside of Sevastopol.
UPDATE: Just how many Russian troops are in Crimea?
Ukraine's border guards said Moscow had poured troops into the southern peninsula where Russian forces have seized control.
Serhiy Astakhov, an aide to the border guards' commander, said there were now 30,000 Russian soldiers in Crimea, compared to the 11,000 permanently based with the Russian Black Sea fleet in the port of Sevastopol before the crisis.
These are border guards saying this, so I assume they mean Russians crossing into Crimea at the Kerch Strait. I'd read that the Russians were massing armored vehicles on their side of the strait. Have the Russians started moving those troops across into Crimea?
If Russia started out with 11,000 in Sevastopol, that means 19,000 were sent into Crimea. The last I read, up to 7,000 were flown into Crimea around Sevastopol. Does this mean 12,000 entered via Kerch? Or did 19,000 enter via Kerch, since this is from the border guards' observations? Yet they clearly state that the total is 30,000.
I wrote of the Russians sending 25,000 (15,000 paratroopers flown in and 10,000 Interior Ministry Troops via Kerch) to occupy Crimea, reinforcing the garrison. That would mean an eventual total of 36,000 troops. That doesn't count local militias, mercenaries, or special forces.
If my WAG (wild-ass guess) is reasonable, the Russians may be merely "paused" only to build up to their invasion strength prior to ending the phony war after the Russians arrange a vote in Crimea to request Russian help.
I'd really like something relatively authoritative on Russian troop strength and deployment in and near Crimea, as well as the areas in Russia across from eastern Ukraine.
We need to stop thinking of our diplomacy as a means to "help" Russia escape their "mistake" of invading, and treat our diplomacy as a means to achieve a victory over Russia--the evacuation of of Russian troops from Crimea outside of Sevastopol.
UPDATE: Our military says the Russians have 20,000 troops in Crimea. That would be the original 11,000 plus 9,000 reinforcements. The Ukrainians say there are 11,000 militias besieging their troops in their Crimea bases.
So that adds up to a little north of 30,000. So that may reconcile different figures, and would allow some overlap assuming some of the 20K Russians are among the 11,000 militias out there. And it would indicate that Russian troops did not cross at Kerch in any great numbers.
UPDATE: The pause in military operations may last only as long as it takes to hold a referendum in Crimea, get Russia's parliament to accept Crimea into Mother Russia, and flip the safeties off Russian weapons.
If Russia is trying to keep things calm until then to influence Crimeans to vote for independence on the assumption that secession from Ukraine is a done deal, Ukraine needs to break that sense of inevitability.
I think Ukraine may have the chance to move forces into Crimea to reclaim some territory, and dare the Russians to shoot first on live feeds. If we also help resupply those Ukrainian outposts under siege, more Crimeans may refuse to vote for secession if they no longer think it is inevitable and if they see Russia starting the fight. Crimeans voted to stay in Ukraine when they got their chance after the Soviet Union broke apart, after all. I realize that Russia will steal the vote anyway, but we can make them work for their farcical vote, at least.
UPDATE: Saturday morning I read that the Russians have been ferrying troops into Crimea at Kerch:
[A] Ukrainian military spokesman said a large number of troops had been ferried across the Strait of Kerch during the night from Russia.
I assume that these would be mechanized troops, perhaps Interior Ministry units to continue the fiction that the Russian army is not in Crimea. But no mention is made of equipment or origin.
