As a result the intel on Russia from the former Russian states was often more insightful and less scary than the reports Western agencies were still putting out. Old habits die hard and the Western intelligence agencies didn’t want to stray too far from the “conventional wisdom” about Russia still favored by politicians and journalists in the West. The “conventional wisdom” was not only often wrong but could be dangerous as well.
I worry about Russia. But I have never inflated their strength. Blogging in Michigan where my income and status doesn't rely on what I write perhaps made me immune to the pressure to conform to conventional wisdom.
I never elevated Crimea into the template of Russia's strengths, preferring to count Russia's extensive troop presence and large base in Crimea as well as the complete lack of Ukrainian military strength to resist Russia in the early weeks of the new government that overthrew the Russian stooge.
I never got on board the whole "hybrid" war frenzy, preferring to see that as old methods that in fact highlighted Russia's inability to use large-scale conventional warfare to quickly gain the territory they wanted in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region.
I never go caught up in the near worship of Russian battalion tactical groups as revolutionary organizations of massive power. I prefer to think of them as the the only usable power of Russia's brigades scraped up from across the country. Rather than being great battalion task forcess, they are essentially weak brigades.
I don't worry about Russia's fleet and instead hope they put more resources into a blue water fleet to deprive the ground and air forces of needed money.
I can see that their "stealth" plane is at best a frontal-only stealth plane and not a reason to panic. If they can get it to work and put it into production.
The same applies to the new Armata super tank. Nice looking prototype. Try mass producing it and maybe I'll worry.
Heck, I wonder how many of Russia's nuclear weapons work given that I wonder how likely is it that their nuclear forces are uniquely well built and maintained amidst the mess of their military?
But Russia has a geographic advantage over NATO by being able to generate a high level of superiority over our NATO allies of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (and old NATO state Norway for that matter in their far north)--and against neutral but NATO-friendly Sweden and Finland--that will last for many months before America and the rest of NATO can send troops to the east through the logistics infrastructure-poor new NATO states.
So Russia is a danger to NATO territorial integrity. Especially if the Russians talk themselves into the notion that NATO is too "soft" to fight tough Russian fighters in a lengthy fight. Russia might believe they can use their initial advantage to take territory, dig in, wave their nukes around, and scare the decadent NATO nations into giving in to Russian aggression.
On the bright side, taking Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania doesn't have to be more than a temporary loss if NATO gathers a counter-attack force. NATO is in a much better position today than in the Cold War when a Soviet advance of only a hundred miles or so after defeating the best NATO troops would reach the Rhine and cripple NATO.
