Russia is floundering now in its war effort. And Russia shows no signs of recovering. But don't make decisions on NATO deployment in the Baltic Sea region that count on Russia always floundering. Russia may learn enough to start the next war effectively.
Putin's invasion of Ukraine has undermined Russia's claim to great power status:
Russia may be vast, but it is a medium-sized polity that still yearns to be a superpower. Its population ranks between Bangladesh and Mexico, its economy between Brazil and South Korea and its share of global exports between Taiwan and Switzerland. Although Russia enjoys some sympathy in non-aligned countries like South Africa and India, its soft power is ebbing—hastened by its display of incompetence and brutality in Ukraine.
I did say Russia risked this outcome:
Putin pines for Soviet glory days. Putin's threats to use his military give Russia more stature than its status as a regional military power with continents-spanning defense needs justify. Just like Mussolini enjoyed--until he used his military and exposed it for the sham it was.
This is tempting advice from The Economist article:
The message for NATO is that it needs to update its tripwire defence. This rests on the idea that a Russian attempt to take a bite out of, say, the Baltic states may succeed at first, but would trigger a wider war which NATO would eventually win. That defence involves the risk of miscalculation and escalation, which are more fraught than ever if Russia’s conventional forces are weak. Better to have a large forward force that Russia would find hard to defeat from the very start. The best way to be safe from Mr Putin and his rotten army is to deter him from fighting at all.
But Russia will eventually rebuild its military. And it will learn from its painful mistakes. Just using the military it had in February more wisely rather than creating the military Russia wishes it had could have provided a victory over Ukraine--if a bloody one.
Russia may even reform its military. The Soviet military that embarrassed itself in 1939 against Finland did recover to win in 1940. And while that Russian military reeled from the Nazi invasion in 1941, that military stopped the Germans in the rubble of Stalingrad in 1942. And then shattered and drove the German army back into Berlin, which The Soviets turned into rubble.
I think abandoning a Baltic states tripwire and instead massing NATO troops in the Baltic states--or worse, rushing them in at the last minute--and counting on Russia's military remaining as bad as it has looked so far is a risk NATO must not take.
UPDATE: This is timely:
The Russian army has salient structural flaws, but despite the claims of some Western scholars, it is not fundamentally incompetent. The Russian army is struggling to win this war because it did not plan to fight a general war against a determined and resilient enemy. It did not mobilize the mass and firepower necessary to overwhelm the Ukrainian forces in the opening phase of the war. Its leaders kept tens of thousands of soldiers in the dark about the operation, setting the state for a crisis in morale. Russian planners chose a needlessly complex operational scheme of maneuver and failed to stockpile sufficient supplies and ammunition to sustain their momentum. It is counterfactual, but still valuable, to assess how the war might be going if the Russian army had been prepared. I do not assert that any combatant can fight a flawless campaign, but I attribute the bulk of the Russian setbacks to the flawed theory of victory, not a fundamental lack of military competence.
I think that's about right.
NOTE: War coverage continues at this post.
