Easter Incident

Russia claims that shadowy Ukrainian fascists attacked a pro-Russian road block near Slavyansk in eastern Ukraine. I'm guessing Russia's fingerprints are on this.

Russia doesn't seem too upset that unrest is still going on in eastern Ukraine, given that they haven't reacted to the fact that pro-Russian mobs still occupy government buildings and man road blocks in eastern Ukraine:

At least two people were killed in a gunfight early on Sunday near a Ukrainian city controlled by pro-Russian separatists, shaking an already fragile international accord that was designed to avert a wider conflict.

After the deaths, Russia questioned whether Ukraine's Western-backed government was complying with the agreement, brokered last week in Geneva, to end a crisis that has made Russia's ties with the West more fraught than at any time since the Cold War.

The separatists said gunmen from Ukraine's Right Sector nationalist group had attacked them. The Right Sector denied any role, saying Russian special forces were behind the clash.

A pro-Russian masked witness described the attack:

People jumped out of Jeeps and started shooting at us. They threw stun grenades. Our people started running in various directions as somebody shouted 'Down!'. A sniper was shooting those who tried to run into the village. The first who ran was killed by a sniper right away, then there was a second dead. There was another man who wouldn't get up, he was just lying there."

Stun grenades? Why would murderous Nazi gangsters use stun grenades rather than fragmentation grenades? The former are useful to stun people when you want to keep them from resisting while you identify threats from non-threats. Like when entering a building where civilians might be mixed with combatants.

If your have the element of surprise, you throw actual exploding grenades to kill enemies while they are least able to resist and seek cover.

But it could have been Ukrainians opposed to Russia's subliminal invasion of eastern Ukraine. Maybe the local attackers thought they brought real grenades. Maybe they really didn't want a large body count and just intended to send a message. Remember, pro-Russian separatists are refusing to stand down as they are supposed to do after the Geneva agreement was signed. The Ukrainians are defending their country, aren't they?

And it could have been Spetsnaz posing as Ukrainian nationalists who egged on the attack by locals. Perhaps the Russian special forces provided stun grenades to lower the body count of the pro-Russians and allow the road block defenders the chance to resist. The attackers might not have known they were given stun grenades.

Given Russian failure to get the Spetsnaz-organized mobs to stand down and given Russian eagerness to threaten consequences, this certainly does sound more like a Spetsnaz operation than a gang of bloodthirsty Nazis risen from Hitler's bunker to threaten holy Mother Russia in the 21st century--if I had to choose from only those competing narratives.

Although an actual pure Spetsnaz operation to kill would not have roared up to the road block to attack--everyone would be dead at the end of a pure Spetsnaz operation that dealt out death from the silent black night around the road block before any of the defenders could react.

So I'm going to go with the Spetsnaz priming both sides to get the chaos that Putin craves in eastern Ukraine--don't stand down the pro-Russian militias and encourage local Ukrainians to attack the pro-Russian militias.

The Ukraine crisis really isn't over. Remember that based on Russia's intake of new recruits and discharge of soldiers completing their term of service, we're at that beginning of a window of opportunity for Russia to invade with the maximum number of reasonably trained troops:

If Putin decides to send in his troops, he has a narrow window in which to act," Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer writes in "Foreign Policy," citing the need to seize on current troop readiness before Russia's spring draft brings in a wave of unseasoned conscripts. "The window of opportunity for an invasion will open during the first weeks of April and close somewhere around the middle of May."

If we want the crisis to end, we need to help Ukraine mount a credible resistance to a Russian invasion. I hope we are doing more behind the scenes than just sending MREs and water purifiers, and other such nonlethal help that is as much use to the Ukrainian Boy Scouts as their army.

And even if the negotiations end the crisis, the Russians will be back one day to have another go at taking more of Ukraine.

UPDATE: Have no doubt that the Russians are still stirring up Ukraine:

For two weeks, the mysteriously well-armed, professional gunmen known as “green men” have seized Ukrainian government sites in town after town, igniting a brush fire of separatist unrest across eastern Ukraine. Strenuous denials from the Kremlin have closely followed each accusation by Ukrainian officials that the world was witnessing a stealthy invasion by Russian forces. ...

“There has been broad unity in the international community about the connection between Russia and some of the armed militants in eastern Ukraine, and the photos presented by the Ukrainians last week only further confirm this, which is why U.S. officials have continued to make that case,” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said Sunday.

The question of Russia’s role in eastern Ukraine has a critical bearing on the agreement reached Thursday in Geneva among Russian, Ukrainian, American and European diplomats to ease the crisis. American officials have said that Russia would be held responsible for ensuring that the Ukrainian government buildings were vacated, and that it could face new sanctions if the terms were not met.

The Russians sign an agreement to end the crisis. But they refuse to stand down the city occupations that they carried out, and blame Ukraine for failing to abide by the agreement.

But let's remember that Russia has already failed to abide by the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

UPDATE: SACEUR notes, among other things, the use of stun grenades in building assaults as a sign of Spetsnaz activity.

Cause and Effect

Foreign jihadi numbers in Syria are way up.

CENTCOM commander, General Austin, said of the foreign jihadis in Syria:

“You know, when I took command about a year ago, we were talking about 800 to 1,000 foreign fighters being in that country,” he said. Now, the intelligence community says it’s 7,000 to 8,000, which means it’s grown by orders of magnitude within one year.”

I'd just like to note that during the Iraq War, opponents of the war said that the only reason (far fewer) foreign jihadis entered Iraq was because we were a magnet and provocation. If only we left, Iraqis would sort things out by themselves.

We aren't in Syria, of course.

Oh, and in Iraq, jihadis are running loose in Anbar province and still holding cities and towns.

We aren't in Iraq, now, of course.

From Scratch

Lamb made her first cookies from scratch at her new baking station.

We didn't have time to do the full project as well as color Easter eggs. So instead of a triple layer cookie with candies in a hollow center cookie piece, Lamb made "moon pie" style cookies with a layer of marshmallow cream in between. The cookie dough and icing were home-made and Lamb added icing and sprinkle decoration accents (with purchased stuff) and melted chocolate.

We didn't have corn syrup, so we substituted cane sugar vanilla syrup that I have for ice coffee (as if I'll ever need that again, with an endless winter still dogging our heels).

They turned out good. Although I just had one smaller one that wasn't made to be a moon pie cookie.

We lost track of time and the cookies were probably in a minute too long, but fortunately that did not wreck the cookies. Probably because they were thicker than the recipe assumed for the triple layer cookie pieces.

The special cookie with eyes was made for Lamb's younger cousin, Very.

So a baking success!

A New Portion of the Conflict Spectrum

We need to confront the "new" way of waging war that Russia displayed in Crimea and attempted in eastern Ukraine, but let's not get carried away in disregarding conventional forces.

This is an excellent point:

Europe, the United States and above all the Ukrainians need to learn to cope with masked warfare — the Russian term is maskirovka— which is designed to confuse not just opponents but also the opponents’ potential allies. As I’ve written, the West urgently needs to rethink its military, energy and financial strategies toward Russia. But more specific new policies will also be needed to fight the masked invasions that may follow in Moldova or, in time, the Baltic States if this one succeeds.

Americans and Europeans should begin to rethink the funding and governance of our international broadcasters in order to counter the new war of words. We should also begin to reinforce the local police forces of the states that border the new Russian empire; NATO’s F-16s cannot fight thugs who are storming the town hall. This isn’t just about spending money: We need more special forces, more “human” intelligence, not just more ships and planes. Above all, we need to be prepared, in advance, for what may come. It’s a new world we are now entering, and we need new tools to cope with it.

Strengthening Ukraine's counter-intelligence, police, and special forces should be just as important as strengthening their conventional military.

And NATO needs to do the same thing. I mentioned that post-Afghanistan and post-Iraq, our Europe-tagged special forces should go back to working with eastern European states about resisting a Russian invasion:

Let me add in that 10th Special Forces Group should refocus on Europe and prepare for its Cold War-era mission of being a stay-behind force to conduct direct action in the rear area of a Soviet invasion and rallying locals to resist the Soviets.

These special forces troops would practice working with Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian forces as irregulars fighting in the rear of the Russian advance to keep the Russian invaders off balance before and during the NATO counter-attack.

That was their main Cold War mission. My post was focused on defending the Baltic states from a sudden Russian invasion, but it applies generally to NATO in the east. And even to Ukraine outside of NATO if we exercise with the Ukrainian special forces.

And unmasking the Russian subliminal threat is important, too.

But let's not get carried away with this Maskirova Warfare. Conventional warfare is not dead because of it.

Remember, Crimea was secured by this subliminal invasion not because of the superiority of this maskirova approach, but because Ukraine's army was not prepared to quickly mount an operation to disperse the Spetsnaz and the militias they organized and imported in Crimea.

Spetsnaz are good troops. But they are special operations troops--not conventional operation troops. A competent conventional force would have defeated and scattered the Spetsnaz and their militia hand puppets. That's why Russia airlifted in six or seven thousand troops into Sevastopol to reinforce the naval infantry regiment there, and sent in 15,000 more ground troops across the Kerch Strait. If the subliminal invasion faced resistance, old fashioned maneuver units would have been needed.

And in the east, Russia's similar maskirova efforts appear to have failed to simulate a widespread uprising requiring Russian intervention to "preserve the peace."

I'd like to note that the scope of Russia's successful Crimea operation and (presumed) failed eastern Ukraine operation matched almost exactly with the scope of Russian action I speculated about before the invasion in Operation Kharkov Storm.

I read elsewhere an invasion scenario that saw Russia invading along an arc from west of Kiev to Crimea. With just 40,000 Russian troops massed near the border plus the Crimea garrison, I thought this was madness. You don't go into such a vast area with so few troops for a mission of conquest. A raid? Sure. Or a punitive mission. But not conquest. Moderately effective resistance would cripple the effort and result in an ugly victory at best and defeat at worst.

Besides, with Ukraine's army strategically fairly immobile, why attack on a broad front to include as many Ukrainian defenders as possible? Just strike a narrow front with Russia's limited ground forces to maximize the force ratio. The very eastern portion of Ukraine between Kharkov and Donetsk seemed like the best target for a successful Russian effort.

But back to the main point, Russia's failure to wage a successful subliminal invasion of eastern Ukraine meant that Russia would have had to resort to conventional force to salvage the invasion. Russia had already successfully energized Russians about the imaginary Ukrainian threat to Russian speakers in Ukraine, so could have invaded with a pretext few in the West would believe. They did not invade.

Despite some worries that I was failing to judge events to contradict my speculation that Russia was too weak to fight a war in eastern Ukraine, Russia did not unleash their army to invade. Why?

Russia did not invade [eastern Ukraine] early. Why?

Did the Spetsnaz effort fail and so deny Putin a needed pretext? If so, why not just assert the pretext and go anyway? The pretext was flimsy for Crimea. What was one more?

Did I grossly over-estimate the Russian troops available? And rather than 100,000 troops and Interior Ministry troops being available, only a quarter of that could be scraped up quickly?

If so, Crimea is the priority.

Now Russia seems to have enough troops to occupy the eastern portion of Ukraine--had the troops been available a month ago. Now, these troops may not be enough to fight for, take, and hold eastern Ukraine in the face of Ukrainian resistance.

Or maybe Russia hasn't made nearly as much progress in restoring their military to fight "the big one," when they earned an ugly victory over a small foe since 2008. Perhaps they're still only capable of fighting "the small one." And Crimea was it.

Or at least Russia's military is not good enough to win a bigger war cleanly and quickly. Such a fight would cripple the Putin narrative that the Russian army is awesome.

You can argue Putin's purported soul made an unexpected cameo appearance, I suppose, to convince Putin that it was wrong to conquer eastern Ukraine.

Or you can argue that the Spetsnaz failed in eastern Ukraine and that Russia's army was not ready to fight for eastern Ukraine as opposed to simply road marching in to collect the gift of a Spetsnaz-orchestrated phony uprising.

So this so-called Maskirova War is not a replacement for conventional warfighting abilities. We have to fight on Putin's terms, of course. Because it can work, as Crimea demonstrates.

But if we ignore NATO conventional capabilities to win the Maskirova War as if that is the entire spectrum of conflict, Russia can just send in the tanks and paratroopers to win the old fashioned way. Note that Applebaum said we need "not just more ships and planes," accepting that ships and planes (and ground forces) are needed. Don't misinterpret this new threat as the only threat.

Ground Troops to Poland?

Will we send ground troops to Poland?

That's what this says:

Poland and the United States will announce next week the deployment of U.S. ground forces to Poland as part of an expansion of NATO presence in Central and Eastern Europe in response to events in Ukraine. That was the word from Poland’s defense minister, Tomasz Siemoniak, who visited The Post Friday after meeting with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon on Thursday.

That's a good idea. When I hear about US ground forces, I think maneuver units. Not air defense or helicopter units or anything else. Those units are great and valuable. But nothing says commitment like a maneuver unit of infantry, armor, and artillery, designed to take and hold land.

I agreed with a proposal to put our Germany-based Stryker brigade in Poland. Plus liked the idea of reinforcing the Army in Europe.

And while I'm at it, noted my earlier call to move our equipment in Norway for a Marine brigade to the Baltic states region.

And then noted my post-Georgia invasion proposal to put Army brigade sets of equipment in Poland. I stand by that, too.

But then I read elsewhere later (sorry--lost link) that this is referring to moving an American company of 150 men to the area for exercises.

Which is symbolic only.

Sure, we get familiar with the area. Which is valuable. And a big decision to base a brigade in Poland would take a lot more time to make and plan. So this could just be easing into that. But it isn't the big deal I thought it might be.

Of course, the biggest job will be to improve the logistics network of NATO to support the movement of western NATO forces into eastern NATO countries to come to the aid of NATO states under threat from Russia. That's the biggest brake on meeting a Russian threat.

But whatever agreements we had with Russia about not basing troops in the east is as dead as Crimea's status within Ukraine. Russia can whine and complain about this as our latest sin, but Russia is driving bad relations right now.

Air Farce One?

A civilian American plane was on the ground in Iran recently. Why is the question.

An American plane would need all sorts of permissions granted to go to Iran. Somebody got that permission:

Iran had an unlikely visitor: a plane, owned by the Bank of Utah, a community bank in Ogden that has 13 branches throughout the state. Bearing a small American flag on its tail, the aircraft was parked in a highly visible section of Mehrabad Airport in Tehran.

But from there, the story surrounding the plane, and why it was in Iran — where all but a few United States and European business activities are prohibited — grows more mysterious.

With talks with Iran about their nuclear programs going nowhere, I wouldn't be too shocked if the administration blessed an effort by a private individual to see if a deal can be worked out.

If so, I imagine it would have to involve American concessions to get a deal where Iran pretends to end their nuclear programs and we pretend to believe them.

But that is a long standing worry of mine.

With problems in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, the Obama administration would love to have something it could portray as a diplomatic success. They'd just have to maintain the fiction until the fall mid-term elections.

The mystery of who is on the plane and why they are there remains.

UPDATE: Iran has an answer:

Iran says that a plane which landed in Tehran airport flying the American flag was leased to Ghana's presidential office and carrying a business delegation from the West African nation. ...

State news agency IRNA on Friday night quoted Iranian foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham as saying that the plane was transporting the brother of Ghana's president and a mining delegation.

Interesting. But nothing seems suspicious--like Uranium--off hand. I wonder how sanctions affect such a mission? And I freely admit I simply may not understand the nefarious uses that Ghana's mineral exports could support. Although we and Ghana are friendly, as the article notes.

So chalk it up as a short-lived, interesting bit of RUMINT.

The Tax Meta Data

Instapundit notes TurboTax's lobbying effort to make sure tax filing is more difficult.

Yes, complicated is better--for them.

Which reminds me of a tax preparer company's commercials discussing their role in helping you comply with the complicated federal tax code.

Preparing your taxes, the commercial says, is like preparing the story of your life over the last year.

The story of your life in deductions and credits.

I don't want the federal government getting the story of my life when I pay my taxes. After all, they might disapprove of the story:

New emails show that both the IRS and Justice Department were involved in a probe of Tea Party and other conservative groups. This is no mere scandal — it's a major breach of the law.

Tip to Instapundit.

When I pay my taxes, I want the federal government to get the revenue needed to run government and carry out the core functions of government that Congress has authorized. They have no business getting the story of my life for the last year.

So We Got the Pivot Going For Us

Let's keep in mind that "reset" with Russia and "outreach" to the Islamic world were the Obama administration's reasons we could "pivot" to Asia and the Pacific.

So Russia invades Ukraine and the Middle East burns, with our major gain in the region--Iraq--under threat from Iran and unrest spilling over from Syria.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific:

During Obama's four-nation tour of Asia that begins on April 23, his toughest challenge will be to reassure skeptical leaders that the United States intends to be more than just a casual observer and instead is genuinely committed to countering an increasingly assertive China in the region. ...

U.S. officials say the Obama administration's long-promised "rebalancing" of America's economic, diplomatic and security policy toward Asia is on track, largely unaffected by the attention demanded by the crisis in Ukraine or persistent troubles in the Middle East.

The Asia "pivot" - as the White House initially dubbed it - represented a strategy to refocus on the region's dynamic economies as the United States disentangled itself from costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I love that. Worries about our resolve to win in Europe and the Middle East really should have no effect on Asian judgments about our commitment to winning in Asia. Because... Pivot. And stuff.

The administration considers the pivot on track not because moving assets and programs to the Pacific is increasing allied confidence in us and deterring potential foes. No, the pivot is on track because moving assets is on track--forgetting the difference between means and ends. Measuring the inputs is all that matters in judging the pivot.

And by that logic, events in Europe and the Middle East have no effect on judging our efforts in those regions we pivoted away from. We're drawing down. So who cares what happens? Success!

Perhaps at the end of 8 years of smart diplomacy, we'll receive total diplomatic consciousness.

So we got that going for us. Which is nice.

Pivot to Sevastopol

If the Ukraine agreement really doesn't ratify Russia's conquest as the price for preventing a Russian invasion of Ukraine, we need to pivot back to the Crimea issue, with a particular focus on Sevastopol.

Before Russia formally seized Crimea, I wondered if we could make this a crisis over Sevastopol to limit the damage and end the crisis.

That ship sailed. Russia took the entire region.

But maybe we can return to this idea as a basis for a lasting agreement. If Russia pulls out of Crimea but keeps Sevastopol as a base area after paying Ukraine handsomely for the base, we could lift sanctions.

Couple it with language that adds to Crimea's existing autonomous status within Ukraine to give Russia a visible but nominal victory "protecting ethnic Russians" that can justify withdrawal from Crimea outside of a Sevastopol base area.

Unmask the Invaders

As the crisis over Crimea and eastern Ukraine has gone on, there have been reports of masked Russians involved in the armed uprisings. We should catalog and publish all the incidents to unmask the operations as the Russian aggression that these incidents were.

Russian special forces weapons. Vehicle markings or plates. Accents and word use indicating Russian origins. Occasional boasting by masked men of their true identity. These were all hints at Russia's hand behind the image of resistance to Ukrainian rule.

Then add this in:

Many Western observers now take as fact that groups raiding buildings in places like Donetsk and Kharkiv are, in fact, Russian and not simply Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Consider the recent example of Kharkiv, where pro-Russian protestors first attempted to occupy the city’s opera theater before realizing that it wasn’t City Hall. “Presumably, the local citizens of Kharkiv, if they wanted to take over City Hall, they would have gotten the right building to begin with,” Steven Pifer, director of the Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative and a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, told Defense One.

Huh. Well that's embarrassing.

It strikes me that the Ukrainians, supported by our ability to disseminate information widely, should catalog all the instances where the masks slipped to reveal a Russian face behind the cover. Putin can keep denying that Russians are involved. But that denial could be repeated after every instance shown of actual Russians operating on Ukrainian soil is shown.

Russia complains that Ukraine is preventing male Russians from entering Ukraine, but that is just common sense, as I've noted in other circumstances.

Despite the glorious signed agreement in Geneva, the crisis will go on as Ukraine indicates:

The anti-terrorist operation is still going on and how long it continues depends on how long terrorists remain in our country," Marina Ostapenko, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's State Security Service (SBU), told reporters.

The Ukrainians will need a better operation, however. Sending in troops to confront semi-armed civilians was a mistake since the troops were equipped and trained to overcome resistance by shooting to kill. Outnumbered by aggressive mobs and unwilling to kill civilians (a good thing, really), the troops could only retreat or surrender.

I'd pay good money if we'd start calling this the Geneva Memorandum. (Oh. Why? Because of the Budapest Memorandum that should have prevented Russia's aggression.)

UPDATE: Add the saga of Andrei Petkov, solid Ukrainian citizen/German spy/selfless pediatric surgeon (What? No puppy rescuer role?), who has been featured in Russia's propaganda efforts:

The Petkov fabrications would make for a good laugh were the situation not so serious. Readers should not think that Petkov affair is an isolated incident. It is the norm rather than the exception. Viewers of Russian television are fed a daily diet of fabrications that show non-existent gun battles, savage beatings of innocent civilians, sinister forces proudly displaying Nazi regalia, and tearful residents of east and south Ukraine longing for annexation into Russia. Readers must understand that the Crimean Anschluss, accepted by many in the West, as a joyous, celebratory reunion was a cynical spectacle organized by Russian special forces, protest tourists, and local mafia thugs.

We can laugh. But don't. As amateurish as this incident is, we can't seem to counter it. Putin's efforts to justify an invasion of Ukraine are working inside Russia and is being picked up by too many Western outfits who describe unrest in eastern Ukraine as a budding civil war rather than the Russian Operation Chaos that it is.

UPDATE: Ah. I missed this:

In a blog post entitled “Who are the men behind the masks?” the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Gen. Philip Breedlove, offered the most detailed Western evidence to date that, despite Russia’s claims that the unrest there is an organic, local movement, it was instead the work of Russian troops posing as locals that orchestrated the apparently coordinated takeover of government buildings in eastern Ukraine that has plunged the fragile country into chaos.

“The pro-Russian ‘activists’ in eastern Ukraine exhibit tell-tale military training and equipment and work together in a way that is consistent with troops who are part of a long-standing unit, not spontaneously stood up from a local militia,” Breedlove wrote.

This is a start. But speaking of the obvious training is just one part of a story we have to tell about Russia's attempt to simulate a local uprising to justify a Russian movement into Ukraine to suppress the disorder.

UPDATE: More from RFE/RL on the 25th airborne brigade debacle, in which 6 vehicles switched hands to the pro-Russian groups. It seems that the soldier was offered money to switch sides.

As you may recall, I said that I wouldn't be surprised if money changed hands for the vehicles. The post doesn't directly linke the money claim to the vehicles, but my speculation isn't so off the wall. Ukraine rightly does not want to live under Russian rule--which is something to support--but it is far from being a bastion of rule of law. Let's not think we have anything other than a potential member of the Western community in Kiev. But at least there is hope without Russian dominance.

So let's put these bits of information together with Putin's claim of innocence leading off every one of them. Just pound the point of Putin's lying about Russia's role.

Resistance Risks Tension?

China is aggressively insisting that it owns islands that other countries own. Yet preparing to defend those small islands is what risks creating tensions?

China's expansive definitions of what is their territory isn't the problem that causes tension. The problem, the editors clearly believe, is that those on the receiving end of this aggression are preparing to resist Chinese claims:

Japan is sending 100 soldiers and radar to its westernmost outpost, a tropical island off Taiwan, in a deployment that risks angering China with ties between Asia's biggest economies already hurt by a dispute over nearby islands they both claim.

Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera will break ground on Saturday for a military lookout station on Yonaguni, which is home to 1,500 people and just 150 km (93 miles) from the disputed Japanese-held islands claimed by China.

Defending their own territory. How provocative.

I don't doubt that the Chinese will react with anger at such a move. But let's remember that China's reaction is not justified and it should not be a veto on perfectly normal Japanese decisions to defend their territory.

Japan's defense strategy is so far focused on dominating the air and sea following a Chinese land grab rather than holding the ground in the first place:

Japan's remote-island strategy, set out in the guidelines, is to "intercept and defeat any invasion by securing maritime supremacy and air superiority" with swift deployments supplementing troops positioned in advance.

"Should any remote islands be invaded, Japan will recapture them. In doing so, any ballistic missile or cruise missile attacks will be dealt with appropriately."

I think Japan can win that type of fight.

I also think Japan could supplement boots on the tiny ground by deploying robots to defend their tiny bits of land.

Resisting unreasonable Chinese demands is not provocative no matter how much the Chinese would like everyone else to just go along with China's claims.

A Simple Reason Those Ranchers Aren't Terrorists

Senator Reid (D-Bizzaroworld) says that the Nevada ranchers in a land dispute are domestic terrorists. Reid obviously doesn't believe that and I can conclusively demonstrate why.

I may not have a strong opinion on the Nevada rancher issue, but pushing back against an intrustive federal government is not a major sin in my book.

Although the idea that the land isn't federal is kind of silly. I admit that whether or not a state should have so much of its land under the control of the federal government is a good question. I leave it to others to tackle the specific land issues.

But really?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is calling armed backers of a Nevada rancher "domestic terrorists" for using guns in a grazing rights battle with the federal Bureau of Land Management.

Don't be silly. Those people can't be "terrorists." If they were, Reid and his ilk would be wringing their hands while asking endlessly, "why do they hate us?"

If Reid and his allies really thought that the ranchers were terrorists, they'd be called the "ranchers of peace" and Reid would be directing cowboy poetry funding their way.

Heck, President Obama would probably give a big speech in Cheyenne, Wyoming, billed as an "outreach to the plains people."

And of course, the Council of American Independent Ranchers (CAIR) would be invited to sit in on every discussion of federal land policy.

That's why I know Reid doesn't actually believe the ranchers are terrorists.

I guess if it had been called "Occupy Bunkerville," and the protesters just stopped bathing while living in tents, the ranchers would have gotten better press coverage.

Cashing In?

There is a deal to de-escalate the crisis over eastern Ukraine.

Apparently my initial impression that Russia was bluffing to cover their insufficient military power to pull off an opposed invasion was right.

But Russian activity sure did make me question my judgment.

Of course, a deal essentially ratifies Russia's conquest of Crimea.

UPDATE: There is no timetable and we claim the issue of Crimea is not closed:

No timeline was given for the implementation of the agreement, but Ukraine's foreign minister said it should begin "in the coming days".

He added that the West is "not giving up" on Crimea, "but we did not come (to Geneva) to talk about" the peninsula.

The agreement also called on all sides to reject extremism in all shapes.

I tend to think this outcome was Putin's intent (because his military wasn't good enough to win anything but an ugly initial victory in eastern Ukraine) rather than being a case of our brilliant diplomacy keeping Russia at bay.

Membership Has Privileges

I would not go to war over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine has not pushed for NATO membership and we should not be in the business of granting the benefits of membership to nations that decide not to join. But we can and should help Ukraine resist the Russians in this crisis.

Yes, there was Russian pressure, Western fear, and Ukrainian divisions to explain it, but Ukraine did not join NATO and has not been on a path for membership. Indeed, as I understand it, Ukraine did not qualify because Russia had a base in Ukraine, which is against NATO rules.

Obviously, that block against membership is gone going forward.

But whatever the past, Ukraine is not a member of NATO and even if we had the logistics network in eastern NATO to project significant forces into Ukraine, we should not. It would be a terrible message to send that you can get NATO protection without joining NATO and contributing to NATO actions.

Yet as a member of the international community that is being subjected to Russian aggression in violation of both the United Nations charter and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine deserves help in defending itself.

And this is entirely inadequate help:

The United States is working on a package of non-lethal aid for Ukraine that could include medical supplies and clothing, but would stop short of providing body armor and other military-style equipment, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Good grief.

Major weapons are pointless. Ukraine can't integrate new weapons into their military on short notice. But we could send body armor and look for spare parts and ammo among our new NATO allies who are shedding Soviet-era equipment.

And we could help with communications gear and night vision equipment. Our main role should be to help Ukraine use what it already has to maximum potential and fill in gaps with easy-to-adopt equipment. Heck, could the Ukrainians use trucks for logistics?

Socks and MREs are great, but the Ukrainians need to be able to fight and maneuver--and survive.

Do we really believe that we are signalling firm resolve with Russia by escalating from MREs to socks and maybe upping the ante to tents and eventually to dreaded flashlights if the Russians continue to provoke unrest?

Help Ukraine fight and survive. That's the signal to send.

Preserve the Army

Trying to figure out just what Ukraine's military could do to defeat the Russians keeps leading me to the conclusion that the Ukrainian military simply isn't reliable enough to risk in a major battle. This makes scenarios a paper exercise based on paper units that likely won't reflect reality. The key objective of the army isn't to hold the east--but to survive the loss of the east while inflicting casualties on the Russian invaders.

Leadership is always the important factor in whether units hold together. When the 25th airborne brigade lost 6 of its armored vehicles recently (defection, theft, purchase--I don't know), it showed one problem with sending troops to the east.

That unit will be disbanded:

Acting President Oleksander Turchinov said on Thursday the entire paratroop brigade would now be disbanded and those who surrendered would be punished.

So scratch one paper unit. Perhaps the troops and officers can be filtered to reconstitute a smaller but more reliable unit. I'd focus on punishing officers and not troops.

Putting units up against civilian mobs is also a mistake, since the troops likely only have the option of shooting to defend themselves and that would make for very bad relations with the locals. And add to Russia's list of sins that they will use to invade.

Add in the fact that any Ukrainian troops pushed into the far east near the Russian border could be cut off by Russian pincers moving into Kharkov and Donetsk and then closing the gap by securing the north-south road between them where pro-Russian forces (organized and paid for by Spetsnaz) are already active.

So what can Ukraine do with their military?

One, the Ukrainians have to inflict casualties on the Russians and extend the campaign. If Ukraine can't hold their eastern (and possibly southern) regions, they have to deny the Russians "style points" by giving the Russians a quick and low-cost victory. Ukraine needs to pull a Finland and inflict enough losses on Russia to make them think twice about fighting Ukraine again in the near future.

This means that the Ukrainian military can't march off to battle to be destroyed in the first clashes in the east. The army has to survive.

So what would I do?

The Ukrainians have police, army, intelligence, and National Guard forces on the ground plus air force and a negligible navy that was unimportant before the loss of ships in Crimea.

In the east, before the Russians invade, the Ukrainians need to send police and special forces to the east for the main effort to use less-than-lethal force against the Spetsnaz rent-a-mobs to avoid bad optics. And to tangle with the Russian Spetsnaz and to organize pro-Ukrainian locals to resist the Russian occupation should it come.

Troops in contact with the mobs is a bad idea and risks either defections or collapse if units don't shoot and risk provoking a Russian invasion if they do shoot.

Only token army combat units plus some engineer units should be in the far east region between Kharkov and Donetsk, along invasion routes but away from civilians. Units should be mobile and asked only to destroy some invading armor, lay mines, fell trees, blow bridges and tunnels, and otherwise slow the Russian invaders a bit. They should know that they are expected to retreat and survive with rally points all the way back to the Dnieper River established.

Indeed, I'd have minimal mobile forces in the entire eastern region east of the Dnieper River. Let the initial Russian blow hit empty air. As the Russians push west, hit them with helicopter and air strikes and try to ambush them with small anti-tank units that keep falling back rather than trying to (vainly) halt the Russians.

Once the Russians move, I'd push National Guard troops into cities with orders to hold in place as road blocks. They can be stiffened with small units of the army with anti-tank and other heavy weapons to support these enthusiastic if poorly trained men. Hold in the cities to slow down the Russians and inflict casualties. And then scatter when resistance fails to see if they can either form partisan bands or escape west. Remember, the Russians will have a low troop-to-terrain ratio if they push west. Escape should be possible.

Main Ukrainian combat units should be held at the Dneiper River or deeper from the border in the south to prevent an easy link up between Russia and Crimea overland.

As Russians move west, Ukraine should use their attack helicopters to strike the spearheads of the Russian columns while transport helicopters move in anti-tank equipped infantry into blocking positions for ambushes and then withdrawal to do it again somewhere else.

Aircraft should be used to hit the spearheads, too. The Ukrainian air force can't win control of the air. And I doubt that they can deconflict air defense missiles with air operations. So rely on ground-based air defense missiles to inflict losses on the Russian air force while using aircraft to bomb, missile, and strafe the invaders. Burn the air force out to affect the ground war. If the planes wear out, so what? You don't get points for losing a war with planes surviving. Besides, there are lots of second-hand F-16s out there to re-equip after the war (and some A-10s, it appears).

Ukrainian artillery units could be organized into small units of a firing battery and a company of tanks or mechanized infantry for local security and an engineer detachment to move within range of Russian units, fire a volley--and then displace west to try it again. The engineers would plant mines or fell trees across roads or otherwise block chokepoints with obstacles to slow pursuit.

Hopefully, by the time the Russians are reaching the end of their first lunge into Ukraine, they've used up supplies, suffered casualties, and failed to decisively engage Ukraine's army even though the Russians will have taken territory.

If the Ukrainians can manage it, they should use their mobile units to counter-attack the Russian spearheads at this point. I don't anticipate a general offensive to regain ground. Just local battles to inflict losses on the Russians while keeping their own units intact.

Reservists who are mobilized and the new National Guard forces should be kept in cities to hold them and be a sponge to soak up Russian mechanized forces that try to enter the cities.

At the neck of the Crimean peninsula, I'd hold a thicker line. I hope Ukrainian engineers have been busy bulding bunkers and obstacles since the Russians took Crimea. And use artillery units to bombard the Russians holding their end of the neck. Helicopter gunships in smaller numbers could also raid the Russian line trying to pick off vehicles and heavy weapons.

I'd burn my long-range surfact-to-surface missiles in a bombardment of Russia's Sevastopol naval base.

These operations would keep Ukraine's 8th and 6th corps (division-sized units) busy. The western-most 13th corps should defend against a thrust from Belarus and mount the only real Ukrainian offensive by moving into Transdniestria as quickly as possible against the small Russian garrison there.

I'd want this done fast in order to free up the corps' aviation regiment and artillery brigade for use in the east or around the Crimea neck.

I'll add that this would require NATO intelligence support with satellite, AWACS, and JSTARS information shared quickly with the Ukrainians.

As for Ukraine's surviving navy, I'd be grateful if they can manage to lay a few mines and launch brief bombardments of Sevastopol before getting out of harm's way.

The end result if enough goes well, is that Russia has occupied a chunk of Ukrainian territory in the east and south--I don't know how much Putin wants or how much his military tells him they can capture.

But Sevastopol naval base is a shambles. A large burning Russian ship settled on the bottom of the harbor is a bonus.

Russia's army has suffered embarrassing losses.

Ukrainians are still resisting as partisans in the east (and south).

Transdniestra in the west is in Ukrainian hands.

And the Ukrainian army is still largely intact.

At that point, the Ukrainians can start infiltrating small irregular units, special forces, and intelligence agents into Russian-occupied Ukraine to organize and wage guerrilla war against the Russians while the Ukrainian army continues to use artillery to harrass Russian forward units occupying Ukrainian territory.

Just refuse to be beaten despite the loss of territory and compel Russia to fight a long war with too few troops to secure the area conquered.

Offer to talk, of course. But don't declare a ceasefire otherwise the talks are just a means to ratify Russia's victory with only the details to be determined. The goal should be the evacuation of the Russians. That's the only reason to talk.

Could this work? Don't know. But I know that Ukraine has to keep their army intact. And they have to inflict casualties on the Russians and drag out the fight to deny Russia a quick win that bolsters Putin's boast of an awesome Red Army reborn.

And the Ukrainians have to fight just to establish that they are a real country with a right to exist and not just a lost province of Russia waiting to be pulled into the empire when the time is right.

The Hotel California

When pro-Russian ethnic Russians heard Putin's mission bell, they thought to themselves, "this could be Heaven." But the shimmering light ahead was not what they thought it would be:

Life on the Black Sea peninsula, for most if not all its residents, has been turned upside down, at least in the short term. Shopkeepers post prices in both Russian rubles and Ukrainian hryvnia, and have to resort to hand calculators to make change. Lawyers and judges complain that the legal system is all but paralyzed. And Crimea’s main economic engine, tourism, is in danger, as the turmoil spooks tour operators and new visa requirements make vacations more of a headache.

And those who rejected annexation to Russia may not have a choice:

For those who want to keep their Ukrainian citizenship, however, authorities have set up a byzantine process and a strict deadline of Apr. 18 to do so. Those who don’t meet the deadline automatically become Russian citizens.

Russian citizenship is so great you don't even have the option of rejecting it!

I know it is early. But the notion that Crimeans would be eager to get inside Putin's increasingly dictatorial system struck me as insane:

And let's wrap our heads around the idiocy of Crimeans begging to go into Putin's Russia. Did nobody point out that when the opportunity presented itself between 1989 and 1992 that everybody who could manage it escaped from the then-Soviet Union's loving grip?

Putin has let Crimeans know that while they can check out anytime they like, they can never leave.

And so the Crimeans said, "We are all just prisoners here, of our own device" Ukrainians in the east should take note.

The Press Release Was Enough

Apparently, Iran got more mileage out of saying that their "fleet" would sail the Atlantic than actually sailing the Atlantic.

Never mind:

Iran's semi-official Fars news agency is reporting that the country has temporarily called off a plan to dispatch warships to the Atlantic Ocean.

The risk of having the Great Satan rescue their broken down ships was probably a factor.

Use 'Em or Lose 'Em

Rebels in the north have reportedly received a small amount of TOW anti-tank missiles:

"Moderate, well-organised fighters from the Hazm movement have for the first time received more than 20 TOW anti-tank missiles from a Western source," the source said on condition of anonymity, and without specifying who had supplied the rockets. ...

"More have been promised should it be proven that the missiles are being used in an effective way," the source said.

This model, improved over the decades, is an old design. And I'm sure that there are older models that will work fine against Assad's armored vehicles. So I don't worry about these falling into the wrong hands.

It's a small start, to be sure. But in time, this weapon will induce more caution by Assad's armored vehicle crews.

I wonder what the proof is? Videos? I know in the campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan, we supplied new Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to rebels only when we received a spent launcher in return.

UPDATE: The missiles seen in action are older models:

Wednesday NPR reported that the CIA plans to send more arms and training to Syrian rebels and that 50 TOW missile systems had been sent to Harakat Hazam as a part of a “test” or pilot program. ...

[The] current TOW fielded by the US military no longer has a wire command linked warhead, instead using an infared aiming system. Syrian rebels, however, appear to operating an older version of the system as screen grabs indicate that the warhead is still wire guided.

If the pilot program works, more will be sent.

Hmm

I take it Assad doesn't want to just sit and take Jordan's support for Syrian rebels:

Jordan's army says the country's air force has attacked cars that were at the kingdom's border with neighboring Syria.

An army statement says the attack happened Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. (0730 GMT). The statement says the camouflaged vehicles were driving in a rugged area near the border and ignored demands to stop from security forces.

The statement says Jordanian warplanes fired warning shots at the vehicles. The statement says the vehicles didn't stop and were then destroyed in airstrikes. The statement did not say how many vehicles were destroyed, nor did it offer casualty figures.

Were they entering or leaving Jordan? Rather dramatic to launch air strikes on civilian vehicles--even if painted in camo colors.

UPDATE: Entering Jordan:

Jordanian warplanes hit and destroyed several vehicles trying to cross the border from Syria, a government spokesman said on Wednesday, underlining Amman's concern about incursions from areas controlled by Syrian rebels.

They were "technicals," as the Somalia-inspired jargon would describe them--civilian vehicles with machine guns mounted on them. Apparently rebels--I assume of the jihadi bent since otherwise they'd have cooperated with Jordanian efforts to stop them.

I find it odd that the story says Jordan has minimal cooperation with rebels in southern Jordan, given that the southern rebels seem to be our main focus of late. Perhaps plausible deniability is strong.

UPDATE: Ah. Jordan is extremely sensitive about any rebels returning to Jordan after surviving in Syria:

Three years into Syria's civil war a growing number of Jordanian jihadists are coming home, some disillusioned by infighting within rebel ranks, others seeking a break from a draining and largely inconclusive conflict.

Up to a few months ago, Jordanian authorities were more discriminating with returning fighters, sometimes freeing "first-time offenders" who were deemed misguided after expressing regret for their actions.

Now, every detained returnee is whisked straight to court, although none have been accused of plotting attacks in Jordan.

The Jordanians don't mind if people go to Syria to fight. But if they don't die there, they should go elsewhere if they tire of the fight. Hence blowing up private vehicles carrying jihadis coming into Jordan.

Drang Nach Osten

Syria and Hezbollah are under a lot of pressure because of the war and because Iran has had to cut back financial support. But that doesn't stop the claims of imminent victory from coming out of Syria and Hezbollah's front office.

An article about how great the Syria intervention has been for Hezbollah's combat effectiveness just seemed like a propaganda ploy to me:

Lebanon's Hezbollah movement is gaining new combat experience in Syria, shedding its guerrilla tactics to fight alongside an army, and shifting its narrative to explain the battle against "Sunni extremists". ...

Hezbollah is believed to have about 5,000 fighters in Syria at any given time, with thousands more preparing to deploy.

Their officials say so many men signed up last year that they are no longer actively recruiting for the Syria front. ...

Syria's conflict, wrote former US defence intelligence official Jeffrey White this January, is giving Hezbollah "valuable knowledge of irregular warfare and actual combat experience".

Interestingly enough, Hezbollah says the Syrian troops are pretty poorly trained.

But while Hezbollah is surely getting combat experience, the idea that Hezbollah has no problems recruiting people to go to the eastern front Syria is nonsense:

What makes this worse is that Hezbollah has been spending a lot more cash on the Syrian war than it expected to. The problem is that Hezbollah had to use cash to maintain morale among the Hezbollah men who “volunteered” to fight in Syria. Hezbollah does not have many full time fighters and most of those sent to Syria are “reservists” who have received military training but are basically full time civilians. Over 2,000 of those “volunteers” have been killed or wounded so far. To keep the families of these casualties happy Hezbollah has paid large sums in death benefits as well as disability payments for the wounded in addition to all their medical expenses. While Hezbollah only sends its fighters to Syria for a few months at a time, the high casualty rate and having to fight fellow Arabs is demoralizing for many of them. There is growing resistance when these men are asked to go back to Syria for another combat tour. Over the last year Hezbollah has found itself running out of money and popular support among Lebanese Shia.

The posts note the drop in Iranian financial support.

So boasts that Hezbollah is confident that Assad will win is hope masquerading as confidence:

Echoing recent bullish talk coming out of Damascus, Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy leader of the Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia which is supporting Assad in combat, told Reuters that the president retained popular support among many of Syria's diverse religious communities and would shortly be re-elected.

"There is a practical Syrian reality that the West should deal with - not with its wishes and dreams, which proved to be false," Qassem said during a meeting with Reuters journalists at a Hezbollah office in the group's southern Beirut stronghold.

Ah, wishes and dreams. The man is right that Western policy has been confused. But increasingly it seems like the West is starting to realize that Assad is no partner and that his defeat will require efforts by the West rather than just reaping the benefits of a cheap win after stating that "Assad must go."

Amusingly enough, Putin's people are the source of reports about Assad's confidence:

President Bashar al-Assad has forecast that much of the fighting in the Syrian civil war will be over by the end of the year, a former Russian prime minister was quoted on Monday as saying.

"This is what he told me: 'This year the active phase of military action in Syria will be ended. After that we will have to shift to what we have been doing all the time - fighting terrorists'," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Sergei Stepashin as saying.

Stepashin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and former head of Russia's FSB security service, portrayed Assad as secure, in control and in "excellent athletic shape" after a meeting in Damascus last week.

This part is kind of funny. Hezbollah didn't get the full talking points, it seems:

Stepashin, who served as prime minister in 1999 under President Boris Yeltsin and now heads a charitable organisation called the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, added that "the fighting spirit of the Syrian army is extremely high".

Yeah, the fighting spirit is fine. That's why Iran needs to pay for Hezbollah and a largely Iraqi Shia foreign legion to be the spearheads of any Syrian government offensives.

After the autumn 2013 Lavrov-Kerry deal about chemical weapons ensuring Assad's survival, Assad promised victory in six months. With that promised relief date approaching, Assad needs to extend that promise to the end of the year.

After that it will just be mopping up, Assad says.

But Assad's forces are taking a beating in casualties and in financial losses. With so few Syrians part of his base of support, these losses mean that they need to see a light at the end of the tunnel. But there isn't. Assad's best case scenario is a Pyrrhic Victory.

Hopefully, we make sure that the light is actually the headlight of a coherent policy that seeks to defeat Assad.

UPDATE: Some push back on the Assad ascendant theme:

[The] Syrian army is overstretched and drained by relentless combat, high casualty rates, and desertions. It was only able to retake tracts of western Syria because of help from Hezbollah and Iraqi paramilitary forces, as well as Russian and Iranian logistical support, analysts say.

If the Assad regime decides to make a push for Daraa province in the south, part of which is held by the rebels, or Idlib and Aleppo provinces in the north, dominated by rebel and foreign extremists, it could leave insufficient troops to garrison Qalamoun and the coast and prevent rebel forces from slipping back into the area.

“It may well be that the war Iran is interested in pursuing – the one that secures for itself and its Syrian vassal that part of Syria important to Iran – is the war Assad thinks may be over by the year's end,” says Mr. Hof. “I'm not sure that Assad would want to expend the time or effort to reconquer those parts of Syria whose inhabitants he largely holds in contempt.”

These are themes I've been stressing. Syria's ground forces are hurting, reliant on outside forces for offensive punch, and may have problems holding what the spearheads capture, and that Assad is really only winning--and that control seems tenuous--in a Core Syria stretching from Damascus to the coast.

It's good to see some analysis that pushes back against the Russian propaganda effort.

Fraternal Assistance is the Next Logical Step

As I mentioned earlier, before the Crimea invasion, speculating about Ukrainian military options is difficult because the loyalty of security forces is uncertain.

RFE/RL shows pro-Russian elements with Ukrainian BMD infantry fighting vehicles. These are made for airborne troops. So it seems as if the Spetsnaz got Ukraine's 25th paratrooper brigade to give up some.

It could be from sympathies. I'll bet that the vehicles were purchased from Ukrainian troops. Corruption is high in Ukraine, just as it is in Russia.

Russia calls this a civil war. But it is Russian aggression.

UPDATE: Austin Bay has it just about right:

For the past month, the Russian government, with Vladimir Putin its spotlight propagandist, has repeatedly declared that brutal anti-Russian ethnic violence as a prelude to ethnic-based civil war is imminent in Eastern Ukraine.

That's a lie. What Eastern Ukraine really faces is a Russian military invasion -- and more on that in a moment.

Kremlin claims of anti-Russian ethnic violence in Eastern Ukraine reprise the false accusations Putin made in February to provide media camouflage for the Russian seizure of the Crimean peninsula.

I don't think Slovensk is a central point as an initial objective for follow-up thrusts either north to Kharkov, south to Donetsk, or west to the Dnepropetrovsk. I think that the road net would mean a direct attack on Kharkov from the north and a march on Donetsk from the southeast, with fake uprisings between the cities assisting Russian forces in linking a new western border along the north-south road between the bigger cities.

But the key is that this R2P mission has nothing to do with responsibility to protect ethnic Russians. This is just responsibility to Putin for creating a crisis.

If Ukraine will fight a prolonged war even after Russia occupies their east, Russia could be made to pay a price.

I hope Ukrainian special forces are deploying as stay-behind forces to organize resistance they way our special forces did during the Cold War for NATO defense.

Get Ukraine's artillery, air, and long-range missiles to target military assets in occupied Crimea, use Ukraine's conventional military to take Transdniestria, and deploy to mount raids and support the infiltration of irregular National Guard into occupied Ukraine.

UPDATE: More on Ukraine's difficulties resisting the Russians:

“We even have an agreement on the books that forbids our [military intelligence] agencies from working against each other,” says Igor Smeshko, who served as head of Ukraine’s State Security Service from 2003 to 2005. “We could never have imagined that our Russian brothers would ever fight a war against us,” he says. “We could never have thought that just when we’d been bloodied from fighting our own tyranny here at home, that we would get a knife in the back from the Russians.”

Good grief. Is John Kerry their foreign minister, too?

Ukraine must resist the Russian invasion. Finland and Crimea should be contrasting lessons. Fail to fight, as Ukraine failed in Crimea, and Russia keeps pushing for more. Fight and lose, as Finland did in the 1939-1940 Winter War, and you can live even if you lose territory.

UPDATE: Ukrainian mechanized infantry of unknown size took up positions at Izyum, which lies north of the recent cities where pro-Russian building takeovers have happened, along the Kharkov-to-Donetsk road. Per RFE/RL live blog today.

UPDATE: Yes, the vehicles are from the 25th brigade:

The Associated Press reports that one of the men on the APCs, "who identified himself only as Andrei, said the unit was part of Ukraine's 25th Brigade of Airborne Forces and that they have switched to the side of the pro-Russian forces."

Switched sides? Maybe bribed. But maybe switched sides. Just because there are relatively few in the east who want to join Russia doesn't mean there are none.

But I tend to think Russia is simply working hard to simulate a civil war to justify invasion.

Just ... Wow ...

Why I pray for our president's health and safety every day.

I have to be missing some context there. People seemed to appreciate the vice president's words, and it makes no sense that they would smile when told that the bombing was worth it to hear the survivors speak a year later. Were they not paying attention? Was there something else I'm just not seeing?

Or does nobody expect much from him?

UPDATE: Thanks to Stones Cry Out for the link. I honestly hope to post an update putting the statement into a context that just doesn't make it sound like our vice president simply doesn't want a bloody Boston Matathon bombing crisis to go to waste.

We Owe Russia Some Hurt

For all those bizarrely trying to blame Putin's aggression against Ukraine on the West's failure to befriend him, let's remember that the Russians helped Saddam's odious regime resist our invasion.

We owe the Russians some payback (via my old post):

Two Iraqi documents from March 2003 -- on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion -- and addressed to the secretary of Saddam Hussein, describe details of a U.S. plan for war. According to the documents, the plan was disclosed to the Iraqis by the Russian ambassador.

We need to help Ukraine resist the Russians, and if the Russians invade Ukraine, we should increase aid so that Ukrainians can wage guerrilla warfare within the conquered zone and strengthen Ukrainian conventional forces to fight back.

I hope we are sharing intelligence with the Ukrainians to help them deploy their limited forces more effectively.

And I will laugh when China seizes territory in the Far East from Russia at some point.

The Thucydides Escape Valve

I don't assume that America and China will come to blows if China passes us by in power (or comes close to passing us by). Political science theories say this is so, but today's situation is different than the history that has led to these theories.

This could be worrisome on the face of it:

In recent years, especially since the beginning of this decade, the term “Thucydides trap” (between China as a rising power and U.S. as an established one) has gained increasing currency among policymakers, advisers, and China experts in Western research institutes and think tanks. The fear is that as its power increases, China will eventually choose to challenge or even overturn the existing international order that has contributed so much to its rapid rise, making a war between China and the U.S. likely.

The Thucydides Trap refers to the Greek writer Thucydides who described the long struggle between Athens and Sparta, writing that Sparta and Athens had to clash as Athens reacted to the prospect of losing their dominance (and let's gloss over whether a pro-Athenian attitude was just an attempt to clear Athens of any wrongdoing).

The author above writes that 3 factors make the trap less likely to lead to war.

One, the international system rejects war more than it did in the past when power transitions seemed to spark war. Well, perhaps it was written before Crimea.

Two, China benefits from the current system so why would they want to overturn it? I don't understand why this means China wouldn't want to fight for dominance within the system. Or why China might not believe they'd do better with their own.

Three, China says they won't go to war and want to rise peacefully. Sure. And China says that they expect to just be given stuff because of their rising power. What will China do when they don't get "stuff?" It seems that the peaceful rise factor ignores the fact that China simply expects to gain the rewards of winning wars by the mere fact of their peaceful rise.

I am not comforted by these three explanations, but I do think there is a reason that a power shift is not a guarantee of war as Thucydides saw it. We speak of the Tyranny of Distance in regard to projecting our power across the vast Pacific. The reverse side of that coin is the Pressure Valve of Distance.

I recently had a post on power shifts between China and America:

One advantage we have in avoiding general war is that we lack a land frontier to have really tense face offs, the way we had with the Soviet Union at the Fulda Gap in West Germany during the Cold War. The vast Pacific gives us a bit of buffer to think clearly.

We are not in the position of Europe during its long history of warfare, whose powers had to figure shifting power when strong powers crowded each other on a small continent.

Unless China gains the ability to invade and occupy Japan, any Chinese gain such as South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, or Vietnam, will not give China a decisive advantage, but will give us notice that we are at war with China and allows us to wage a long war to disrupt China's trade and to seek an opportunity to counterattack around their periphery. The ability of China to really inflict a killing blow if they choose war doesn't seem terribly high to me, the way the USSR had the ability to inflict a major blow against NATO if the Red Army could advance to the Rhine River.

The reverse is true, too. We are not going to invade the Han heartland and try to occupy it.

So a power shift between America and China doesn't seem nearly as dangerous as it was in the past, which we define as Europe-based.

Sheer distance is a lubricant that reduces friction and decisions made in fear of dramatic loss. The power shift between America and Britain with the Atlantic between us did not result in a hammer and tongs, all-out war between us to decide who runs things.

And even a power shift will leave America with more free power to deploy in contrast to China which has lots of local power centers that China has to cope with.

Finally, I'm not so sure China will necessarily pass us by or, if they do, be able to hold their edge.

Let's hope the Thucydides Trap doesn't apply to the America-China power pairing. Because we could be at risk as China approaches our power to pass us by and then again as we regain our lost position to regain the top spot.

This isn't to say that we couldn't get involved in limited wars in support of allies. But distance will give both sides a bit of perspective before making this a total war to see who calls the shots.

We're From the Government and We're Here to Help

Really, the federal government is going after the first born of deceased persons who the federal government says owed them monety?

Can debtors' prisons be far behind?

Social Security claims it overpaid someone in the Grice family — it’s not sure who — in 1977. After 37 years of silence, four years after Sadie Grice died, the government is coming after her daughter. ...

The government doesn’t look into exactly who got the overpayment; the policy is to seek compensation from the oldest sibling and work down through the family until the debt is paid.

How is this legal? In what world are minor children responsible for what their parents did?

And worse, for what their parents received from the government without any proof that even the parents knew there was a problem?

Have we really gotten to the point where we have to smear lamb's blood on our door frames to make sure Treasury passes us over?

One more reason that the federal government is just too big.

Tip to Instapundit.

Now They're Just Effing With Us

Figuratively the Queen of Battle

Strategypage has a good post on the quest to figure out just how the heck you put women in infantry units.

Yes, women have performed well in combat situations. But no, that is not the same as being in the infantry.

And yes, I was just a REMF, if you have something to say about that.

Stuff Happens

Am I just too cynical in thinking that Russia might have had a hand in an attack on our Pakistan line of supply to Afghanistan?

Let's see how this goes:

Pakistani officials say at least one driver has been killed in attacks on trucks carrying supplies to NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.

Could be just local nutballs. But the Russians wouldn't mind us seeing the alternative lines of supply through Russia to our forces in Afghanistan as less reliable.

UPDATE: Thanks to Stones Cry Out for the link.

There are enough Taliban nutballs in Pakistan to make this a sheer coincidence, I freely admit.

I'm just saying that it is in Russia's interest to remind us why we need the Russian supply links to Afghanistan in order to push us back from helping Ukraine enough to defy Russia.

Stuff does just happen. But it can be convenient when it does.

Assad Shows What Torture Really Is

After the overwrought allegations here that we tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib, Iraq, and a handful of al Qaeda, Syria's Assad reminds us of what actual torture is.

This is torture:

The UN's human rights chief on Monday condemned the "routine" use of torture in Syrian detention facilities, as a new report said victims were raped, beaten and had their teeth and toenails pulled out.

Navi Pillay said torture was routinely used in government detention facilities as well as by some armed groups in Syria, where more than 150,000 people have been killed in a bloody civil war.

"In armed conflict, torture constitutes a war crime," said the UN rights commissioner.

"When it is used in a systematic or widespread manner, which is almost certainly the case in Syria, it also amounts to a crime against humanity."

The UN report, based on accounts by 38 survivors, detailed the systematic torture of men, women and children in the war-ravaged country.

Jihadis fighting Assad also torture, according to the report.

Let me contrast this torture with what we were alleged to have done in Abu Ghraib. While revolting, the naked pyramid photos of detainees were far closer to fraternity hazing than any type of physical abuse, let alone torture. The incidents were a breakdown of military discipline and wrong. But they were not torture despite the routine description of what happened as torture.

As for waterboarding, we rarely did it and it is simply not in the same league as beatings that can cripple or kill, raping, and pulling teeth and toenails out.

Waterboarding is not torture, in my opinion. It is terrifying but will not cripple or disfigure a person.

And at risk of reopening an old, poorly conducted debate, torture is not worthless. If you know from other information that a subject has information, torture will most assuredly get the subject to talk.

What people mean when they say that torture doesn't work is that routine torture of people swept up by security forces in the hopes of getting good information doesn't work. Yes, in that circumstance, torture does not work because those who know will talk, but so too will the far more numerous people who know nothing. They will talk nonsense to get the torture to talk, which will muddy the waters and make even the accurate talk less valuable.

Look, we are free to ban any type of pressure that we aren't comfortable with, and in consideration of what we hope to get. I wouldn't torture enemies for information.

We are even free to ban waterboarding as a method. I'm not in fact terribly comfortable with that method. Yet I can't blame our people in the aftermath of 9/11 for using such a method on a small number of people believed to have information in order to stop another 9/11.

But banning a particular method isn't to say that the banned method is torture. And it always bothered me that opponents of the method argued against it on the grounds that it is torture.

Seeing actual torture in action should be clarifying, shouldn't it? But a lot of what is happening in Syria contrasted to Iraq should be clarifying.

UPDATE: Thanks to Stones Cry Out for the link. I scored a hat trick with Mark's daily links. That's a first, as far as I can tell.

An Inconvenient Pravda

A Russian official made the mistake of getting ahead of Putin:

The parliament speaker in Russia's Khakassia Republic has apologized for a statement he made about Moscow's right to "own" territories in Kazakhstan.

Vladimir Shtygashev said on April 12 that his words had been misinterpreted and he offered "sincere apologies" to everyone offended by his statement.

Yeah. "Misinterpreted." I hate it when that happens.

When Putin asserts the right to protect ethnic Russians wherever they are, the right to own territories is not something to be interpreted as it is to be prioritized. Kazakhstan is simply lower down the list, it is clear.

Some in Khazakhstan seem to have a similar "misinterpretation" of Moscow's threat:

[Opinion] in Kazakhstan on the Crimea crisis appears to be divided along ethnic lines: Northern Kazakhstan, which is dominated by an ethnic Russian population tends to be supportive of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy in Ukraine, whereas the rest of the republic harbors decidedly mixed feelings on the subject.

There's your problem right there: northerners (ethnic Russians) would welcome their new insect Moscow overlords; while southerners rather appreciate getting out of Moscow's grip once and do not relish another trip into the Russian empire.

We'll see if Kazakhstan and its neighbors play the China card in response.

That Khakassia legislator made the classic government faux pas--he told the truth.

Donetsk Pocket

One of the problems Ukraine has in defending the east is that Russia's mechanized and airmobile forces could envelope them from north and south and simply take them out of the fight by isolating them within a Putin Triangle.

This geography is a problem for Ukraine's army if they deploy to the far east (in orange) to defend this region from invasion:

Put Ukrainian conventional forces forward at the border and the Russians (in red) can drive into Ukraine around the defenders. The Ukrainians simply don't have the numbers to defend the region.

This was terrain for sweeping mobile operations in World War II. It still is, I imagine.

I'll have to update my Ukraine military option post, given the ability of Russia to march into this eastern region.

UPDATE: News today is that a small Ukrainian mechanized force has moved near Slovyansk:

The 20 tanks and armoured personnel carriers were the most forceful response yet by the Western-backed government in Kiev to the pro-Kremlin militants' occupation of state buildings in nearly 10 cities across Ukraine's rust belt.

Ukrainian forces set up a cement road barrier and began checking traffic leading to Slavyansk while fighters and attack helicopters circled overhead.

That's likely elements of a mechanized infantry battalion--if not an entire weak battalion. I'm not sure what the Ukrainian maintenance and manning levels are.

And at Kramatorsk, Ukrainians took control of an airport:

Soldiers disembarked from two helicopters at an airfield at Kramatorsk, where reporters earlier heard gunfire that seemed to prevent an air force plane from landing. The troops withdrew into barracks after local civilians manning a barricade gave them a hostile reception when they tried to leave the compound.

n Kiev, acting president Oleksander Turchinov declared a much-needed victory over pro-Russian rebels by saying the air base had been "liberated". But there was no sign of militants.

Both are small operations between Kharkov and Donetsk. And not too close to the Russian border.

The Ukrainians are apparently beginning a low key and fairly low level effort to counter the Spetsnaz-led building captures throughout the region.

UPDATE: Remember that talking about a civil war in eastern Ukraine over-states the support by local residents for Russian occupation of the region. Talk of a civil war assumes Putin's version of events is true. That version is not true.

Recent polling shows few Ukrainians in the east want to be part of Russia. And much of the violence is organized by Russian special forces and paid locals or Russians imported to Ukraine to simulate Ukrainians.

I wouldn't go to war over Ukraine--they have not wanted to be part of NATO and NATO help should not be easy for outside nations to gain--membership should be the goal of others and not a free ride.

But we should help Ukraine resist the Russians, with arms, supplies, intelligence, and operational advice--even if Russia occupies even more of Ukraine.

UPDATE: This article says the Slovyansk operation is by 500 troops backed by 20 armored vehicles. That sounds like a smallish battalion. So there should be trucks moving some of the infantry, I imagine.

How Wars Start

Our destroyer in the Black Sea was harrassed by a Russian aircraft:

A Russian fighter jet made multiple, close-range passes near an American warship in the Black Sea for more than 90 minutes Saturday amid escalating tensions in the region, a U.S. military official said Monday.

In the first public account of the incident, the official said the Russian Fencer flew within 1,000 yards of the USS Donald Cook, a Navy destroyer, at about 500 feet above sea level. Ship commanders considered the actions provocative and inconsistent with international agreements, prompting the ship to issue several radio queries and warnings.

On the bright side, we could see the plane was unarmed. But under different circumstances, what if we weren't sure and opened fire in the belief that the plane was preparing to attack?

With a Russian frigate shadowing our ship, too (but not dangerously close), maybe we'd hit their ship as well, fearing they were acting together.

Or what if we took defensive actions against the plane that the frigate mistook for threatening action?

Watching us in international waters is fine. But risking a shooting match is just stupid.

State Department Comments on Ukraine

The State Department has responded to false Russian claims about the Russian-stoked crisis in Ukraine.

Mostly I'm interested in a clarification on Russian troop strength:

An estimated 35,000-40,000 Russian troops remain massed along the border, in addition to approximately 25,000 troops currently in Crimea.

Add another 40,000 Russians deeper inside Russia. And of the troops in Crimea, I think you have to subtract about 10,000 as Sevastopol garrison forces.

These aren't a whole lot of troops for a war with Ukraine. It all depends on whether the Russians expect--and get--a road march into Ukraine to some particular depth or whether the Russians get a war.

While we can offer advice on how to maintain, bring out of storage, and use what they have, it is too late in the day to bolster Ukraine's major combat operations capabilities with new weapons. If Ukraine survives this crisis, we can look at that later. For now, we'd be better off sending small arms and garage door openers (to trigger IEDs used against Russian troops.

It's About Trust

I appreciate that Air Force fire support specialists are upset at the retirement of the only dedicated ground support aircraft that the Air Force has. Leadership isn't as interested in that mission, unfortunately.

As a ground guy, the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns eliminated the basic mistrust I long had of the Air Force's ability and interest in supporting ground troops. Troops learned to count on and trust the Air Force to put ordinance on target when it was needed.

Sadly, Air Force leadership is showing exactly what it thinks of the ground support mission by deciding to get rid of the A-10:

Oh sure, the Air Force promises that multi-mission aircraft will continue to support the "mission" of ground support even when the asset designed for that mission is gone.

Yeah, I'm sure when the Air Force is prioritizing missions for their scarce multi-mission aircraft that ground support will be high on the list.

But by killing the only aircraft specifically designed just for ground support, the Air Force is very clearly telling us what their priorities are. The Air Force is essentially telling the Army (while denying this to Congress) to have a nice life--but goodbye. To think they were once the Army Air Force.

Yes. Jointness talks. But money walks. And there is no money for the A-10.

But the ground coordinators who embedded with the grunts who did the work of supporting ground forces aren't happy with this decision:

The Defense Department decision to retire an Air Force plane built specifically to support ground forces has ignited a firestorm of criticism from the airmen whose job is to embed with Army ground forces and spot enemy targets. Meanwhile, one top Air Force commander is defending his service’s decision to eliminate the A-10 Warthog, despite acknowledging the aircraft’s value.

Even when I was in basic training, these pilots took the time to practice their missions using the training company I was in as a prop. When we went on night fire, A-10s practiced strafing runs (well) in front of us so they could learn what a line of US troops firing looked like while cruising by.

But the Air Force says that the platforms that also have the missions of air superiority, deep strike, and whatever else the Air Force planners come up with to win the war on their own will be responsive to Army needs for ground support--with a caveat:

“If I have to sacrifice something in order to be able to fight the range of military conflict,” [Air Force General] Hostage said, “I’d rather have the F-35 and be able to fight the full range, than have an A-10 and be world class at close air support, and then lose completely in any kind of high-end fight.”

Already, we see other missions have higher priority. He has a point. But the fact is the Air Force will be deciding when close air support priority justifies using his multi-role aircraft for that mission.

The Army will have better luck responding to a Nigerian email scam. And lots of luck with the Air Force keeping the trust with the Army that was built up through years of effective Air Force close air support.

UPDATE: In the opening sencence I mistakenly wrote "pilots" are upset at the A-10 retirement. While they probably are, the story was about the Air Force personnel who move with ground troops to call in fire missions. I knew that and wrote about that in the post but mistakenly wrote "pilots" in the first sentence by mistake.

Going Where Assad Isn't

Even as Assad is using limited ground power to go on offense around Damascus, especially to the west toward Lebanon's border, other rebels are making forays into previously safe areas in the Alawite core region.

The war is continuing in Syria, notwithstanding Assad's stated confidence that he will win:

For three years, residents of Syria's Mediterranean provinces have watched from their coastal sanctuary as civil war raging further inland tore the country apart, killing tens of thousands of people and devastating historic cities.

But a three-week-old offensive by rebel fighters in the north of Latakia province, a bastion of President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite minority, has brought the battle ever closer and shattered that sense of relative security.

Rebels are now fighting in the hills overlooking the sea, bringing the country's main port of Latakia within their range - rocket-fire killed eight people in one barrage on the city a month ago - and Syria's coast feels under real threat.

If rebels can't hold areas, they need to disperse and go guerilla. And hit where Assad is weaker. Casualties are Assad's weak link with only 10% of Syria's population in Assad's Alawite community.