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2023-09-26 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
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When does Putin attack NATO? Americans need escalation
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Victoria Nikiforova
[RIA] Why Putin has not yet attacked NATO and when will Russia escalate the Ukrainian conflict - this is the question asked by the authors of a new report by the RAND Corporation , a leading US military think tank. There is some disappointment in their tone. The fact is that over the past year and a half, RAND specialists have been building various “escalation ladders” for us. It was assumed that Russia would either use tactical nuclear weapons or attack American military bases in Europe . In response to the alleged blow, options for retaliation and punishment for Russia were voluptuously developed.
Continued from Page 5
However, none of these scenarios worked out. In the first lines of their report, the RAND authors reluctantly admit the mistakes of the US analytical community: “The predictions of American experts about the escalation of the conflict by Russia turned out to be inaccurate, because, firstly, there is no understanding of how strategic decisions are made in Russia, and secondly, it is significantly underestimated Russia's risk tolerance."
Nevertheless, experts continue to ride the rake: the US establishment is offered another ladder of escalation. This time it is recognized that not only Russia, but also Ukraine can escalate.
Escalation risks are divided into intentional, unintentional and accidental. Such options are considered unintentional. For example, the Russian Armed Forces strike the territory of Ukraine, and there the official representatives of a NATO member state come under attack. The country's leadership demands that Article 5 be invoked. Russia, to prevent a concerted NATO attack, attacks first. The Alliance and Russia are entering into open military confrontation.
Or the Russian Aerospace Forces are “maneuvering dangerously” in the Black Sea, which leads to the death of American pilots piloting a reconnaissance aircraft. The American leadership responds with orders to shoot down a Russian plane or strike a Russian naval base. Moscow strikes in retaliation.
Another option: Russia “misunderstands NATO’s activities” by regarding the supply of long-range missiles or discussions of Ukraine’s membership in NATO as an intervention by the alliance. Then Moscow launches a warning strike against NATO countries. Which, in turn, leads to a fork in the road: such a strike can lead to successful containment of the alliance, or it can “anger” it and force it to take measures to “punish” Russia.
RAND rates the risk of inadvertent escalation as medium. Experts consider deliberate escalation more likely. Ukraine, in the face of defeat, may intensify its attacks on Russian territory - this is how terrorist attacks on non-combatants, sabotage and launches of drones filled with explosives are politely defined.
Russia has a wider range of potential actions. Moscow can increase the intensity of shelling of Ukrainian territory, use nuclear weapons there (we have been hearing this since last year) and use chemical weapons (but this is something new).
Here you need to understand that the Americans constantly pass off their own events as “escalation” on the part of Russia. For example, they blew up the Nord Stream , but it is presented in such a way that Moscow, for the purpose of escalation, stopped gas supplies to Europe.
We saw the same thing with nuclear weapons. The Zelensky regime assembled a “dirty bomb” on its knees and fired at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant , while the Americans, meanwhile, frightened the whole world that Moscow was about to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
The same scheme is possible with chemical weapons: the Americans will bring something from their uncontrolled reserves to Ukraine, and the Kiev regime will use it against its citizens without hesitation. It's simple with this one.
Moscow may also carry out a “limited attack” on NATO forces on the territory of the alliance in order to stop or reduce the supply of Western weapons to Ukraine. The United States also considers underground nuclear tests that Russia may conduct as a deliberate escalation.
The most interesting option for escalation is the creation of some kind of crisis outside of Ukraine, which will force Washington to be distracted from helping Kiev . It’s funny that anything at all falls into this category: even the situation in Syria , even the relations between China and Taiwan , even the internal unrest in the United States itself. Washington is trying to simultaneously manage so many crises that it obviously does not have enough resources.
This is a bad signal for Ukraine. If they wish, the Americans will find the “hand of Moscow” in any aggravation on the world stage and will be able to quickly merge Kyiv into this matter.
RAND experts give a very unconvincing answer to the question of why Moscow needs to sharply raise rates now. Combat losses are for the Ukrainians, territorial losses too. There are no catastrophic defeats and they are not expected. The internal turbulence on which the West placed so much hope never materialized. Russia is not going to lose and fall apart. Why do we need escalation?
“The Kremlin’s control over the country is becoming increasingly fragile, which could force Putin to look for opportunities to quickly end the war,” RAND analysts fantasize. Oh really? It seems that experts are simply projecting US internal problems onto us. The White House's control over the country is indeed becoming more fragile as Trump rises to power. The final blow to Biden and the ruling Democratic Party could come precisely from a loss in Ukraine.
More recently, the same RAND convincingly described all the risks of prolonging the Ukrainian conflict and gave advice to Washington “how to avoid a long war.” The United States is afraid of a second Afghanistan : the longer the Ukrainian case drags on, the more shameful defeat it can bring for the United States. Hence all these dreams that Moscow will now escalate and then it will finally be possible to “punish” it. A military confrontation with NATO, according to American strategists, will frighten the people of Russia, and this will open up opportunities for internal turbulence and a change of power in the Kremlin.
That is, it is the American authorities who urgently need escalation in Ukraine. Otherwise, they will have turbulence and regime changes there.
Therefore, we must expect new provocations from them - they will be presented as escalation on the part of Moscow. And Russia’s reluctance to climb this ladder will be dispersed in the information field with shrieks about “where are your red lines?” Well, we’ve already been through this and done it successfully.
The main conclusion from the RAND report: our strategic adversaries are absolutely unable to predict Russia’s actions, as they themselves admit. The guys were completely lost in the fog of war, good luck to them.
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