Thread by @CorporalFrisk

I don't know if there's a real risk for a Russian offensive, or if the movements are just part of the training pattern leading up to #Zapad21. However, this is one of my pet peeves - it's hard to tell an exercise from preparations for war. #turpo=#säkpol corporalfrisk.com/2016/08/13/exe…

"The only thing differentiating war from maneuvers is the last stage on the last day. The concentration of forces and the logistics is the same for both.” Lt.Col. Ben-Porat, AMAN, on lessons from Soviet repression of the Prague Spring (quoted in Rabinovich’s ‘The Yom Kippur War’)

Kofman has written quite a bit on the recent #Russia.n movements, and is certainly correct to preach caution and ask if it is different this time re water crisis and spring being a good for war. However, there's three issues were I question the reasoning:

https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1377697525138927619?s=20

The first is whether the high visibility of movements really is a sign that they are meant to be *solely* an intimidation tactic? A good argument can IMO be made for two alternatives: it is really hard to do large troop movements in today's day and age without being spotted, ...

...and it is entirely possible that the plan is to show enough forces to be intimidating, while still preparing to use them if that tactic fails. Yes, you would give up strategic surprise, but that is hard to achieve anyhow (see point above).

Second is the question about water supplies to #Crimea (and to a lesser extent about a land bridge). As far as I can tell, there is something of a water shortage brewing in Crimea, and spring arguably is a good time to wage mobile warfare.

Does this mean an attack is imminent? Probably not, and it is a train of thought that has been repeated annually the last few years. However, the fact that it didn't happen last year doesn't necessarily affect the likelihood of it happening (or not) this year.

There's a fine line between crying wolf and not taking this serious enough. As said, the basic premise of the shortage and time of year does make sense, the question is whether there's any reason to think it is different now from last year? I don't know.

Last issue is that it feels that the irrationality of human beings isn't factored in enough. War might not be a rational decision based on underlying factors and troop concentrations in the region more generally, but one should be careful to draw conclusions solely based on this.

Humans doing stupid things based on poor judgement has a long and varied history of leading to bad stuff. Again, this is not to say that war is imminent, but the region is worth keeping an extra eye on IMO. #turpo=#säkpol