False Flag
In the late days of August, 1939, tensions grew on the German/Poland border. According to the Nazis governing Germany, there were a series of Polish military “incursions” into the German province of Silesia, including an attack on a radio station near the border. A Polish “soldier” was killed in the attack, his body displayed in full uniform to underline the “facts”.
It was a complete Nazi plot, codenamed “Operation Himmler”. The body was actually a German citizen arrested for supporting the Poles. He was not in the Polish military, and in fact his sole crime besides his support was to get arrested at the exact time the Nazis needed a body as evidence. He was drugged, dressed in a Polish Army uniform, then shot and killed. His body became the “flagrante delicto”, the primary evidence of a “Polish” attack, that triggered the German assault on Poland. Russia soon invaded Poland from the East, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, and the Second World War began.
That’s called a “False Flag” operation, when one country operates under the “flag” of another in order to place blame. It comes from ancient battles on the sea, when a ship would fly the flag of an allied or neutral country in order to get close in to the enemy, then “run up” it’s “true colors” and open fire.
Soviet Dreams
President Vladimir Putin of Russia is determined to rebuild the old Soviet Union. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Russians “incorporated” several formerly independent states into their “Union”, including Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Other would-be nations were part of the old Russian Empire before the Soviets: Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia. With the fall of Communism in December of 1991, all of these nations broke away to form their own individual countries.
Much of Ukraine had been a part of the Russian Empire dating back to 1793. And Russia’s main access to an ice free seaport both for shipping and Naval operations is in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. When Ukraine broke away from Russia, the Russian Navy continued to lease the port as the headquarters of their Black Sea Fleet. In 2014, President Putin sent Russian troops to occupy Crimea and maintain control of the port. They are still there today. He also invaded other Ukrainian provinces, sending “false flag” troops dressed as partisans, to control parts of Eastern Ukraine.
For the past eight years, Russia has maintained control of Crimea and the two provinces in the East. And today, Putin has poised 100,000 Russian troops on the Eastern and Northern Borders of Ukraine, clearly threatening to invade. He only needs a pretext, but, like the Nazis on the Polish border, he can always create a “false flag” whenever he chooses.
The Cusp of War
I don’t think this is the eve of World War III, despite the dire predictions of some experts (Alexander Vindman, of the Trump phone call fame, for one). NATO stands to support Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and the rest of Eastern Europe, and the Ukraine is not part of the that treaty. A Russian invasion of Ukraine does not invoke “Article Five”, the clause of the NATO treaty that triggers military retaliation.
And while Russia still has the second most powerful military in the world (Global Firepower), they are 11th in the world economically, behind Canada and just ahead of South Korea (Economist). In a long term conflict, Russia would be at a complete disadvantage against the NATO powers, led by the United States.
Vladimir Putin may be a lot of things, but he is not foolish. He can gain advantages and prestige by “playing around the edges”, but there is no advantage for him to start a full scale land war in Europe. He knows that, and so do the NATO allies. Putin may dream of the return of the Soviet Union, but remembers the 24 million deaths of World War II that allowed for that expansion. Putin is a cold, calculating technocrat, not a Stalinist, an “at all costs” empire builder.
Calculations
Russia also represents a major source of energy, particularly natural gas, and that dependence requires NATO to act carefully. The Nord Stream pipeline runs through the Baltic Sea, far from Ukraine. There are “stop valves” at both ends. Sure Russia could dramatically impact German life by cutting off the gas. But Germany could just as effectively impact the Russian economy by turning off their end.
So Putin’s calculations are narrow. How much can he indulge his desire to re-acquire Ukraine (and the other former Soviet Republics)? Will NATO offer only economic sanctions in response? At what point will Russian actions trigger a military response along the lines of that terrible day in 1939 when the world descended into war?
There’s little room for miscalculation on any side: Russian, Ukrainian, NATO, or the United States. And here in America, still focused on Covid, Insurrection, and the politics of 2024, it would be easy to miscalculate, or just ignore the problem.
We do so at the world’s peril.
