{"id":50855,"date":"2022-03-10T22:04:34","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T22:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=50855"},"modified":"2022-03-10T22:04:34","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T22:04:34","slug":"russia-third-rate-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=50855","title":{"rendered":"Russia: third-rate power"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">Barry McCaffrey knows military matters better than just about anyone on Earth. I mean, the guy served combat tours in Vietnam, then rose through the ranks to get four stars pinned on his uniform. He served was a division commander and then led the Central Command in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>So \u2026 when retired Army Gen. McCaffrey describes Russia as a \u201cthird-rate military power,\u201d I tend to believe him. He does offer an important caveat, which is that Russia possesses a\u00a0<em>first-rate nuclear arsenal<\/em>. As for its conventional fighting prowess, McCaffrey isn\u2019t impressed with the way the Russians fight conventional battles.<\/p>\n<p>All of this is my way of suggesting that McCaffrey could be onto something when he suggests that Ukraine might be able to earn enough of a battlefield stalemate against the Russian aggressors to force the Russian despot Vladimir Putin to seek some sort of \u201cexit ramp\u201d off the field of battle.<\/p>\n<p>I have said all along \u2014 and I don\u2019t proclaim to have any special knowledge of this \u2014 that Ukraine isn\u2019t defenseless against the Russian onslaught. Ukraine does have a significant army and air force. It has been shooting down Russian aircraft and it certainly has inflicted a significant number of casualties among Russian personnel.<\/p>\n<p>Putin well might have deluded himself into thinking the Russian armed forces would waltz into Kyiv, declare victory and then set up a puppet government all in short order. That ain\u2019t happening.<\/p>\n<p>Which takes me back to the start of this post. If the Russians are a third-rate\u00a0<em>conventional military power<\/em>, what is their dictator thinking when he sends his personnel into battle against a force determined to protect its homeland against naked aggression?<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\" style=\"text-align: right;\"><a href=\"mailto:johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com\">johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barry McCaffrey knows military matters better than just about anyone on Earth. I mean, the guy served combat tours in Vietnam, then rose through the ranks to get four stars pinned on his uniform. He served was a division commander and then led the Central Command in the Middle East. So \u2026 when retired Army &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=50855\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Russia: third-rate power<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[6470,7018,4050,4998,5116],"class_list":["post-50855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-news","tag-barry-mccaffrey","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-vietnam-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50856,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50855\/revisions\/50856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}