I think it goes to the military point of: no plan survives contact with the enemy. We understand it better today through the application of Boyd’s OODA loop.

The guy who can improvise will beat the fool and the genius.

See Wellington at Waterloo.

Georgia, Azerbajan, Turkmenistan.

Georgia was not just about oil.

Even better with the 6th Army example. And the Germans only had a 100 mile round trip, so their planes were making 5-8 drops a day, and did not have to contend with any nations in the flight path granting air transit rights. It was as you said, a failure…

Russia is a rising menace and China is a future problem.

At this time we have no territorial conflicts with China except for Taiwan. Taiwan will be absorbed voluntarily into China. China also has interests in the central Asian nations and their oil resources. That will conflict with Russia interests also.

I believe that US will want to maintain the East European nations, Balkans and the Caucasus nations. Georgia is a strategic importance. Let the borders be the natural mountains of the North Caucasus. We want to get Georgia absorbed into our military umbrella fast because that allows us to have influence and protection over Azerbaijan, Russia’s natural target. It is in our natural strategic interest to secure Caspian oil for the west.

We also keep Iraq and hopefully get Iran via a coup. I think the installation of the dead Shah’s son, as a ruler would be a good idea. But that means that we have to destabilize Iran by taking out their nukes. We can’t wait until the next administration. Hopefully we can get the Israelis to do it for us.

Tactics in Afghanistan has to be changed. We no longer can support the slow and steady with a supply line that will be cut by Russia and Pakistan. Use CIA and Special Forces and set up warlords to fight the Taliban. Use UVA and air forces to destroy Taliban incursions and bases in Pakistan. NATO squandered the time we no longer can afford.
Afghanistan we have to be a diminished effort. The Taliban is not the strategic threat that Russia is.

Use Special Forces and CIA assets to smoke out remaining AQ but they are a dying organization. The jihadists will be around but their target will be Pakistan and try to control that country. Encourage India to push Kashmir.

Maliki will be a problem since he now feels cocky and is screwing the Sons of Iraq. Economic pressure needs to be applied to allow the Sunni participation to check Maliki’s consolidation of power.

Permanent bases in Iraq will be acquired to maintain control and influence over the ME.

That is just a quick assessment

Russia’s Moskova missile cruiser left port with 18 smaller escorts facing 9 NATO vessels. We are bringing in another 5 NATO fleets for a massive show of brinkmanship. Russia’s verbal belligerence makes me wonder if they really wanted to try us to attack in the Black Sea. They know that the NATO presence is a major push back in their sea. I believe our naval units are better than theirs, but does Medevev want to try us? I am beginning to wonder how rational the Russian are going to be. Their desire to punish us for their losses and dissolution of the USSR seems to be peaking. This is plan ego talking on their part and we should be careful if we want to antagonize Russia unless we are willing to follow through. This is not a good situation to leave to a next President.

A retreat to the enclaves is easy. I thought that Russia would take the chance to grab the enclaves and save face, since they blinked before they could take the pipelines. They could drag out negotiations for years while maintaining the enclaves.
But now we have to support Georgia with force if needed. If we keep Georgia than our ability to support Azerbaijan is greater and we have more leverage against Iran.

Bush did not want to handle a new Russian aggression, but they must be reassessing our strategic priorities and Cheney is going there. Better to stop Russia now at Georgia and get Azerbaijan to join us also. We need to finish up in Iraq as soon as possible with these new challenges. Afghanistan may be lost since Pakistani supply lines are compromised and Russia supply lines will also be lost. We will have to set up some warlords to fight the Taliban and hit them with airpower. It is a shame that the NATO forces squandered the opportunity to really damage the Taliban. But Taliban and the small remainder of AQ are not a strategic threat like Russia is and we should act accordingly.

It would have been nice if we had Iran on our side with a coup like the Shah’s son installed as ruler who could be our ally. It is a shame that we hamstrung our CIA from performing those operations in the 1970’s. It sure would be cheaper than war.

”Estonia today called on Nato to build a military facility in his country, which has a large Russia speaking population. Officials said the Baltic states would use a Nato meeting in London next month to demand a tougher Western approach.

“It is time to again think about whether NATO should build new infrastructure, including in Estonia,” Foreign Minister Urmas Paet told the broadcaster in a separate interview yesterday. “Russia’s actions in Georgia have changed the international reality.” ”

Now I have no problem with our removing Saddam. Removing Saddam and the necessary rehabilitation of Iraq is a very expensive and time consuming project for the U.S.

Cultivating Saddam and growing him into a monster that we had to destroy cost Russia, the Chinese and the French nothing. All they had to do was jerk us around at the UNSC and make money selling weapons and technology to Saddam.

France, for example, understood full well that Saddam was pursuing nukes but they also understood it would be the U.S. and not France that would have to deal with Saddam’s nukes. Put another way, they would get the money for arming Saddam and we would get the body bags and the French were copacetic with that outcome.

I guess my point is that I believe that what all of these countries (i.e., Russia, et al) were up to was no more complicated that attempting to exhaust the U.S. to the point where the U.S. was just too worn out to compete AND THEN they could begin to make moves that the U.S. would require fresh energy and stamina to counter.

Put another way, Russia’s support of Iran is just geopolitical rope-a-dope. I believe that Russia and China know that the the U.S. will not permit Iran to create nukes. This means that Iran will never present a nuclear threat to Russia because we will destroy Iran at much risk and cost (and maybe begin another long, expensive rehabilitation effort) and it will have cost the Russians basically nothing.