Will Tsar Vladimir Go To War in Ukraine?

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Somewhere in the first three episodes of HBO's Peacemaker, our hero, who has collapsed in stress earlier in the episode, regains his moral outrage and willingness to kill to keep the peace and says something like "Eat peace, motherfuckers!" before he blows the bad guy's head off.  The best way to do what Vladimir, the Keeper of Peace, is doing is to not let anyone, even your own side, know what you plan to do. 

But there is a list of things that people have learned to do before battle begins and one can observe these things and get a sense for what is about to happen.  Different sides do different things, but basic principles apply.  This is more about guidelines than it is about inflexible rules.  All of these are pretty logical in retrospect and will make sense to you as well. All of these have relevant historical precedent.  And it is because of these things that people after the war ask "how could you not have known?" Hindsight has perfect vision.

Here is a short list in the context of the Russian/Ukraine situation.  Russia pulls most of its personnel out of their embassies and consulates.  Citizens are warned to leave the country.  Classified papers and other material in these embassies are destroyed.  Someone sends special forces to the potential site of conflict to help get their diplomats and citizens out.  Live ammunition is released to the units.  Leaves are cancelled.  The logistics of war are completely over the top amazing and even if you are not sure war is happening, certain really big things have to be put into motion (e.g. Russian amphibious ships are sortied and people are not sure where they are going... maybe they are just going on vacation).  Various countries start running around the clock missions to provide critical munitions to their ally, munitions that they might have kept a very tight grip on previously, but not now.  "Here" they say, "Take these antitank weapons.  They are our very best and God Speed".  Border incursions by air and ground increase in tempo until they seem to be almost continuous.

Units start disappearing.  Brigades, Divisions, maybe Corps, go to radio and electronic silence and move and you dont know where they went.  Units show up where you didn't expect them.  People at the front start reporting noises of equipment that they had not heard before.  The listening posts report in, something is happening.  Airplanes and other assets are dispersed.  Your networks say that war begins in 3 days but you know they have been wrong before.  Warnings are issued.  Alert levels are raised.  People lose sleep and they are armed and nervous. Mistakes happen.

War is not inevitable, but at some point information entropy takes over and you either give the "go order" or you dont.  And if you say "go", at some point you may not be able to pull them back.

There is a lot of history here.  War is perfectly plausible in this part of the world.  You may not agree, but Russia has interests here.  Obviously so does Ukraine.  Personally I think they are going to do it.  God Speed.

 

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