War with Russia


Western media has finally caught up to the fact of the slow-motion Russian invasion and partitiion of Ukraine.

The real question is, what's next?

As Anne Applebaum puts it in an article entitle "War in Europe - Putin has invaded Ukraine. Is it hysterical to prepare for total war with Russia? Or is it naive not to?" at Slate.com

In the past few days, Russian troops bearing the flag of a previously unknown country, Novorossiya, have marched across the border of southeastern Ukraine. The Russian Academy of Sciences recently announced it will publish a history of Novorossiya this autumn, presumably tracing its origins back to Catherine the Great. Various maps of Novorossiya are said to be circulating in Moscow. Some include Kharkov and Dnipropetrovsk, cities that are still hundreds of miles away from the fighting. Some place Novorossiya along the coast, so that it connects Russia to Crimea and eventually to Transnistria, the Russian-occupied province of Moldova. Even if it starts out as an unrecognized rump state—Abkhazia and South Ossetia, “states” that Russia carved out of Georgia, are the models here—Novorossiya can grow larger over time.

Article.

So should Europe (and the U.S.) prepare for war with Russia?

Yes.

We are already there in an economic sense. Putin - and perhaps Russia - will only grow more desperate as the reality of that sinks in.

I'm not advocating war, but I do believe it may be forced upon us.