Since the end for World War II, the United States has fallen victim to exaggerating national security threats while ignoring others that proved more dangerous. …
Since the end for World War II, the United States has fallen victim to exaggerating national security threats while ignoring others that proved more dangerous. Perhaps the memory of the interwar years and appeasement of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan became embedded in America’s DNA. The alleged missile gap of the late 1950s and early 1960s turned out to be decisively in America’s favor; Vietnam was never vital to halting non-existent monolithic communism; Saddam Hussein never had weapons of mass destruction; imposing democracy in the greater Middle East was a mirage; and today, intelligence warnings o f a Russian assault into Ukraine with 175,000 soldiers, and generals and admirals fretting over a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, exemplify these exaggerations. Barring a catastrophic blunder, Russia will not attack Ukraine. For the foreseeable future, China lacks the military capability to mount an amphibious operation to seize and occupy Taiwan. Why? A common thread links Russian President Vladimir Putin with Soviet leaders dating back to Lenin: “ active measures.” Active measures have always rested on combinations of military intimidation and non-kinetic, psychological, covert and overt intelligence and disruptive operations. The Soviet Union used them unsuccessfully in trying to assimilate Estonia in 1924. Putin is employing them today. While predicting exactly what Putin may or may not do is risky, identifying the likely reasons for creating this crisis is less so. First, Putin understands that he has the initiative in dialing up or down the state of the crisis.
