What's next?, next war Romanians could be part of

A problem separate from the strength of the armies is the length of the common borders. It is huge. And when you are the weaker part, defensive is usually the option. When the length of the borders is huge, defensive is not a great situation.
The enemy can appear anywhere.

This post has been edited by Florin on March 04, 2014 06:44 pm

Two things about Ukraine. Most important is the second, but the first must to be read, IMO:

http://www.cristiannegrea.ro/geopolitica/2...na-spre-razboi/


http://www.cristiannegrea.ro/geopolitica/2...a/#comment-1859

This time about Afghanistan, where our troops were (are) also present:
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26483320
A good question: Is Afghanistan really impossible to conquer?

In the XIXth century both British Empire and Russian Empire decided that it is better to have an independent "buffer" between their borders.
Before that, any time one of them tried to conquer Afghanistan, the other empire sent help to the Afghans. But do not consider it as significant help. I guess the Afghans would have their way anyway.
Jumping to early XXth century, the fact that Hitler's Germany equipped one Afghan division with German equipment proves that Hitler sincerely believed that he has to plunge his nose in every pie of the world.

Another buffer state was the Kingdom of Thailand. After the French conquered from the Chinese Empire its most southern part, later to be known as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the British decided that it was better for the Kingdom of Thailand to remain independent, in order to don't have common border with the French. However, the French grabbed a part of Thailand and added it to their empire.
When the Japanese conquered all that area, they gave back to Thailand her lost part. After WWII, together with Bulgaria, Thailand was one of the two states in the world to keep the land obtained through the Axis good graces.

About situation in Ukraine:

http://www.cristiannegrea.ro/geopolitica/2...va-merge-putin/

Cristian Negrea is missing few things. The best would be to read my short notes below after you read his comments in the quoted link.

1. Leaders sometimes decide contrary to the best tactical option. Reasons are plenty: the leaders are human beings, thus prone to mistakes. It is well known Dunkirk from 1940, but Napoleon also allowed the Russian and Austrian armies to withdraw after Austerlitz, even though he could easily cut their retreat.
2. The Russians did not attack the American aerial bridge bringing back the Georgian soldiers for the same reason they did not attack the American planes supplying Berlin in 1948: one shot toward an American plane could be interpreted as an act of war toward America.

This post has been edited by Florin on March 11, 2014 07:00 pm

Must agree to Florin, at least Putin beyond the propaganda in his favor (from cartoons to jokes favorable to him, often encountered in media) not proved to be such a "good chess player" as we would expect from an ex-KGB operative... An interesting article about Turkey and its role in the current crisis:
http://karadeniz-press.ro/kara/cum-va-muta...a-marea-neagra/

interesting assesment of current Russian military from today's NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/world/eu...?ref=world&_r=0

encrypted PTT com devices! Sober soldiers!!!

who knew??!!

Another one:

http://www.cristiannegrea.ro/geopolitica/2...scare-a-rusiei/

CN says :
"În noile condiții geopolitice, România va trebui, de fapt va fi obligată, cu acceptul Ucrainei sau fără acesta, să ocupe militar sudul Basarabiei, Bugeacul, asigurând militar o zonă defensivă pe limanul Nistrului, singura frontieră naturală contra avansului rusesc. Ar fi preferabil ca să fie de comun acord, cu acceptul Kievului, dar în cazul în care acesta nu este de acord sau ezită, indiferent, armata română va trebui, este obligată strategic, să ocupe linia Nistrului în Bugeac."[I]

CN forgot the most important question: HOW can Romania "occupy" Budjak? With what army? NATO will never agree to the use of military force by a NATO nation to occupy any Ukrainian lands for "nationalist reasons" especially since NATO has been very vocal about similar Russian action. But let us think of what CN's "simple" phrase entails: Romania MUST initiate military action against Ukraine in order to occupy land so that it could later use it to fight a war with Russia. Take a second to take all that in. Two wars. Think about the military assets of Ukraine, Russia and, most importantly, Romania. Think of the military assets (troops, weapons, vehicles, aircraft, munitions, supplies and supply chains). Let us assume for a second that Romania had enough assets to fight Ukraine first. Such a war would most likely deplete these assets. So, assuming that Romania WON that first war with Ukraine, how would Romania fight Russia later with such depleted assets. This whole scenario is predicated on the idea that Romania has access to a significant amount of military assets.

Never mind that... CN forgot to explain how and for how long will this sliver of flat land (about the size of Metropolitan London) hold back Russia. What if those dastardly Russians chose to go around Budjak at the north? What if the Russians chose to sail across the sea from their new base in Crimea?

As usual with CN, that article raises more problems than solutions.

Radu

This post has been edited by Radub on April 05, 2014 09:15 am

Agree again to Radub post! From my perspective it's also obviously that we lack armored and/or mechanized forces forces properly equipped for such missions and against that kind of "ennemies" (Ukraine and/or Russian forces), and a lightly-equipped force can't resist to an enemy attack of medium scale (not to mention a strong attack)! We lack tanks, IFVs, SP Artillery systems, ground attack and support helicopters, attack and support aircraft... An operation similar to that conducted by Russia in Crimeea using special forces, can't be achieved by us, not with the forces and equipment that we have right now!

What CN did was he looked at the map and said it would be better to have Bugeac as a buffer area (protecting the Galati/Danube area) and the Nistru River as a border. But there is a long way from identifying this as an "ideal" geopolitical goal to actually doing something about it. He didn't analyze the feasibility of such a move from a political-diplomatic point of view. And he didn't look at Romania's military means to accomplish the goal. So he covered only 1 of the 3 aspects he should have covered in his analysis.

Transnistria is gone, it is under Russian control. Get over it, CN. Bugeac is a "bridge too far" if not a Russian trojan horse/poisoned gift. The only thing Romania can do is help Moldova (minus secessionist Transnistria and possibly soon-to-secede Gagauzia) stay out of Putin's hands. And even this would be difficult and call for intelligence, cunning and balls of steel given Obama's weakness. So what CN writes is pure sci-fi.

Who is this blogger, CN? Does he have any credibility with Romanians?

I'm reading him in Google translation, of course, but his scheme sounds pretty hare brained to me too.

His WWI/ Europe as a chessboard "analysis" in this, the second century of nuclear weaponry, ballistic misslery and now, EWAR is ludicrous.

That said, the question remains; How crazy is Putin?

And...how prepared is Romania, really? There's no doubt in my mind you have some of the best cyberwarrior potential.

Like it happened before all previous wars, we aren't that well prepared.
- there aren't many operational tanks left and only one battalion is relatively modern
- the APCs are beyond obsolete, with the exception of 30+ Piranha IIIc, but which are not really well protected; all this despite there is a new Romanian built APC type, which was tested and liked by the Army, but no orders were placed
- part of the IFVs are modernized and constitute the main AT weapon with the Spike missles
- the artillery is mostly towed, with the exception of the missle artillery which is partially modernized
- the air force can transport stuff and there are still several serviceable MiG-21s that can engage enemy planes BVR in favorable circumstances
- the radar systems seem to be very good, but they not coupled with any formidable missle system that could shoot down any Su-27 that would happen to cross the border
- the navy hunt submarines with some success, but can't hope to achieve something in ship-to-ship battles, because it isn't sufficiently armed for it
- the only chapter in which we overwhelm any potential enemy is the Danube fleet, but in case of the proposed occupation of Bugeac, what good will that do?

On the plus, there grunts seem to be good, given the praises they received from the NATO allies during the many years of service through Irak and Afghanistan, and the special forces are supposedly high quality.