Were the West’s leadership not so eager for the war to commence, one might say the core tragedy will spring from a cultural misread. Eschewing symbolic gesture, the Russians do not telegraph. They deliberate slowly on crucial decisions, a quality easily misconstrued (through our cultural lens) as dithering and reticence.
When they do decide, often based on the oddest final straw (what Holmer calls their unseen red lines), Russia is perhaps the most resolute nation on the planet –and the most deadly. (Russia was responsible for three out of four Nazi kills in WW2.) Western war-gamers afford them all due respect.
-- Norman Ball
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