And this is the reaction:
On another note, someone I know on Facebook posted this:
I'm going to continue to monitor the amusing reactions and misuse of historical analogies ("Is it the Cold War again? Is it 1914 again?"), but right now, I'm a lot more interested in Russia's snap military drill that began along the Russian-Ukrainian border a few days ago. Ukraine's acting President, Oleksander Turchinov, has already announced that this a military intervention by Russia would mean war. Sadly, some of my favorite bloggers on the Russian military (i.e. Dimitry Gorenburg) have not yet written more about the topic, but I expect that this crisis is going to give analysts a much better idea of the modernizing Russian military's ability to conduct joint operations within its re-drawn (as of 2010) military districts. Whatever happens, that will be the most important comparison to come out of this crisis and Georgia in 2008. Back then, the Russian military demonstrated that it couldn't even grasp tactical basics such as establishing air superiority and cover for its advancing ground forces as they attempted to squeeze through one point of entry - the Roki Tunnel (which would have made them extremely vulnerable, had the Georgians not been equally incompetent). This time, they're facing the far larger and better-equipped Ukrainian military, which has less recent combat experience than the Georgian forces, but plenty of other advantages (among other things, a growing lack of dependence upon incompetent and poorly-motivated conscripts, something the Russians cannot say about their own forces). In the end, Putin and everyone else knows that there is not much that the U.S. can do to keep him from exercising power in the Former Soviet Union. But his army needs to have a better showing than it did in 2008 if he wants any future threats to have credibility.
Oh, yeah, and:
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