Title: How to Wear Down a Bear
Time/date: Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 9:05:37 am

The cease-fire agreement with Georgia is holding for now, but the Russian military is in no hurry to leave. Stuart Koehl has an interesting piece on possible military options for Georgia: The Pain Game.

This invasion has probably eaten deeply into Russian operations and maintenance funding, to say nothing of its war reserve stockpiles of ordnance and equipment. Russia must have bet on a short and fairly bloodless war, because it cannot afford—militarily or politically—a protracted slog. Not only doesn’t it have the equipment to do so, but it doesn’t have enough highly trained troops to sustain heavy casualties. The Russian military consists of a small, diamond-hard point on the end of a wooden stick. If the point shatters or wears down, you are left fighting the stick. (It should be noted that Ralph Peters, writing in the New York Post, has been scathing in his assessment of the Russian army’s performance in Georgia, so by Western standards even the best of the Russian army would be considered rather mediocre).

The question is how to wear it down.