I had to laugh when I read the @blakehounshell tweet that “Sarah Palin totally called this exact Ukraine scenario 6 years ago…”.  In 2008 he was blogging for the magazine Foreign Policy magazine when he dismissed Palin’s notion with the following statement.

“As we’ve said before, this is an extremely far-fetched scenario.”

As others have pointed out he was not alone in his view. I did not know why at the time I read this statement but the notion that this was an extremely far-fetched scenario struck me as strange. Today I was reading the post, “Who Saw The Ukraine Invasion Coming, And Who Didn’t”, and it dawned on me that the Russians understand the classical relationship between diplomacy and warfare and the US does not. The ultimate achievement in warfare and diplomacy is to achieve your objective without fighting. Sun Tzu said this a long time ago in The Art of War and later Clauswitz reminded us that “war is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.” If the Russian objective was to re-establish political control of the Ukraine, they have already won. It sure looks like the Russians are the professionals and we are the amateurs in the foreign policy game. Unfortunately this event reminds me of Hitler and the Anschluss of Austria, too.

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
”• Sun Tzu, The Art of War