Originally Posted by
Asturias56
" if we had a minor conventional skirmish with pro-Russia or Russian forces on the fringe of Europe that lead to a small but precise retaliation of conventional cruise missiles against 2 or 3 RAF bases "
Does anyone REALLY believe that this is likely? Its a fantasy........
And TBH what effect would that have? They're not invading the UK, we can retaliate by taking back their bank accounts, their houses, football clubs and all their wives, mistresses and kids in London - which would just about pay for the shiny new jets we'd order from BAe.
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A little over 30 years ago, few thought the invasion of Kuwait very likely... The armed forces don’t exist just for what’s likely, nor are the Nation’s defences organised this way. Strategic shocks are also usually difficult to predict, otherwise they’re not shocks!
I would question the likelihood most people would have attributed to the Litvinenko and The Skripal attacks. Our judgement of the strategic value of radiological and chemical weapon terrorism by Russian elements in the U.K. against their tactical value was undoubtedly different from Russia’s. No rational government would pursue these courses of action, at least by our standards.... But then we wouldn’t have invaded Georgia, blown up our own apartment blocks to justify a war in Chechnya, annexed Crimea our sustained a conflict in Eastern Ukraine, just to cite a few examples of Russian behaviour. The Russians don’t think the way we do, and we’d be daft to believe their strategic calculus is anything like ours. When regime survival trumps everything else, all sorts of wise stuff becomes more likely.
Mirror-imaging our values and standards on the decision-making of others just makes strategic shock more likely.