Russia’s Biggest Intelligence Failure
I just published an article about the military intelligence failures in the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, but there was an even more significant failure on the Russian side that was a mix of military and political intelligence that bears mentioning.
Russia massively failed to realize the immensity of the Pandora’s Box it was opening by invading and annexing another country. Their attempt to upset the world order based on international law and their belief in BrICS as a counterweight to NATO was perhaps the most significant blunder since the West failed to see the dissolution of the USSR. Russia was so focused on Ukraine that it forgot the long-term strategic implications of its imperialism and thus could not predict the Western response accurately.
Part of this is founded on Russia’s inability to conceptualize democracy and the rule of law. Russia is a nation of oligarchs and Tsars where might makes right, and the idea of democracy is so foreign to the Russian mindset that they saw disagreement and sometimes even chaos in the Western political system and interpreted that as weakness.
0 Comments