Whether delivered as a rock, rifle round or laser burst, lethal fire by a military force is one of the two most fundamental combat actions. It is certainly the action best understood by artists. From cave painters to Hollywood directors, their material weapons make the “fire” threat posed by the spearman and the sniper explicit.




The Russians have certainly done that in Crimea. They have seized several advantageous positions without bloodshed. Adolf Hitler did the same when his forces re-militarized the Rhineland on March 7, 1936. That maneuver violated the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. The French thought Versailles ended World War I. Hitler disagreed; he didn't think the war was over. “Re-militarization” created a new strategic fact on the ground: German forces in the Rhineland. It also created a new political fact: Hitler paid no significant international political price for breaking the treaty. In historical retrospect, “re-militarization” was a euphemism for invasion.

At the moment, the Pentagon prefers to call the aggressive employment of “fire and maneuver” against an adversary “kinetic military action” or sometimes simply “kinetics.” Kinetics is a euphemism for war. Adversary is a euphemism for enemy.

Several European Union political leaders and the Obama Administration have called Czar-Commissar Vladimir Putin's decision to send Russian troops into the Crimean Peninsula a “terrible mistake” or grave error. Both strike me as euphemisms for terrible invasion.

Ukraine's fledgling government has no trouble referring to Russia's latest despot, Czar-Commissar Vladimir and his army as their enemy. The Ukrainians know they have suffered an invasion.


For example, the Wall Street Journal reported that Russian soldiers “fired warning shots over the heads of unarmed Ukrainian soldiers” at the Balbek air base in Crimea. The Ukrainians were trying “to go to work” despite the fact that the Russians had captured the installation. The Russians agreed to let the Ukrainians enter the base as long as they remained unarmed.

Is this Twilight Zone warfare, a strange limbo between potential combat and “kinetic action”?

No, not really. The Russians took the air base and did so without the political downside of videos of dead Ukrainians going viral on the Internet.
