>The utter stupidity of that idea is along the sames lines as rhetoric, also present in OP, that Russia "weaponized" its gas pipelines
Cutting off energy a nation's energy supply in violation of an established trade agreement, as a response to an escalating conflict between nations, is economic warfare. The term "weaponized" is used correctly in this sense and the author was not engaging in hyperbole.
Modern hybridized warfare is fought across a number of spaces: legal, political, economic, ecological, informational, 'cyber', etc, etc.
We no longer have the luxury of believing the warfare only involves weapons with purely kinetic effects. This is not the way Russia conducts war anymore nor has it been for the last few decades if not more. Conventional military action is always the last resort or the culminating event in modern campaigns.
>I'm going to just go out on a limb here and say that I won't take seriously anything that doesn't immediately address how insane those initial accusations, of Russian sabotage of its own pipelines, were.
Can you honestly justify any actions that Russia has taken openly over the last few years as sane? Countries run by viscous autocrats who have consolidated power often make decisions which suit their personal interests more than the those of the nation. Many in Europe and the US have made the mistake of assessing Putin's strategies as being 'Russia's strategy' and therefore unlikely because it would be bad for Russia. When in fact Putin's strategies serve him just fine because he doesn't give a shit about Russians.
Cutting off energy a nation's energy supply in violation of an established trade agreement, as a response to an escalating conflict between nations, is economic warfare. The term "weaponized" is used correctly in this sense and the author was not engaging in hyperbole.
Modern hybridized warfare is fought across a number of spaces: legal, political, economic, ecological, informational, 'cyber', etc, etc. We no longer have the luxury of believing the warfare only involves weapons with purely kinetic effects. This is not the way Russia conducts war anymore nor has it been for the last few decades if not more. Conventional military action is always the last resort or the culminating event in modern campaigns.
>I'm going to just go out on a limb here and say that I won't take seriously anything that doesn't immediately address how insane those initial accusations, of Russian sabotage of its own pipelines, were.
Can you honestly justify any actions that Russia has taken openly over the last few years as sane? Countries run by viscous autocrats who have consolidated power often make decisions which suit their personal interests more than the those of the nation. Many in Europe and the US have made the mistake of assessing Putin's strategies as being 'Russia's strategy' and therefore unlikely because it would be bad for Russia. When in fact Putin's strategies serve him just fine because he doesn't give a shit about Russians.