"The US lets people get away with shit because there is no domestic political will for action (and they know it) barring direct attacks on the US homeland."
This is exactly what Russia knows, and it's exactly why they've been doing what they're doing since 2013 (helping Syria first and then the rest in Ukraine). They understand that after…
"The US lets people get away with shit because there is no domestic political will for action (and they know it) barring direct attacks on the US homeland."
This is exactly what Russia knows, and it's exactly why they've been doing what they're doing since 2013 (helping Syria first and then the rest in Ukraine). They understand that after 20 years of GWoT failures, the American public's political reservoir for foreign conflicts is tapped out barring a fresh attack on the homeland or on our forces abroad or on NATO partners (And even that is iffy at this point), so all they have to do is commit harder than the American people are willing to in the conflicts they start with others and they can outlast us in terms of political will.
"The Russian military is probably better now than it was at the start, simply because of experience gained and the various revelations of incompetence and corruption. It doesn't mean that it is great."
They don't have to be great, they just have to inflict high enough casualties against the US in a US v Russia war and then wait for our recruiting structure to collapse. If we don't replenish the bodies they kill/wound then our military depletes itself via attrition. If we don't have a draft on the books and nobody is joining after the current contract force bites a real hard bullet then their task gets easier and easier with time--even if they have to conscript more MOBICs along the way due to what we attrite from them.
Being mass-oriented works if your enemy has to do an expeditionary campaign to the other side of the world that it can't continuously replenish because it doesn't have a conscription system. The same goes for other NATO members.
"The US lets people get away with shit because there is no domestic political will for action (and they know it) barring direct attacks on the US homeland."
This is exactly what Russia knows, and it's exactly why they've been doing what they're doing since 2013 (helping Syria first and then the rest in Ukraine). They understand that after 20 years of GWoT failures, the American public's political reservoir for foreign conflicts is tapped out barring a fresh attack on the homeland or on our forces abroad or on NATO partners (And even that is iffy at this point), so all they have to do is commit harder than the American people are willing to in the conflicts they start with others and they can outlast us in terms of political will.
"The Russian military is probably better now than it was at the start, simply because of experience gained and the various revelations of incompetence and corruption. It doesn't mean that it is great."
They don't have to be great, they just have to inflict high enough casualties against the US in a US v Russia war and then wait for our recruiting structure to collapse. If we don't replenish the bodies they kill/wound then our military depletes itself via attrition. If we don't have a draft on the books and nobody is joining after the current contract force bites a real hard bullet then their task gets easier and easier with time--even if they have to conscript more MOBICs along the way due to what we attrite from them.
Being mass-oriented works if your enemy has to do an expeditionary campaign to the other side of the world that it can't continuously replenish because it doesn't have a conscription system. The same goes for other NATO members.
See Korea in the 50s and the stalemate the Chinese forced. And we and our allies had ongoing drafts, not to mention reservists.
Yup. The Chinese had us surrounded something like 9-to-1 at the Chosen Reservoir.