The First Rule Of Warfare

As my theme for today is "half way lucid comments that I have left on other 'blogs", let me round off with my comment over at C-at-W regarding recent Russia/Georgia/South Ossetia unpleasantness*:

"... what the cold warriors forget (on the Russian side and in the West) is The First Rule of Warfare**, that has held pretty well for the last hundred years.

It's quite simple.

Millitarily, it is a piece of piss to invade another country, especially if you're big and they're small.***

Politically and economically, it is impossible to hold on to occupied territories in the long run. The cost of doing so - in money, in lives, in unhappy families of soldiers who've died, in the drain on the economy to support the military spending, the terrorist attacks that you provoke in your own country, the international opprobrium, the trade sanctions, the ignominy of the ultimate withdrawal - always exceeds any short term benefits.

So whatever Russia hoped to gain from smashing up Georgia (and I can sort of sympathise with them) will be outweighed by the long run costs of occupying Georgia. The same applies to the USA and Iraq, BTW. Or Israel and the West Bank. Etc etc.

So sooner or later they will withdraw. And every rouble they waste on that war is a rouble less they can spend on attacking us (in this case, attacking us by proxy via the Islamofascist bastards in Iran).

And they'll have learned their lesson ... for a decade or two before the next power mad shithead in the Kremlin (or in the White House - or the Knesset - or in Tehran or Pyongyang for that matter) - does it again."

* As you may have noticed, this is a topic that does not overly interest me. So far I have restricted myself to posting Denis Cooper's fine fisking of Dave The Chameleon's sub-GSCE drivel.

** I once expounded The First Rule Of Warfare to a history teacher chum and he hummed-and-hahed. A month later, he told me that he quoted this handy rule-of-thumb in his lessons.

*** UPDATE. Make that "Militarily, it is usually a piece of piss, especially if you're big and they're small, but even then, the large country can get its arse kicked e.g. Russia v Finland".

UPDATE, UPDATE. Having now taken the trouble to read up on The Winter War, I conclude that Russia got its arse severely kicked and failed miserably in its original objective, but managed to grab a small slice of S.E. Finland which is still controls to this day. This still fits the overall generalisation that 'invading other countries is a bad idea'.