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Viliam_Bur comments on Open thread, Dec. 1 - Dec. 7, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Yes. Ukraine is not an isolated data point. There is a recent history of Russia attacking its different neighbors, which would make me bet that the future will be similar.
It's not merely "What to do about Crimea?" but also "Who is next (and what to do about them while we can, while the Russian army is not there yet)?". If my country had borders with Russia, I would consider fortifying those borders a #1 national priority. I would probably destroy as much roads and railways across the border as would be economically possible. But that's only passive defense.
I don't think this helps all that much (tanks can travel over rough terrain) and has high economic costs. Better to mine the infrastructure, and detonate the mines when a train carrying enemy soldiers passes over it.
Modern tanks are pretty capable cross-country, but they have a long supply tail. An Abrams tank (which, to be fair, is more of a gas-guzzler than average owing to its high weight and its cool-but-questionably-practical turbine engine) gets about half a mile to the gallon and has a nominal range of a bit under 300 miles, which overstates its operational range because warfare tends to involve a lot of waiting and a lot of local maneuvering.
Strategically, you can only move armor as fast as the trucks or railroad cars carrying fuel, food, and ammunition, and that means that roads, rails, and bridges remain important. (A bit less so if you're somewhere like Iraq, though, where you've got lots of open, hard-surfaced desert to work with.)
Well, destruction of infrastructure is certainly some help, but I imagine that the supply train would be reasonably adapted to rough terrain as well. Even if you can slow the Russians down, this only really helps if reinforcements are on the way, which depends on whether NATO is willing to get involved.
Destroying bridges is certainly really useful though.
That seems... excessive (and pretty useless). Do you actually believe that, say, Finland should do this now?
This is the situation where it could be useful to have a prediction market for "which country will be next invaded by Russia?". I don't have high confidence for my predictions here.
My guess is merely: within 10 years, Russia will invade another country, one they share a border with. But I'm not sure which one.
Finland seems like an interesting target: it is a EU member, but not a NATO member. NATO has weapons, EU has rationalizations why not doing anything is the wisest policy ever.
On the other hand, there are former Soviet Union countries where Russia can use the excuse "they belonged to us historically anyway, and there is our minority we have to protect". I don't know how important each of these factors is for Russia when deciding its next target.