JOURNAL: Defending the Baltics

"The worst option, which Georgia took, is to create a toy army. A handful of modern jet fighters, a battalion or two of tanks, a frigate for the navy, all add up to nothing. Against a Great Power, a toy army goes down to defeat in days if not hours." Bill Lind

Situation: The Russian invasion of Georgia has sent shock waves through the Baltics. Are they next?

Question: How can the Baltics defend themselves against Russia?
Answer: Make it prohibitively expensive for Gazprom.

Expanded Answer: Small teams that can make deep strikes on Gazprom's pipelines -- from Russia to Ukraine to Central Asia. Small teams of hackers (Estonia has many) that can break Gazprom systems (from electricity to pipelines to corporate records to executive data).

Objectives: Drive down Gazprom's stock price. Anger Gazprom's customers.

GENERAL NOTE: A key objective for any global insurgency (or micropower defensive operations) will be to target corporations, since they are within the target scale for most global guerrilla groups (or micropowers) and damage to them creates extensive network effects. Operations should be focused on specific corporations, in turn -- with the intent of damaging that specific company's business network, hierarchy, supply chain, etc. as quickly as possible.

Comments

[Syn Diesel]

Holy crap John I hope you never find yourself on a plane that needs to emergency land in Russian territory. Da. >:-p

[Duncan Kinder]

"A key objective for any global insurgency (or micropower defensive operations) should be to target corporations, since they are within the target scale for most global guerrilla groups (or micropowers) and damage to them creates extensive network effects."

Excellent, John. Corporations are, by definition and at their essential core, organizations established to minimize risk. That is what limited liability is all about.

This is why, for esample, the stock market responds like a herd of gazelles whenever the Fed coughs.

( Although you will forgive me for pointing out - as I have so often in the past - that Blackwater, too, is a corporation.)

BTW: as we're working toward developing resilient communities, we need to develop a more robust form of economic organization - one that not only can - but is intended to - take a lickin and keep on ticken.

An economic battleship rather than an economic aircraft carrier, so to speak.

[french swede the rootless vegetable]

what hinders Russia to answer in kind?...