They would have had to have. Wouldn't they? If not then we're more screwed on a global scale than I thought. Not much we could have/can do about it anyway, I mean really, what can we do? Tariffs? Embargos? Pfft, not likely. Europeans are the ones who are screwed for any regress considering that Russia is the go to on the continent for natural gas and I feel sure being warm will dispel any inclinations towards retaliatory positions financial or otherwise. Always knew one day the USSR would live again, in geographical terms if not in name.
That's something I hadn't considered yet: If global surveillance works, it's going to favour extreme short-term military planning, right? The kind where the time between decision and implementation is as short as possible to minimise the enemy's advantages for knowing what you're about to do?
But you can only move small units discretly. You try to move anything, say a brigade or bigger, and it's gotta peg some sort of radar.
Exactly. But now the NSA gets pegged as soon as you communicate your intent of mobilizing even to your colleagues. So I guess the only way to keep any kind of momentum and surprise on your side is to decide on mobilization very, very quickly, and follow through so fast that the benefit of the enemy knowing beforehand is minimized?
That rapid/irreversible mobilization to catch your enemy off-guard concept was a major contributing factor to World War I.
Very true. Some have likened the mobilization plans in Europe to the nuclear weapons prepared for "launch on warning" during the Cold War. Once you started there was no going back.
