By Gilbert Doctorow, Antiwar.com, 12/22/21

In the past couple of days, my peers in the community of Russia analysts have addressed the question of “what if” – what is it that Russia can and may do if the negotiations with the United States over its draft Treaties on security in Europe fail within the very short time period the Russians have set, apparently one month. Parenthetically, I am amused that spokesmen for the U.S. State Department say that they may enter into talks with the Russians some time in January. It seems they did not catch the short timeline the Russians have set or mistakenly believe it was a bluff.

The best of the analyses by my fellow analysts was posted yesterday by former Canadian diplomat Patrick Armstrong. I recommend this read to everyone, because it is in its own way reassuring, setting out possible Russian options that are far removed from pressing the button and blowing us all, and themselves, to bits.

However, I did not see in his piece, nor do I find in the writings of other independent analysts, not to mention on the pages of our mainstream newspapers, any explanation of what exactly Vladimir Putin meant when he said initially and repeated yesterday before the Collegium of the Russian Ministry of Defense, an audience of a hundred or more generals, that should the talks with the US fail, Russia will immediately implement “military-technical” retaliatory measures.

The term “military-technical” has been picked up and sold for the purchase price by nearly all our media. No explanation is given, because very likely no one really understands the term.

So I will have a go at it here and now, after a eureka moment came to me earlier this morning. The term is as elusive as the translation of “адекватный,” which most everyone (or every translation software) wrongly translates as “adequate” when it normally means “appropriate” or “suitable.”

The “technical” in the expression is coming from техника, which is the common Russian way of saying “equipment”. Military “tekhnika” means motorized howitzers, personnel carriers, fighter jets, etc. Tekhnika also has common civilian use: the outfitting of a factory is “tekhnika” as in “техническое оснащение.”

So, what Putin is saying is that the Russians will respond by deploying military hardware. Now what hardware would that be? Given that so much of the draft treaties deal with short range missiles that the US is deploying in Europe and hopes to deploy in Ukraine, it is entirely logical that the Russian response to failure in negotiations will not be to invade Ukraine, it will not be to cut gas supplies to Europe, but it will be to deploy its nuclear capable short range missiles in Belarus and in Kaliningrad.

But that is not all…

Read full article here.