John Robb

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.

Posted by John Robb on Tuesday, 09 September 2008 at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)