Wars have a nasty way of starting when one nation underestimates the will or ability of another to fight. Saddam Hussein’s troubles began when he underestimated the will of the Iranians to fight after the Islamic revolution of 1979. He invaded Iran and walked right into a World War I-style bloody trench war that wound up killing a million Iranians and Iraqis.
      In the 1930’s Japan watched Stalin liquidated the officer corps of the Red Army. They attempted an invasion of Siberia and were promptly thrashed and thrown back over the border of Manchuria.
      In 1941 Hitler, having seen how easily the Finns defeated a Soviet invasion, thought the USSR ripe for the taking. Four years later Russian solders were digging the Führer’s charred corpse out of a muddy Berlin shell hole.
      In 1990 Saddam Hussein thought the West to weak and lacking the nerve to respond when he invaded Kuwait. George Bush the Elder responded by assembling a mighty coalition army that, after a punishing, month-long air assault, vanquished the Iraq Army in 100 hours.
     Now the Russians appear to be embarking on the Mother of All Misjudgments. This is an under-appreciation of America’s nature and resolve so profoundly in error that it might spell the end of contemporary civilization.
     Read this clip from the August 15 issue of Pravda:

        The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia warns Poland that it may become a priority target for Russia in the event the USA         deploys elements of its missile defense system on the territory of this East European nation. To put it in a nutshell, Russia may strike a         nuclear blow on Poland, which is possible after the recent change of the Russian Federation defense doctrine.
          "The USA is busy with its own missile defense system; it does not intend to defend Poland at this point. Poland lays itself         open to attack giving the USA a permission to deploy the system. The country may become an object of Russia's reaction. Such             targets are destroyed in the first instance," Anatoly Nogovitsin, Russia's Deputy Chief of Staff said commenting the recent agreement         regarding the deployment of the US missile defense system in Poland.
           Nogovitsin stated that Russia may use nuclear weapons in cases as stipulated by the defense doctrine.
          "It clearly states that we can use nuclear weapons against the countries possessing nuclear weapons, against allies of such countries,         if they somehow support them, and against those countries, which deploy other countries' nuclear weapons on their territories.                 Poland is aware of it," the general said.

     Correction: The United States does intend to defend Poland. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk made it quite clear to our government that he did not want the anti-missile interceptors on his country’s soil backed by the NATO guarantee of assistance alone. Tusk said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would be too slow in coming to Poland's defense if threatened and that the bloc would take "days, weeks to start that machinery."
     "Poland and the Poles do not want to be in alliances in which assistance comes at some point later -- it is no good when assistance comes to dead people. Poland wants to be in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours of -- knock on wood -- any possible conflict," Tusk said.
     He obviously would not have signed an agreement to base the missile in Poland, especially not when the Russians were smashing Georgia, without ironclad American guarantees that we would instantly come to Poland’s aid if the Russians attack that country.
     Russia underestimates our will to fight. If they attack any part of Poland with nuclear weapons, we will respond in kind. That has been U.S. military and foreign policy for a long time.

     The Russian threat, even if it is a bluff, is so irresponsible, so insane…  that it staggers the imagination. They don’t realize they may be trading a patch of rural Polish soil –where we would locate the missiles-- for a nuclear firestorm in Moscow. It would end only one way: with hundreds of millions dead in Russia, the United States and Europe, civilization smashed beyond immediate repair and a dark age for mankind lasting God knows how many centuries.
     Or, the Russians could grow up and restrain themselves.
     What is troubling is that George W. Bush the Younger has not firmly and publicly answered the crude Russian threat with plain language …that we will retaliate with nuclear weapons if our ally, Poland, is attacked with them.
      It may be that a credible threat of retribution in kind is the only thing these madmen will understand. God grant that they do.