Or, in Mencken's lingo--moron with Ph.D. Sarah Paine is moron who teaches some humanities shit in the US Naval War College. No wonder US officer corps believes all kind of mythological crap and has about zero tool kit for understanding the world outside the US.
This pseudo-academician is utterly situationally unaware, which is pretty much normal state for the US military and "intel". And here is fresh demonstration. Good ol' town of Simbirsk, known today as Ulyanovsk (the birthplace of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin)). And you cannot use here this beaten to death "argument" of Moscow being the facade of Russia, while everything else is decrepit. Paine, her age considered, should not visit modern Russia, especially well beyond Moscow (such as Ulyanovsk--450 miles from Moscow) --her little provincial universe will collapse on her and that may have some health effects, especially on "scholars" such as hers who wouldn't pass even basic exams on real strategy and warfare.
US military education is a joke. It was inevitable in the environment which literally rewrote military history of the XX and XXI century and imbued this "democracy vs dictatorship" contrived dichotomy which led, inevitably, to a sheer obscurantism and ideological rigidity worthy of the worst manifestations of communist or fascist ideologies. But then again, you cannot expect any self-awareness from most Ivy League humanities (brainwashed) graduates such as this Paine lady. In the end, how can one teach "strategy" while having no clue about Operations and about the "dictator", you know--"know thy enemy" shit. I guess, that's the issue of culture and ethics and that's not to be expected from these types.
