I guess to answer this post's title question, we could start by listing to what they are telling us.
It really could be that simple.
If things went sideways in Ukraine, what have the Russians been working on?
They've told us and in places, showed us.
Are we ready?
I'm pondering over at USNIBlog.
Morale is to materiel as three is to one. Character is to law as fifty is to ten. War is a spiritual discipline before it is an intellectual, logistical, mechanical, and physical one . . . or it is lost. Still, conflict itself is in the nature of things life's steady-state, by design.