Russia: still just an adversary, but not too far from actual enemy status

This ought to make us all sit up and pay attention:

The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert Neller, told troops Thursday that "there's a war coming" and urged them to be prepared.

"I hope I'm wrong, but there's a war coming," Neller told Marines stationed in Norway, during a visit there, according to Military.com. "You're in a fight here, an informational fight, a political fight, by your presence," he added. 

The commandant pointed to Russia and the Pacific theater as the next major areas of conflict, predicting a "big-ass fight" in the future. 

"Just remember why you're here," he said. "They're watching. Just like you watch them, they watch you. We've got 300 Marines up here; we could go from 300 to 3,000 overnight. We could raise the bar."

Neller's visit comes amid tensions between Russia and NATO allies. Russia warned neighboring Norway that the presence of American troops could hurt relations, after Norway decision to host a new unit of U.S. soldiers through the end of 2018. 

Particularly when considered in conjunction with this:

In what must come as a terrible shock to liberals who believe that President Trump is Russian President Putin's puppet, the American president has approved a plan to send antitank missiles to Ukraine, thereby ensuring a "new phase" in the conflict between that country and Ukraine.

The decision to send Javelin antitank missiles, the Wall Street Journal reports, "places Washington closer to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Although Ukrainian government officials have long sought these missiles, the U.S. refused to do give in to the pressure fearing doing so would escalate the conflict."

A few thoughts:

• This all once again confirms that Trump is winging it. While Trump foreign policy is generally playing out in terms that provide a welcome relief to the appeasement and "leading from behind" policy of the previous administration, we have to wait until a move is made to discern some general direction. In other words, so much for the tweets a while back about how much the US and Russia have to work on together. (Has anybody heard about Russia being a major player in the final dismantling of the ISIS caliphate?) We can't tell anything from Trump's bloviating. 
• That said, he has an instinct for surrounding himself with people of consistent vision.
• Unresolved world-stage problems do not just go away by themselves. Just because Russian threats to Ukrainian security have not been on the front burner for a while does not mean they ceased to exist.
• The other big nation that has adversary status from a US standpoint is, of course, China. What constitutes adversary status in 2017 is superficially civil behavior on leaders' parts at international gatherings, but clear signals in all other ways that the nation in question cares not a whit about cooperation on anything vital to US interests.
• The collusion meme looks sillier all the time - unless one is talking about collusion involving the Clinton machine, certain problematic elements in the FBI, the DoJ, the CIA and the NSA, and certain problematic elements within the Russian power structure.