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Putin: West wants to put Russian bear 'on a chain'

annata said:
thing about regional powers is they have their own agendas too.
Mid East Big Guys are Saudi Arabia and Iran -and they despise each other. While I'd like to see a more balanced approach with Iran,
we can't just shift overnight either with our security agreements, and weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.
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i'd like to see us get out of the region almost entirely for thirty years at least to give it time to stabilize.

annata said:
I have no idea what we could do with Mexican drug gangs, other then legalize all that stuff ( libertarian approach),
and just tax it, instead of having the DEA drive west hemisphere policy.
I do agree a more sane relationship with Cuba was well past due -but we also have world (global superpower)duties like it or not.
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some form of your approach could work.

annata said:
China and Russia will only act in their self interests. Tibet and Ukraine are good examples. They will glom up territory.
China is smarter then Russia in the use of "soft power" The Decline of America's Soft Power | Foreign Affairs
but they are backing it up with a new fighter that they prolly ripped off the design from our F-35, as well as any other weapons systems they are pumping money into.

My point is we could do a better job with soft power -no more land wars of intervention -
or regime change like Libya ( which is now a failed terrorist state).
But we simply cannot abandon global roles as there isn't anyone else to take our place.
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the world doesn't need a pro bono global policeman. if the world would like our help, and our help is absolutely necessary, then the region needs to fund it. no more pro bono war on the credit card. we need to spend that money elsewhere. the house is falling apart, and needs repair.
 
annata said:
Putin: West wants to put Russian bear 'on a chain'


some colorful language -read other sources for more in depth.
He also mention US torture post 9-11, and lashes out at a question about political reform.

Be interesting to see if Russia can diversify from an extractive economy; or as McCain called it
"a glorified gas station"
EDIT: his annual news conference
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Unfortunately, ordinary Russians share part of the blame for the current economical crisis.
Not only governments' actions dictate the economical strength of a country but also the attitude of the general population to its' role in the country's economy.

Currently, Russia is swamped with bureaucrats, and low quality "professionals" that breed corruption and incompetence, both are still a disease that Russia as a whole struggles to deal with. These factors combined with several others make Russia's economy as weak as it is today.
In order for Russia to survive and become a competitive economical player it needs to restructure not only its economy but also a lot of the socioeconomic structures that were created in the past 10-20 years.

Fallen.
 
Helix said:
nice Godwin, but endless war has sunk pretty much every empire. that's history, too. Sun Tzu pointed it out in 500 BC, and empires have been ignoring it at their own peril ever since.
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Every empire has sunk. Every empire was built upon war. Empires have fallen for reasons other than war.

People like pretty pictures of the USA, of what made the USA incredibly wealthy and the most powerful country on earth.

The USA was built by war. Against the British.

Attempted in Canada - but failed.

Against Native Americans.

Against Spanish.

Against Mexico.

Take territory militarily. Build forts to keep it. Build navies to protect colonies. That is USA history.

The Spanish American War is when the USA first became a true world power.

WWI put the USA in the category of the other big boys worldwide.

WWII was the USA conquering the world in final effect. Every industrial nation was busted, most of their industry obliterated. Many or all of their colonies gone Russia isolated.

The problem with Sun Tzu's theory is that everyone in the world all has to agree to be nice to each other and to share. The USA could share with the world I suppose. Do you think any politician is going to succeed on a campaign of reducing the American standard of living by 80% to share with the rest of the world?

Ultimately, there will always be push back against the rich and powerful nations/empires by poor ones. The rich/powerful nations be wealthy including by employing military superiority, covert tactics, alliances, and all the rest.

What is unfortunately is that there is almost NO honesty in debating foreign policy - by anyone. War hawks vehemently deny we fight in the M.E. for oil and natural resources - yet that is 100% exactly why. Doves will claim our blood for oil can be given up and everyone can ride bicycles in some never-can-exist hippie view of economics and reality.

Russia returning to the being the USSR is not an irrelevancy to the USA despite your believing otherwise. The USA will get out of the M.E. when it is in the interests of the USA to do so. The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan - the pricking around Russia? To keep the quiet areas quiet and ours - those countries on Russia's Southern border almost no one knows exist - and few know we have air and military bases there.

Rather than going on and going, the simplistic logic of both "hawks" and "doves" is both naïve and false. They debate over pretend realities.

The USA is not a peace loving country. Time to time people want a break from wars, brief periods of isolationism - or rather not overt war. But like all empires, the USA is a warrior nation and always has been, it is an empire, was built the way empires are build.
 
Helix said:
each regional hegemon would be responsible for regional stability.
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Ukraine has been independent and peaceful since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ukraine voluntarily relinquished all nuclear weapons on her territory (Budapest Memorandum) and declared itself a military neutral.

Ukraine did not invade Russia. The regional hegemon you would entrust to maintain regional stability stole Crimea, and is deeply involved in planning/supporting/maintaining "frozen conflicts" in eastern Ukraine, the Caucases, and Transnistria.
 
joko104 said:
Every empire has sunk. Every empire was built upon war. Empires have fallen for reasons other than war.

People like pretty pictures of the USA, of what made the USA incredibly wealthy and the most powerful country on earth.

The USA was built by war. Against the British.

Attempted in Canada - but failed.

Against Native Americans.

Against Spanish.

Against Mexico.

Take territory militarily. Build forts to keep it. Build navies to protect colonies. That is USA history.

The Spanish American War is when the USA first became a true world power.

WWI put the USA in the category of the other big boys worldwide.

WWII was the USA conquering the world in final effect. Every industrial nation was busted, most of their industry obliterated. Many or all of their colonies gone Russia isolated.

The problem with Sun Tzu's theory is that everyone in the world all has to agree to be nice to each other and to share. The USA could share with the world I suppose. Do you think any politician is going to succeed on a campaign of reducing the American standard of living by 80% to share with the rest of the world?

Ultimately, there will always be push back against the rich and powerful nations/empires by poor ones. The rich/powerful nations be wealthy including by employing military superiority, covert tactics, alliances, and all the rest.

What is unfortunately is that there is almost NO honesty in debating foreign policy - by anyone. War hawks vehemently deny we fight in the M.E. for oil and natural resources - yet that is 100% exactly why. Doves will claim our blood for oil can be given up and everyone can ride bicycles in some never-can-exist hippie view of economics and reality.

Russia returning to the being the USSR is not an irrelevancy to the USA despite your believing otherwise. The USA will get out of the M.E. when it is in the interests of the USA to do so. The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan - the pricking around Russia? To keep the quiet areas quiet and ours - those countries on Russia's Southern border almost no one knows exist - and few know we have air and military bases there.

Rather than going on and going, the simplistic logic of both "hawks" and "doves" is both naïve and false. They debate over pretend realities.

The USA is not a peace loving country. Time to time people want a break from wars, brief periods of isolationism - or rather not overt war. But like all empires, the USA is a warrior nation and always has been, it is an empire, was built the way empires are build.
Click to expand...

empires fall. nations can last and thrive. we should be a nation first.
 
Helix said:
i'd like to see us get out of the region almost entirely for thirty years at least to give it time to stabilize.

some form of your approach could work.

the world doesn't need a pro bono global policeman. if the world would like our help, and our help is absolutely necessary, then the region needs to fund it. no more pro bono war on the credit card. we need to spend that money elsewhere. the house is falling apart, and needs repair.
Click to expand...

We rarely do wars for others for free.

For example, for the first Gulf War we billed Kuwait for every bullet, bomb, soldier - every penny spent. We brought all our Cold War old stuff from Europe and elsewhere - no longer needing it with the Soviet breakup and most of it old technology - and sold it at 100% retail to Kuwait. Kuwait, of course, had no choice but to agree - but then we own Kuwait anyway - an area of Iraq that had exactly zero population - declared it a new country with the head of the camel caravan the king - for which they got a 1/7th royalty for the oil. With such a tiny population, Kuwaitis became the wealthiest-per-person population in the world

We did not fight for Kuwait freedom. We fought to keep our oil and we made the Kuwaitis pay for it. A few years ago I spoke to a Kuraiti businessman who moved to the USA. In his view Kuwait was a victim of both Iraq and then the USA. Even suggested the USA caused the war by false assurances to Saddam Hussein that we would just diplomatically oppose his taking Kuwait. But then when he did, we sent an absurdly large and expensive military force beyond anything needed and kept it up until the USA had "sold" Kuwait all our old military surplus at retail - to be paid by Kuwait out of their 1/7th royalty.

A curious view. The USA doesn't go to war because America is nice. The USA has become so spoiled in hippy values, to be environmentally pure, totally safe workplaces, endless benefits, welfare etc etc - that trying to keep the USA from economic collapse with the lost industrial base and cheap labor in other countries taking the jobs is a very difficult balancing act - and military action and positioning is part of that complexity.
 
Helix said:
empires fall. nations can last and thrive. we should be a nation first.
Click to expand...

How low should living standards go for your nation-only view? 25% 50% 75%? How much should social security, Medicare, Medicaid, Aid to Dependent Children, Disability payments be reduced?

You also left off that nations often were wiped off the face of the earth - totally obliterated.
 
annata said:
Russian nationalism at work. He's still got high poll numbers there - a lot of support - not just from the old people who watch state TV.
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"Russian nationalism"

Or...

internet-memes-the-most-interesting-pm-in-the-world.jpg
 
Simpleχity;1064105619 said:
Ukraine has been independent and peaceful since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ukraine voluntarily relinquished all nuclear weapons on her territory (Budapest Memorandum) and declared itself a military neutral.

Ukraine did not invade Russia. The regional hegemon you would entrust to maintain regional stability stole Crimea, and is deeply involved in planning/supporting/maintaining "frozen conflicts" in eastern Ukraine, the Caucases, and Transnistria.
Click to expand...

if the EU wants Ukraine to be part of Europe and it wants to get into a cold war type pissing match with Russia, then it is welcome to do so. as for the sanctions and the negative effect on the economy, they mostly just turn the Russian people against us. if Russia did something similar to us, we'd probably consider it an act of war.

these sanctions and the resulting instability will unite Putin and the Russian people in a common struggle. they will have exactly the opposite of the intended effect.
 
joko104 said:
How low should living standards go for your nation-only view? 25% 50% 75%? How much should social security, Medicare, Medicaid, Aid to Dependent Children, Disability payments be reduced?

You also left off that nations often were wiped off the face of the earth - totally obliterated.
Click to expand...

Don't succumb to the dynastic cycle, defy the **** out of it.

(because that stupid theory is Chinese)
 
joko104 said:
How low should living standards go for your nation-only view? 25% 50% 75%? How much should social security, Medicare, Medicaid, Aid to Dependent Children, Disability payments be reduced?
Click to expand...

if we stop spending trillions being the pro bono global police, then perhaps we'll be able to shore up those programs.

i have a question, too : how much more are you personally willing to pay in taxes to maintain foreverwar?

joko104 said:
You also left off that nations often were wiped off the face of the earth - totally obliterated.
Click to expand...

pretty much every empire ends up as a nation, if it's a lucky empire.
 
joko104 said:
We rarely do wars for others for free.

For example, for the first Gulf War we billed Kuwait for every bullet, bomb, soldier - every penny spent. We brought all our Cold War old stuff from Europe and elsewhere - no longer needing it with the Soviet breakup and most of it old technology - and sold it at 100% retail to Kuwait. Kuwait, of course, had no choice but to agree - but then we own Kuwait anyway - an area of Iraq that had exactly zero population - declared it a new country with the head of the camel caravan the king - for which they got a 1/7th royalty for the oil. With such a tiny population, Kuwaitis became the wealthiest-per-person population in the world

We did not fight for Kuwait freedom. We fought to keep our oil and we made the Kuwaitis pay for it. A few years ago I spoke to a Kuraiti businessman who moved to the USA. In his view Kuwait was a victim of both Iraq and then the USA. Even suggested the USA caused the war by false assurances to Saddam Hussein that we would just diplomatically oppose his taking Kuwait. But then when he did, we sent an absurdly large and expensive military force beyond anything needed and kept it up until the USA had "sold" Kuwait all our old military surplus at retail - to be paid by Kuwait out of their 1/7th royalty.

A curious view. The USA doesn't go to war because America is nice. The USA has become so spoiled in hippy values, to be environmentally pure, totally safe workplaces, endless benefits, welfare etc etc - that trying to keep the USA from economic collapse with the lost industrial base and cheap labor in other countries taking the jobs is a very difficult balancing act - and military action and positioning is part of that complexity.
Click to expand...

dude, we just spent trillions on war while our economy crashed, and we borrowed to do it. we've maintained a nearly constant state of war in some form or another for decades. it just does not work, and never has.
 
Btw following today's talk just had to post this gem...note the bird in the right bottom corner LOL



Fallen.
 
Jack Fabulous said:
Spare me.

I'll take the word of actual Russians, thank you.
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Oh, please. The rise of Stalin's popularity in Russia has been in the news for years.
 
ecofarm said:
Oh, please. The rise of Stalin's popularity in Russia has been in the news for years.
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My sister in law is a high school history teacher in St. Petersburg. They don't exactly sing the man's praises as part of the curriculum.

If there is a "rise in popularity" it is among those dissatisfied with the current situation.(current meaning since the collapse of the Soviet Union) Russia has a lot of problems and communism has always been an easy sell to those who have nothing.
 
ecofarm said:
Oh, please. The rise of Stalin's popularity in Russia has been in the news for years.
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And for that we do not love Stalin? Personality controversial, but he did for Russia is not enough.
 
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