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Russia our greatest enemy?

Turin

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Former Secretary of State Colin Powell had some tough words for Mitt Romney's foreign-policy positions on Wednesday, saying that calling Russia the U.S.'s the No. 1 geopolitical foe was wrong
"Come on, Mitt, think," he said on MSNBC's Morning Joe. "That isn't the case."

He continued saying that the foreign affairs community has been taken aback by some of the presumptive Republican nominee's positions.
Powell, who served under President George W. Bush and endorsed then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, also called into question Romney's choice for foreign-policy staffers. He said many of them were extreme.

"I don't know who all of his advisers are, but I've seen some of the names and some of them are quite far to the right," he said. "And sometimes they might be in a position to make judgments or recommendations to the candidate that should get a second thought.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics...-on-foreign-policy-come-on-mitt-think/257578/

Mitt just cannot think clearly on foreign policy. He really should just wave and smile ... he would do better for himself as opposed to revealing his ignorance. Many center right Republicans were aghast.

John Bolton and other far right neoconservatives on his panel ... ?

Oh ... another point made by Powell below ... right on!

"Look at the world. There is no pure competitor of the United States of America," he said. "All the problems we talk about in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran ... they count about 700 million people in a world of seven billion. What are the rest of them doing? They're increasing their economies, they're building wealth, they're educating their kids, they're building their infrastructure. That's what we need to be doing."
 
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Russia is rapidly turning into a "foe" because of various geopolitical developments. Obviously, that doesn't mean we have to throw fuel on the fire. It is the main reason I voted for Obama in 2008. McCain would have sparked off a major escalation of tensions with Russia.
 
Politics - Matt Vasilogambros - Colin Powell to Romney on Foreign Policy: 'Come on, Mitt, Think' - The Atlantic

Mitt just cannot think clearly on foreign policy. He really should just wave and smile ... he would do better for himself as opposed to revealing his ignorance. Many center right Republicans were aghast.

John Bolton and other far right neoconservatives on his panel ... ?

Oh ... another point made by Powell below ... right on!


John Bolton ios a great man.. Powel is long past his shelf life.. and a joke at this point..
 
cold war is over , btu what is worse ,it became to warm
 
It's funny how the liberals blatantly discredited Powell for being such a liar after his speech before the UN on WMD...

Now they want to quote his every criticism of Republicans as a reason not to vote Republican (blatantly looking away from his racial bias in any matter that discredits Obama)

Condoleezza Rice (who was an expert on US Russia relations) spoke at the Reagan Library in 2009, before Mitt Romney chose to run for president. She said that the Russians continually tried to buck her actions when she was Secretary of State, flying planes over US Airspace without clearance from time to time. She also said it's a shame that Putin has chosen to go away from positive cooperation with the United States.

That's not a politicized statement. It's an accurate reflection on her feelings regarding the Russians under Putin.

Romney is right, that the Russians are our biggest geopolitical foe. If you don't believe this it is because you don't understand geopolitics. Russia and China are the two biggest geopolitic threats the US faces to multilateral actions, such as economic sanctions, support for military action, trade agreements, etc.

For the people who think they arent... name who is? You can't... You could not come up with a nation, that is more of a threat to US geopolitical influence than Russia or China...

Yet, Obama caved in completely to the Russian demands to drop missile defense from the eastern block countries, that are still in fear of Russia potentially trying to conquer them again. They wanted the US to keep the missile defense shield up. So Obama sided with Russia, over our partners in the War on Terror, in Poland, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Turkey, etc.

That's what Romney is right to point out...
 
It's funny how the liberals blatantly discredited Powell for being such a liar after his speech before the UN on WMD...

Now they want to quote his every criticism of Republicans as a reason not to vote Republican (blatantly looking away from his racial bias in any matter that discredits Obama)

Condoleezza Rice (who was an expert on US Russia relations) spoke at the Reagan Library in 2009, before Mitt Romney chose to run for president. She said that the Russians continually tried to buck her actions when she was Secretary of State, flying planes over US Airspace without clearance from time to time. She also said it's a shame that Putin has chosen to go away from positive cooperation with the United States.

That's not a politicized statement. It's an accurate reflection on her feelings regarding the Russians under Putin.

Romney is right, that the Russians are our biggest geopolitical foe. If you don't believe this it is because you don't understand geopolitics. Russia and China are the two biggest geopolitic threats the US faces to multilateral actions, such as economic sanctions, support for military action, trade agreements, etc.

For the people who think they arent... name who is? You can't... You could not come up with a nation, that is more of a threat to US geopolitical influence than Russia or China...

Yet, Obama caved in completely to the Russian demands to drop missile defense from the eastern block countries, that are still in fear of Russia potentially trying to conquer them again. They wanted the US to keep the missile defense shield up. So Obama sided with Russia, over our partners in the War on Terror, in Poland, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Turkey, etc.

That's what Romney is right to point out...

very well said.. and lets not forget that its Russia who is supplying the nuke rectors for Iran.. as thats what Russia exports..

Obama stabbed our allies like Poland in the back .. that was his slap for supporting GWB in Iraq.. Our allies now have to worry that the word of the USA cant be trusted.. Obama is such a low life..
 
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Yet, Obama caved in completely to the Russian demands to drop missile defense from the eastern block countries, that are still in fear of Russia potentially trying to conquer them again. They wanted the US to keep the missile defense shield up. So Obama sided with Russia, over our partners in the War on Terror, in Poland, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Turkey, etc.

That's what Romney is right to point out...
CHICAGO -- NATO says that its European missile shield is up and running with a basic capability to shoot down incoming missiles.

Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Sunday the declaration of "interim capability" at the alliance's summit in Chicago is a first step toward a goal of establishing full coverage of Europe by 2018. A final stage is planned for 2022 that would also provide coverage of the United States from Europe.

The Obama administration has touted the progress as sign of alliance solidarity. But it is mainly paid for and operated by the United States. In Chicago, the administration turned over operational control of parts of the system to NATO. The administration said that other NATO allies committed over $1 billion to support infrastructure for the system.

NATO Declares Missile Shield up and Running - ABC News
 
The Russians are not our friends......Kruschev said "we will bury you".....I like what a great president Ronald Reagan said, "Trust but verify."
 
CHICAGO -- NATO says that its European missile shield is up and running with a basic capability to shoot down incoming missiles.

Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Sunday the declaration of "interim capability" at the alliance's summit in Chicago is a first step toward a goal of establishing full coverage of Europe by 2018. A final stage is planned for 2022 that would also provide coverage of the United States from Europe.

The Obama administration has touted the progress as sign of alliance solidarity. But it is mainly paid for and operated by the United States. In Chicago, the administration turned over operational control of parts of the system to NATO. The administration said that other NATO allies committed over $1 billion to support infrastructure for the system.

NATO Declares Missile Shield up and Running - ABC News

good old "interim capabality"... considering we already had it in place...

is this considered a "flip-flop" or an "evolution"?

Barack Obama surrenders to Russia on Missile Defence – Telegraph Blogs

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Obama's Doublespeak on Russian Missile Defense and Israel

oh but wait until after the election, to find out his true feelings... as he told Medvedev...
 
good old "interim capabality"... considering we already had it in place...
No, not all of it, and Putin isn't protesting over old shields, his objection (at least what you are talking about) is to the new system.

is this considered a "flip-flop" or an "evolution"?
Looks like it is a new system.

Yeah, it is bad to speculate on international negotiations on ICBM's/Missile Shields when you don't know the full story.

It is funny, some of the system is directed at defending the region from Russian missiles, but Obama gets damned for doing exactly what Romney wants. Meanwhile, you still deny Romney's expansive defense spending plans.
 
Russia is not all smiles and sunshine, but they need to be held in check with pragmatic diplomacy, not pointless threats. This "number one enemy" crap is as stupid as the axis of evil and has no place in effective foreign policy.
 
Yep, with Al-Qaeda attacks, radical Islam, and debt getting sold to China forget about all that because Russia is our greatest enemy :roll:

Amazing how much hyperbole many on the right spew.
 
Although the U.S. and Russia currently have a number of conflicting interests including spheres of influence, worries about the balance of power, role of the national interest relative to commercial interests, etc., it is an overstatement to describe Russia as the United States' leading geopolitical foe. Russia (then the USSR) has not been in such a position since the end of the Cold War. There are also significant shared interests in areas of national security and economics.

Historically, Russia has been restless and insecure. Its quest for stability via enlargement long preceded its period as an ideological crusader under Soviet totalitarianism. Today, with a shrinking population, falling life expectancy, eroding conventional military capacity, and restive populations along its frontiers, Russia's sense of insecurity is particularly elevated. Through that prism, it sees today's limited missile defense systems, as somewhat stealthy building blocks of a far more robust future system that will render its strategic nuclear arms, its ultimate security guarantor, completely irrelevant. If it believes today's planned missile defense systems are an overreaction to a much smaller threat than what the U.S. calculates--and that is not an entirely unreasonable argument--it sees their planned installation in Russia's "Near Abroad" as proof that the U.S. now believes it can ignore Russia's critical interests. In turn, that further feeds its sense of insecurity given its very real domestic challenges. Finally, even if some of Russia's political leaders harbored faint hopes of one day being integrated into the European Union, the current fiscal problems in the EU make such a prospect even less likely. Therefore, Russia finds itself in a psychological position of seeing itself weakening on account of difficult domestic challenges and confronted by an unstable periphery, all the while options for integration in a larger community are dissipating.

In the meantime, the U.S., which is facing its own challenges. It is still coming to grips with the reality that the hypothesis of preeminence was illusion. The U.S. was the world's greatest power, but its power fell short of preeminence, meaning that there were limits. It's having difficulty acknowledging the emerging competitiveness gaps in various economic sectors. It sees the global balance of power shifting, currently mainly in the economic arena, though eventually where economic power emerges, military power often has followed. Its own confidence has been dented by a financial crisis and recession that reaffirmed market limitations. Its policy makers remain unwilling and unable to even begin to lay out a cohesive and effective fiscal consolidation plan, even as fiscal crises singe parts of Europe. Its horizons, ranging from energy to space, have begun to narrow.

Ironically, little of what is plaguing Russia has to do with the U.S. At the same time, little that challenges the U.S. has to do with Russia. A convergence of shared interests in numeorus economic and security spheres and skillful diplomacy should make it possible for both countries to avoid a collision course. Such an outcome is far from inevitable. Both would actually benefit from deeper cooperation. Yet, it appears that skillful diplomacy is lacking. In Russia, psychological fears haunt the foreign policy landscape, masking opportunities for its diplomats. In the U.S., assumptions of preeminence that, if they truly existed, would diminish the need for diplomacy, have stunted the foreign policy outlook and led the nation to continue to relegate diplomacy to a lesser role than is warranted. Both nations' challenges have drained their diplomacy of creativity.

Much more could and should have been done prior to this point to sustain and strengthen bilateral relations. The much vaunted "Reset" was rich in rhetoric, but lacking in concreteness when it came to addressing core differences. The alternative modeled after Cold War-era Soviet-U.S. rivalry will only exacerbate current tensions and deprive both countries of mutually beneficial cooperation in areas of overlapping interest.
 
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Yep, with Al-Qaeda attacks, radical Islam, and debt getting sold to China forget about all that because Russia is our greatest enemy :roll:

Amazing how much hyperbole many on the right spew.
This might be a good thing, since I believe that much of the dysfunction in D.C., coming from the RW, is due to their substituting communist enemies for "liberals" in the US. The extremism towards the American left I bet could be mapped as as an inverse function in the decline of the Soviet threat.
 
John Bolton ios a great man.. Powel is long past his shelf life.. and a joke at this point..


Translated for the intelligent, "Powell disagreed with Bush, therefore he sucks. Bolton didn't, therefore he's great. God, I miss the Cold War." Guess what? If Russia's still our biggest threat, then I guess Reagan didn't win the Cold War after all.

Powell is right, he knows what he's talking about. Every day I see something to make me reconsider voting for Romney. My children are Russian, and I don't want to have their President telling them that their birthplace is bad. They are dual citizens right now, and rhetoric like this threatens the existence of my family.
 
Why would Russia be a bigger threat than China?
 
This might be a good thing, since I believe that much of the dysfunction in D.C., coming from the RW, is due to their substituting communist enemies for "liberals" in the US. The extremism towards the American left I bet could be mapped as as an inverse function in the decline of the Soviet threat.

Their last decent President had a Russian enemy. Since the end of the USSR, the Republican party hasn't known what to do as far as foreign policy goes.
 
Why would Russia be a bigger threat than China?
China has @ 145 nuclear warheads, whereas Russia still has:

As of July 2009, Russia's strategic arsenal reportedly shrunk to 2,723 warheads, including: 367 ICBMs with 1,248 warheads, 13 SSBNs with 591 warheads and 76 bombers with 884 warheads.
 
Yep, with Al-Qaeda attacks, radical Islam, and debt getting sold to China forget about all that because Russia is our greatest enemy :roll:

Amazing how much hyperbole many on the right spew.


amazing how polly anna and out to lunch so many on the left are.... hwo did that video message to Iran go from Obama, about the russain nuke progarm being built Iran
 
Translated for the intelligent, "Powell disagreed with Bush, therefore he sucks. Bolton didn't, therefore he's great. God, I miss the Cold War." Guess what? If Russia's still our biggest threat, then I guess Reagan didn't win the Cold War after all.

Powell is right, he knows what he's talking about. Every day I see something to make me reconsider voting for Romney. My children are Russian, and I don't want to have their President telling them that their birthplace is bad. They are dual citizens right now, and rhetoric like this threatens the existence of my family.

nah...Powwel is just a blowhard that is greatly overated period.. where Bolton is spot on the truth and panders to nobody..period...

hows that..
 
amazing how polly anna and out to lunch so many on the left are.... hwo did that video message to Iran go from Obama, about the russain nuke progarm being built Iran

So Reagan didn't win the Cold War then?
 
nah...Powwel is just a blowhard that is greatly overated period.. where Bolton is spot on the truth and panders to nobody..period...

hows that..

Bolton is the most undiplomatic diplomat ever.
 
Bolton is the most undiplomatic diplomat ever.


who cares.. like the sscum he dealt with at the UN was any good?...you do know Im sure all about oil for food..

Bolton was repsected unlike who is it now Susan Rice?... or some completer zero tht is stepped on like a doormat
 
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