Russia To Help NATO Build Anti-Missile Network 175
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that Russia has agreed to cooperate with NATO on erecting a US-planned anti-missile network in Europe protecting the continent against possible ballistic missile attacks from Iran or elsewhere. The anti-missile coverage would be anchored by a US land- and sea-based deployment, reconfigured by Obama from earlier plans devised under the Bush administration. The new idea would be to link individual national missile defenses into the US network and place them all under a NATO command and control center with authority to respond to an attack. 'We see Russia as a partner, not an adversary,' says President Obama, hailing the NATO-Russian accord. President Dmitri Medvedev warned that Russia's cooperation must be 'a full-fledged strategic partnership between Russia and NATO' and not just a nod in Moscow's direction to spare Russian feelings while Europe tends to its own defenses in tandem with the United States."
Russian Game: Assistance but Not Participation (Score:2, Interesting)
That response by Russia should have raised suspicions about the Kremlin's actually sabotaging the des
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"If the Kremlin were a true supporter of NATO, why would the Russian "president" still present Russia as an adversary of the West?"
Precisely, the Kremlin believes that they need a credible foreign threat to keep themselves in power. Truly cooperating with the West would remove that and they'd be left with defending their regime using the same yardsticks as democratic regimes.
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They could like, try to claim that the separatist Chechens have nukes
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There's an old urban legend - dating back to 90s - that Chechens have "backpack nukes" which they have already smuggled into large Russian citizens and wired up. Presumably when they feel things really are bad, they'll push the red button. So nothing new there.
In practice, given the modus operandi of Russian government in the Chechen wars, a more likely approach would be to give the Islamists nukes for real.
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It's really curious in Poland in this regard - Russia is this old, sleazy entity not to be trusted. Somehow nobody mentions how we're the only ones who held Moscow/Kremlin for a few years. And of course popular understanding of partitions in XIX century omits how, on the Russian part, they were almost a personal union - until hardline feudal separatists frakked things up.
(but it wasn't merely scorched earth in WW2, not close)
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LoB
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Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
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Worse, "President" Medvedev has accused the Europeans of using the shield to neutralize Russian nuclear missiles. If the Kremlin were a true supporter of NATO, why would the Russian "president" still present Russia as an adversary of the West?
Why not? They benefit from having it both ways. By contributing to the system, they gain access to valuable technology. And by being very standoffish about it, they'll be in a position to leverage bribes and other income off of even a basic working missile defense system.
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That response by Russia should have raised suspicions about the Kremlin's actually sabotaging the design of the missile system. After all, if the Kremlin is not committed to using the system, why would the Kremlin bother to ensure that the system can actually work?
Obviously Russia would welcome the opportunity to study state of the art western missile defense systems without resorting to the fickle world of spies and informants. What better way to determine the capabilities of the system, and thus its weak
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Russia is the only place with fully operational nuclear missile defense technology...
Re:Russian Game: Assistance but Not Participation (Score:5, Insightful)
Because everybody knows it is really Vladmir Putin who runs Russia, and is Prime Minister to get around the consecutive term limits, and will run again for the Presidency, and win after Medvedev's term is up...
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Yeah, and he is far from supportive of this deal. Curious how this Russia running ends up...
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Check his other comments and submissions, he appears to be on a mission.
fox in charge of the henhouse (Score:2, Insightful)
Eventually you'll own the land, thin your own herd, scare Eu
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Wow, stop putting alum on your cereal or stop starching your shorts.
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Eventually you'll own the land
We prefer to do it in the old-fashioned way, with waves of Mammoth tanks and bear cavalry.
Well (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope the designers of this system know what they are doing. A very obvious design goal would be to make it so that a computer virus loaded in one country couldn't shut down the ballistic missile defenses of another. After all, if one country writes most of the software they could easily insert back doors to allow them to shut down any node of the system at will.
Heck, this system will uses lots of RF antennas for input (such as the tracking radars)...a good back door could be triggered remotely, so long as you were running the same firmware revision as before. So even if you cut the cables linking the control centers together, one country could still remotely disable the defenses of another.
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Heck, this system will uses lots of RF antennas for input (such as the tracking radars)...a good back door could be triggered remotely, so long as you were running the same firmware revision as before. So even if you cut the cables linking the control centers together, one country could still remotely disable the defenses of another.
Joachim: "Our shields are dropping!"
Kahn: "Hit the override. The override!"
Cyber Attacks? (Score:3, Insightful)
typo in tfa (Score:2, Funny)
I wonder (Score:2)
If this will be as useful as the international space station.
yes, comrade (Score:2)
What a load (Score:5, Insightful)
There are no missile threats from Iran or any where else, this is military contractors making deals and the rest of the humans being to stupid to care or notice.
Will Orbital Sciences gets contracts this time? (Score:2)
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Re:We can help you, comrades (Score:5, Funny)
The Nobel Peace Prize is a pretty big achievement, you know.
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The Nobel is a prize, and that particular Nobel is arbitrarily awarded.
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Well the chose Obama on the suggestion of a Mr. Titor, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2045.
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Yeah you don't get something like that just for being elected ya'know.
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Or for not being George Bush.
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Please. McCain wouldn't have gotten it. It's for not being a cowboy Republican.
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It apparently can be achieved by promising rather than delivering on those promises. Still think it's a big achievement?
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Re:We can help you, comrades (Score:5, Insightful)
The only global cooperation here is the willingness for the global military industrial complex to bleed the taxpayer dry. The 'ballistic' missile shield is completely useless against cruise missiles. Now you have stealth cruise missiles, supersonic cruise missiles, long range cruise missiles, their now planning long range hypersonic cruise missles, so really who is kidding who here.
Russia is only willing to play the game for the opportunity to start selling it's technology into Europe, likely that is part of the behind the scenes bargain struck with the western military industrial complex.
Why spend billions on a 'ballistic' missles shield that is completely useless against ground hugging cruise missiles, especially when every country is in the process of shifting technology that way. What is this, some kind of lying bullshit way to squeeze profits out of what is rapidly becoming pointless technology, can't afford social welfare but can afford a broken multi billion dollar missile shield.
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Why spend billions on a 'ballistic' missles shield that is completely useless against ground hugging cruise missiles, especially when every country is in the process of shifting technology that way.
Having a unified ballistic missile defense system does not preclude having defenses against cruise missiles.
And why pray-tell is "every country" shifting away from ballistic missiles? Ahh... yes, because it is possible to detect and defend against them with some kind of ballistic missile defense that has been developed and implemented across much of the world.
As for why Russia is "playing the game', it is because they are no longer the great enemy - the Soviet Union. They are now a country that wishes to
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The shift from targeted ballistic to cruise is because cruise is more cost effective, you can pretty much deploy at ten to one ratio. Especially taking into account multiple targeting options, same engine used with different types to enhance speed or range, anti ship and anti ground targets and of course high export income opportunities. Dramatically extend the range by fitting them to ships, planes and submarines and all fired outside of defence zones.
Ground hugging means defence must can only target to
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The only global cooperation here is the willingness for the global military industrial complex to bleed the taxpayer dry. The 'ballistic' missile shield is completely useless against cruise missiles. Now you have stealth cruise missiles, supersonic cruise missiles, long range cruise missiles, their now planning long range hypersonic cruise missles, so really who is kidding who here.
Not to mention orbital weapons platforms, thermonuclear or even just inertial (put a guidance system on a rock and drop it from high orbit.) It's a hell of a lot harder to hit an object that's coming from space. Are such already in place? I have no idea, but I do know that a lot of Shuttle missions were black. Probably just surveillance or communications equipment, but who knows.
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wrong, no population problem but we only have resource distribution problem, which would mostly have been solved by investing the trillion or ten trillion we spend on war and war-mongering.
No shortage of energy on this world, nor sufficient land to grow food. No shortage of water that can be turned to fresh water by the simplest application of the abundant energy this world receives.
We have shortage of will to get off petro-dollar cartel and shortage of will to invest in condition of humans that wo
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Resource distribution only short-term, when taking large amounts of energy and land from the past (stored in fossil fuels) or the future (spoiling the surroundings). We are above this 2.1, on average [wikipedia.org]
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A NATO-Russia agreement really makes me wonder why NATO still exists.
The Warsaw pact is dead, former members are now part of NATO, Russia is generally friendly. NATO has never been used for it's actual role (defending members), but has been used outside of this scope, unjustly IMO (in the Yugoslavian civil war).
Perhaps it could become a looser partnership, less black and white, instead of being disbanded entirely.
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A NATO-Russia agreement really makes me wonder why NATO still exists.
That is simple. NATO today is effectively a framework for a military alliance of the Western states. Not all of them are in it, but if you look closely even non-members usually cooperate, and e.g. NATO equipment standardization agreements have scope that is broader than NATO itself.
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I fail to see how it's a foreign policy achievement. I see it more as a "He was against it before he was for it!" .
http://security.nationaljournal.com/2009/09/obamas-missile-defense-plan-sm.php [nationaljournal.com]
A little over a year after telling Poland "No", and it seems like that people forgot it ever happened. Googling "Obama stops missile shield" on the news search came up with no articles at all.
Re:We can help you, comrades (Score:5, Informative)
Russia has a missile shield you dolt.
Always had one.
The missile interceptors around and inside Moscow have been since the 70-es. The first missile defence treaty specified that existing systems are to stay. While USA have barely managed to get theirs working for a couple of months in 1975, the Russians have managed to deploy, improve and maintain theirs ever since.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_system [wikipedia.org]
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The thing used(may still use them) nuclear warheads and one of the layer was a total saturation of the area where the missile is calculated to be in.
This is far from what the USA has been attempting to do with small explosion next to the incoming attack.
Re:We can help you, comrades (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it uses fairly low yield warheads and at 20km+ intercept altitude. While not elegant it is a typical russian engineering solution: "Do not force it, use a LARGER hammer".
Do not forget - it was designed for WW3. At a moment when EMP has broken all lose from USA and USSR nuking each other into a glass lake who cares about a couple of extra sub-10K nukes.
Also, the newer interceptors are not nuclear armed and they are also supplemented by S300 at a lower altitude which can also intercept warheads (or at least is rumoured to) at least on par with Aegis and Patriot if not even better.
All in all, compared to what US has got it is probably by up to 10 years ahead.
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Those are roughly equivalent to the MIM-14_Nike-Hercules [wikipedia.org] which was deployed in 1959.
I would hardly say the Russians have ever been ahead of the US in missile defense.
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Right, but due to the ABM treaty (which GWB pulled out of) the US and USSR were only allowed *one* location to be protected by an ABM system. The SU picked Moscow, and the US picked some base in BFE, North Dakota, from what I recall.
Slightly different from a country or continent wide "shield", in that it hardly tips the balance of MAD, even if the system is 100% effective.
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Sounds like a good PR move to me.
"What's that? If Help the West invest time and money into a overly-complex and bureaucratic system that will never work, I can look like I'm cooperating and moving forward? Sounds like a deal to me!"
There doesn't need to be a Cold War, but Russia doesn't exactly want a Western hegemony.
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What makes you think it will never work?
Re:Against who? (Score:4, Interesting)
You do realize that the agreement that was just signed simply ties the current and future European systems (Dutch, German, and Spanish SM-3; German-US-Italian MEADS; French SAMP/T; and US SM-3s in Eastern Europe) to the current and future US sensor network? And you realize that the current network already ties in mobile THAAD batteries, SM-3 equipped AEGIS Cruisers and Destroyers (US and Japanese), and the GBI bases in Alaska and California?
And that the whole thing is in it's simplest form a giant systems integration problem, one similar to what the US has already done?
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Like Skynet ? Everything connected ?
Re:Against who? (Score:5, Insightful)
The "actual enemy" is the potential "Caliphate" opposite the proposed arc of missile defense.
Mentioning it exists is Trollish thoughtcrime, but strategic planners have a duty beyond PC emotionalism.
There is clearly a need to bring Russia into the NATO sphere of influence in a "good way" useful to Russians. We face a mutual Jihadist enemy and wars that may take a century.
We need Russia, China, and India on the same page to contain Pakistan (especially after it falls to its own Taliban and the tiny minority of officials living on US money are lynched) and Iran.
Are you kidding? (Score:3, Insightful)
Pakistan will be running on US funds for the foreseeable future and will be no threat to anyone but itself.
Terrorists use bombs, not intercontinental ballistic missiles.
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More likely we need Russia on line to defend against the only country likely to be a powerful near future military adversary.... China (and possibly North Korea). Iran doesn't have what it takes.
Pakistan will be running on US funds for the foreseeable future and will be no threat to anyone but itself.
Terrorists use bombs, not intercontinental ballistic missiles.
I tend to agree. If there's a World War III, and it is fought with nuclear missiles of one kind or another, there's a possibility it will start between Russia and China. They share a huge border, and they go back a ways. It wouldn't hurt Russia to be on-board with us so far as deterrent and mutual defense are concerned. Russia may eventually end up becoming an ally. How does the old saw go? "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Of course, it would probably be cheaper just to smuggle a few hundred tactical
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Interesting, you just showed a new use for long-term storage in banking safety deposit boxes.
That, and a business opportunity for any company that can come up with a anti-nuclear-device safety-deposit-box scanning system for banks. Now, it doesn't have to actually work, you understand, but it helps if it looks like it does.
An option to automatically generate nude images of bank patrons would be a definite plus.
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Russia may eventually end up becoming an ally.
Ah, just like in the days of uncle Stalin... (well, after we dropped the idea of invading them, few years after 1920)
Re:Are you kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe, China won't try to start a war.
1. they are not fundamentalists
2. they already built their economy to work with the western economies.
They cannot afford a war and they know it. Only "small" fundamentalist states not integrated into the world would try to start something. North Korea, Iran and possibly Pakistan if taken over by the Taliban.
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Yes, they're smarter then that. Personally I see them purchasing a large swath of Eastern Russia instead of fighting for it.
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If by chance those in power are threatened with an internal democratic movement, similar to the Tienanmen Square incident, which could put them out of power, they may be tempted to start a fake or forced war as a distraction. Fundie or not, people in power will often do anything to keep that power.
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I don't think that's true, China's leadership nowadays is quite rational. There's a strong show of support for increased freedoms and civil liberties there, but the problem is how do they introduce that without the country caving in and possibly making China a massive battleground of civil war and bloodshed? If they blanket introduce the kind of freedoms people have in the West then it'll open the door for massive violent revolt in places like the Tibetan and Xinjang provinces. This is why China is resistin
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Nowadays Iran? It's a constant thing for them, with maybe some chance of breaking away from it before the 1953 coup d'etat that we supported.
China is already in a cold war with the west. (Score:2)
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As we are running out of natural resources, I'm certainly not betting against any war in the future.
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It may have been a work of fiction but the scenario in the Tom Clancy book "The Bear and The Dragon" involving the Chinese invading parts of Russia to steal the land and natural resources is not beyond the relm of possiblity if China finds that it doesn't have enough natural resources of its own.
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Russia has incredibly low population density, for its resources - in fact, lower than the average of the planet. Whole planet, including oceans and Antarctic.
(that might mean the "stuff" could start happening mostly around their territory; and Russia probably still prefers to orient itself at least more with Europe than with China, of which this story might be an example - especially considering how China seems to be able to work better with Muslim world and large part of Africa)
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I wonder what would you say at some play on both sides by entities closer home...
(those "nuclear capabilities" are fully controlled BTW, and missiles...we supplied them comparable tech)
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Actually, you have it totally wrong. Iran is a Shia country, they don't believe in a caliphate, they believe in Velayat-al-Faqih. That's not a threat to Europe, since Iran formed theirs via democracy in their constitution.
Bin Laden wants a caliphate, but that's not why he ordered terrorist attacks. He said so himself in his videos, he wants the US out of "Muslim lands" so they can get rid of their dictatorships and thus let the people form a caliphate.
Re:Against who? (Score:5, Insightful)
The korean war was started when North Korea invaded South Korea.
Vietnam war was North Vietnam invading South Vietnam.
Iraq war (desert storm I) was caused because Iraq invaded kuwait.
And afghanistan taliban absolutely were supporting and hiding OBL and AQ when we went in there.
Now, W DID invade Iraq and yes, I agree that we should not have (and I believe that W/Cheney should have charges brought against them for Iraq). BUT, all of the ones that you mention shows me that about the only bigot here is you. Calling this Christian is a joke. America is composed of many religions. OTH, AQ/Taliban/etc are composed of exactly one religion.
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With Korea and Vietnam it's basically moot and arbitrary anyway - back then each side was just as bad as the other. But one was on "our side"...
(Taliban is of course even better, with us supporting them for a long time specifically to destabilize the region / Soviet-supported governing entity...which we now support ourselves; and don't forget how US ambassador essentially gave a green light for Iraqi invasion of Kuwait)
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"anti-islamic racist hate mongering "
Muslims are not a race. Religion is ideology, that is all.
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Nope, that's our doing. We line the Saudis pockets, because that family is, and has been for generations the friends of our petro-dollar cartel.
The religion of the Saudis is Saudi-ism. They use Islam to manipulate.
what a laughable example. Yet another proof the problem is us.
The Saudis are Sunnis, by the way. The Shiites hate their guts.
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That imagined business value is NOTHING compared to the billions we pump to the evil Saudi family, who oppress their citizens including maiming, rape, torture, murder.
And your mentioning that most 9/11 terrorists were Saudis only reinforces my point. We fund the Saudis, who for years funded Al-Qaeda, who were led by CIA agent Bin Laden.
We attacked Saddam, because even though in the past we helped make his reign and gave him his weapons to mass murder, he didn't want to go along with our petro-dollar cartel
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yes, that's how we fund them.
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> go back to sleep there are no threats - it is so great living in this Utopian world where everyone loves each other :-)
go back to sleep there is no debt - it is so great living in this Utopian world where missing money can be printed without any consequences for people that matter :-)
Re:Against who? (Score:5, Insightful)
missing money can be printed
I prefer the term Quantitative Easing [youtube.com], thank you.
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There are threats, alright. There are threats out there that are destabilizing that region, and the whole world. Primarily, the United States and Israel.
"The systems are advertised as defense against an Iranian attack. But that cannot be the motive. The chance of Iran launching a missile attack, nuclear or not, is about at the level of an asteroid hitting the earth -- unless, of course, the ruling clerics have a fanatic death wish and want to see Iran instantly incinerated along with them. The purpose of th
Gratuitously over-expensive (Score:2)
Surely there is a more cost-effective way to address threats, in the same way that you don't need to build an interstate highway for two or three cars. The US military is gratuitously over-expensive. There is no need to spend so much money.
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Ah, nothing like handing a huge shitload of money to the military-industrial complex to protect us from imaginary threats while it's so badly missed in many important areas.
I'm buying myself a laser gun to protect from the swarm of unicorns and elves that are coming to attack Europe next year. It must be true, it was on TV.
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Most of those that you mentioned are allies right now, you know...
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'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?
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'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?
Simple. Not all Russians are evil. But some are.
Of course, you can say that about anyone.
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Re:Earth to Obama (Score:4, Interesting)
Obama is an appeaser in the Neville Chamberlain mold.
There's an important distinction: Chamberlain loved his country. Obama loves the world.
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Obama is an appeaser in the Neville Chamberlain mold.
There's an important distinction: Chamberlain loved his country. Obama loves the world.
Obama has one thing in common with all megalomaniacs: he loves himself. But that's no surprise: it's a requirement for anyone seeking that particular position.
Re:Earth to Obama (Score:4, Funny)
Earth to you, it the U.S. that is the biggest occupier and war-monger-for profit on the planet. It is the U.S. who occupies Japan and many other nations we use as bases to project power globally (which neither Russia nor China do)
Re:Earth to Obama (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Earth to Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
We the people of the U.S. are losing money, yes. However, the banking cartel and military-industrial complex, with our lawmakers in their pockets, are not losing money.
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Hey, I am ALL FOR US pulling out of Japan and South Korea. Of course, japan, south korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, and even India would oppose that To be honest, it was nearly ALL of asian gov. that BEGGED USA to join in the Asian pact. In fact, when the last Japanese leaders wanted us off of Okinawa, we started to explore pulling out of Japan, then the populace voted out those leaders, and voted in some that would keep America in Japan.
Think that it might have something to do with lo
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The President needs to ask himself, what actually changed in 1991? The Russians lost a little territory on the western frontier and some allies in the same area. They were temporarily weakened a bit. As far as I can tell, nothing else actually changed, except the intelligence services replaced the CPSU as the governing instrument.
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The President needs to ask himself, what actually changed in 1991? The Russians lost a little territory on the western frontier and some allies in the same area. They were temporarily weakened a bit. As far as I can tell, nothing else actually changed
Uhh, I don't even know where to begin here.
A "little territory"? Relative to Soviet Union, Russia has lost 30% of its territory, and over half of population.
Weakened "a bit"? Have you looked at the Russian economy lately (and ever since Gorbachev's reforms)? Do you realize that everything that Russian military is armed with today was designed and developed in the USSR, with very few exceptions that are usually produced in minuscule quantities? That its manpower comes primarily from conscripts, the majority
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Actually, compared to China, Russia is a LOT freer. It is possible to vote another party in there.
Well, yes, you get exactly two notable parties to vote - Putin's one, and communists. Everything else are fake single issue parties which either officially support Putin in anything and everything. Any real opposition party or figure other than the commies is denied participation in the elections on various legal reasons (the favorite one is to declare most signatures in support of the candidate as fake).
Then also there's the issue of counting the votes, and don't even get me started there. According to off
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Well, Russia still occupies parts of East Prussia and japanese islands. The Russians are fine.
US corporate communism means the corporations steal from the people and control both parties.
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Iran will be pushed into more revolutions via NGO's, twitter again.
Israel is well protected via its own efforts and what it can buy/find/collect on the world market.
If anyone wanted to use a missile, buy one that works or if thats too expensive, use the cash in emerging non missile areas.
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Us here in Poland think the previous show with missile shield was moronic.