Russia: We will attack Poland if US puts Muissle Defense System there

If all else fails, we can just kidnap AK-47 and demand those nukes be disabled.

 

Why is the USA poking at Russia? What is the point?

DD

 

The Russians are nervous because if the missiles were only for defense then the United States would rid themselves of all of their ICBMs and SLBMs. The equilibrium of MAD is upset when one side has a spear and the other side has a spear and a shield. The guy with only a spear may (understandably) believe the guy with both spear and shield will think themselves invulnerable and subsequently act more aggressively than they would otherwise.

 

I don't think Russia would stupidly go as far as to nuke Poland. And if they do, then it'll be them against the world. Nobody likes nuclear war.

 

Nuclear winter whipes us all out....the earth would survive, but humanity wouldn't....

DD

 

Thomas Friedman on how the US insisted on the road that has led to the new Cold War.
************
Let’s start with us. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, I was among the group — led by George Kennan, the father of “containment” theory, Senator Sam Nunn and the foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum — that argued against expanding NATO, at that time.

It seemed to us that since we had finally brought down Soviet communism and seen the birth of democracy in Russia the most important thing to do was to help Russian democracy take root and integrate Russia into Europe. Wasn’t that why we fought the cold war — to give young Russians the same chance at freedom and integration with the West as young Czechs, Georgians and Poles? Wasn’t consolidating a democratic Russia more important than bringing the Czech Navy into NATO?

All of this was especially true because, we argued, there was no big problem on the world stage that we could effectively address without Russia — particularly Iran or Iraq. Russia wasn’t about to reinvade Europe. And the Eastern Europeans would be integrated into the West via membership in the European Union.

No, said the Clinton foreign policy team, we’re going to cram NATO expansion down the Russians’ throats, because Moscow is weak and, by the way, they’ll get used to it. Message to Russians: We expect you to behave like Western democrats, but we’re going to treat you like you’re still the Soviet Union. The cold war is over for you, but not for us.

“The Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams acted on the basis of two false premises,” said Mandelbaum. “One was that Russia is innately aggressive and that the end of the cold war could not possibly change this, so we had to expand our military alliance up to its borders



.

Despite all the pious blather about using NATO to promote democracy, the belief in Russia’s eternal aggressiveness is the only basis on which NATO expansion ever made sense — especially when you consider that the Russians were told they could not join. The other premise was that Russia would always be too weak to endanger any new NATO members, so we would never have to commit troops to defend them. It would cost us nothing. They were wrong on both counts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/opinion/ 20friedman.html?em

 

Depending on the amount of nukes fired. And the amount of radiation that the nukes pour out, and also the location of where the nukes hit.

 

It's been a long time since we had the specter of nuclear war creep into the discussion.

 

Eventually, you'll stop worrying and learn to love the bomb.

 

Exactly. I was about to say the same thing, and I'm surprised that others aren't picking up on this. I don't even remember the Cold War (too young), but the MAD doctrine seems to have been pretty important then. I don't see why it would be any less important now. The big nuclear powers still have nukes.

 

I made a similar point with almost the same languange in the Georgia thread but I'm going to repeat it hear so Deckard will tell the bawdy joke he was holding back in the other thread.

The fear is that with a shield then it is easier to have a spear underneath.

 

There are 10 interceptors. That is all. Even if it works perfectly, it can stop a fraction of a single Russian ICBM with a MIRV.

It is mathmatically impossible that the shield as configured would be a threat to Russian-US MAD.

 

Even so, it still is a move in a game of brinkmanship. You have to make plans on what you anticipate your rivals will do in the future. First Bush pulls us out of the ABM treaty, and now he's actually constructing a functional, albeit limited, missile defense system right in Russia's backyard. The possibility that the US will build a more effective shield in the near-future has to enter Putin's foreign policy calculus to some degree after this.

 

Because the Bush administration just attacked Mexico? Oh wait...

 

Ummm... the Russians just attacked Georgia, a US friend, and are now saying they are pulling out of NATO...


USA is not poking... merely responding.

 

I was talking about that with a friend the other day....the day that the Russian general threatened a nuclear strike on Poland. We were trying to think back to the last time a country threatened nuclear war on another.

 

North Korea threatened to wipe out South Korea not long ago at all... claiming that 5 million people would die...

 

ahhhh...thank you!!!

 

Absolutely. The dead can't think.

 

The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?