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| Weak economy pushing Russia to arms deal: Biden |
| 2009-07-25 |
| Russia's struggling economy and its leaders' pragmatism will push it to make deals on nuclear arms reduction as Washington seeks to reset ties with Moscow, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said. More likely KGB man Putin has his own commie in the Whitehouse and it's now or never to roll the USA. Russians "have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they're in a situation where the world is changing before them and they're clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable," Biden said. At least Biden got one thing right. From whom did he plagiarize it? The Russians can't afford the manpower, tanks, planes, ships, subs, missiles and nukes to be a major power. A pro American president would sit tight and keep the powder dry as the KGB mafia goes down the drain. I sure wish we had one of those. |
| Posted by:ed |
| #4 "Weak Mind Pushing Biden to Make Stupid Statements" Russia without nukes and a large conventional army is a 3rd world country. Ergo, they are trying very hard to avoid being 3rd world by continuing to pose a threat to their neighbors and the world. To fund this effort, they sell arms to all comers. So, in this respect at least, things haven't changed much. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2009-07-25 18:44 |
| #3 Phil, the Russian military needs to shrink 40-50% for them to rationalize the 4% of GDP devoted to it. They are living on cold war stocks, most of it decayed crap, including their nuke forces. They can't afford to replace their strategic forces when they become so old as to be a danger of exploding in their silos. Nor can they afford submarine based nukes in today's quantities. A $2 billion sub may be comparable in cost to a US nuke, but not when the 11 or 12X difference in GDP is taken into account, while the US nuclear forces are a small portion of the defense budget. They can't compete on high end arms unless Obama raises the white flag. What in heaven's name is the US government treating with a poor, 140M and shrinking population dictatorship like it is an equal or better? What this Obama-Putin treaty does is ensure that Russia can launch more nukes toward the US than the US can launch in response once US set asides are taken into account for unfriendly nuclear armed powers such as China, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan(Saudi). This agreement does nothing about short range rockets and aircraft that the Russians would use against China, Pakistan, Iran, Europe while it guts the US bomber force that get heavy use dropping PGMs on turbans. No thanks. The Russian economy has shrunk 10% in the last 6 months alone. The Russian economy has been very unkind since Bush renounced the domestic oil drilling ban in July 2008. |
| Posted by: ed 2009-07-25 18:35 |
| #2 The Russian economy is booming. Growth in recent years has been about the same as China. Their population trends are about the same most of Europe, although without the immigration. they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years Unlike large parts of the US and European banking sectors which didn't survive the last 15 months. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2009-07-25 17:38 |
| #1 It's not as if we're exactly reluctant to sell arms ... |
| Posted by: Steve White 2009-07-25 16:49 |