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2015-04-20 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

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Posted by g(r)omgoru 2015-04-20 02:40|| || Front Page|| [3 views ] Top

#1 But here's the problem: both countries are currently run by groups who base their identity on being the offended party.

Posted by ed in texas 2015-04-20 07:29|| 2015-04-20 07:29|| Front Page Top

#2 Both Russia and China are presently run by criminal mafias who only think of filling their pockets...Putin just bragged of personally getty majority shares in oil exploration firms for next to nothing and Xi Jinping is systematically "suiciding" the communist old guard...falling off tall building, run over by traffic, falling off bridges, getting melanoma cancer...you name it, the oldies are DESERVEDLY getting it...It's the year of the long knives!

Posted by Spanky Stalin7296 2015-04-20 12:44|| 2015-04-20 12:44|| Front Page Top

#3 And the US is run by a DC-Wall Street mafia.

Posted by Glenmore 2015-04-20 13:03|| 2015-04-20 13:03|| Front Page Top

#4 the US will not go to war with Russia and Putin knows it. That's why he can fly his fighter jets all over EU airspace to Portugal even over the UK and back over the Nordic countries.

The end of the Cold War was great. Russia had a 10-year-window of opportunity to build a functioning democracy. They had no living experience of how to do this but they tried. It would have been difficult for the US to get involved without seeming like it was trying to take over but perhaps it could have helped by proxy through Germany or Sweden.

Sadly Russia had but one democratically elected president - Yeltsin - before the KGB strongman was installed.

Putin could have been stopped in 1999. Putin cannot be stopped now and even if he is deposed he has installed the worst of the old Soviet system in a spy state run by the KGB which has - even worse - incorporated the Orthodox Church into the running of the country.

Reinvigorating that close relationship that the pre-Stalin Czars used to have with the Patriarch.

So what you have is a macho, chauvinistic, theocratic, self-confident and internationally aggressive dictatorship.

and every time the US tries to intervene at the UN to get something done about Iran or North Korea or Sudan or Yemen or Syria or IS or any of the other problems there is Russia ready to back up China in blocking them.

SO the US has to come to terms with the idea that in foreign policy it doesn't have the ability to act as a hegemon when faced with a China-Russia coalition.

You can't fight them. They are militarily stronger. They are nuclear armed. Problem.

India is being ignored as an important ally, a multi-ethnic, multi-religious democracy with a free market. An important bulwark against rising Sino-Russian power and a big stop against the Islamofascist enemies in Pakistan, where the ISI sponsored the Taliban.

America also has the internal analysis problem where it sees state-based opposition (china-russia) as more threatening than asymetric, global, ideological opposition (Islamofascism). In fact, Islamofascism is the bigger threat. And yet we don't act like it.

Pakistan: dangerous enemy, got nukes. Treated as a "regional ally"
Saudi Arabia: dangerous enemy. Treated as a "regional ally"
India: great potential friend, been fighting Islamofascism longer than us - ignored
China/Russia: annoying block at the UN - treated like a feared dangerous enemy

Posted by anon1 2015-04-20 21:50|| 2015-04-20 21:50|| Front Page Top

22:29 chris
22:24 chris
22:24 Mullah Richard
22:23 Mullah Richard
22:22 DarthVader
21:58 JosephMendiola
21:50 anon1
21:37 JosephMendiola
21:26 Besoeker
21:24 Besoeker
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21:22 Glenmore
21:00 OldSpook
20:54 OldSpook
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20:48 JosephMendiola
20:47 lord garth
20:42 jefe101
20:20 P2Kontheroad
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19:31 charger
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