Posted on 04/02/2006 8:36:37 PM PDT by Flavius
MOSCOW -- In this city, it's beginning to feel like a new Cold War, driven by what many people here see as an old American impulse: to encircle, weaken or even destroy Russia, just as the country is emerging from post-Soviet ruins as a cohesive, self-confident and global power.
The specter of a U.S. nuclear first strike even resurfaced this month. An article in Foreign Affairs magazine, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, suggested that the United States could hit Russia and China without serious risk of retaliation. That sent heads spinning here with visions of Dr. Strangelove.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Russian paranoia ?
The first cold war was the Soviet Union's idea. I dare say another would be Russia's idea. They are a dying country though I doubt they can do much. China is much more dangerous.
i don't think we think of Russia much at all.
Translation: Left wing media STILL trying to demonstrate that the USA caused the Cold war by "encircling" the poor Soviet Union. They never give up. They are relentless.
Dumass Putin and his fellow travellers are the ones starting up the Cold War II;
The US and Russia COULD be great allies, and would be if it were up to America and Americans.
But Putin's secret and not quite secret sharing weapons, technology and tactics with the Islamic enemies of civilization, we are looking at the bad old days of the 50s & 60s, compounded by having a 12th century cult that hates EVERYONE armed with 21st century weapons....
You can take the boy out of the KGB, but apparently you can't take the KGB out of the boy.
Blame any new USA / Russian problems directly on Putin.
"Since the Cold War's end, the U.S. nuclear arsenal has significantly improved. The United States has replaced the ballistic missiles on its submarines with the substantially more accurate Trident II D-5 missiles, many of which carry new, larger-yield warheads. The U.S. Navy has shifted a greater proportion of its SSBNs to the Pacific so that they can patrol near the Chinese coast or in the blind spot of Russia's early warning radar network. The U.S. Air Force has finished equipping its B-52 bombers with nuclear-armed cruise missiles, which are probably invisible to Russian and Chinese air-defense radar. And the air force has also enhanced the avionics on its B-2 stealth bombers to permit them to fly at extremely low altitudes in order to avoid even the most sophisticated radar. Finally, although the air force finished dismantling its highly lethal MX missiles in 2005 to comply with arms control agreements, it is significantly improving its remaining ICBMs by installing the MX's high-yield warheads and advanced reentry vehicles on Minuteman ICBMs, and it has upgraded the Minuteman's guidance systems to match the MX's accuracy."
"Some may wonder whether U.S. nuclear modernization efforts are actually designed with terrorists or rogue states in mind. Given the United States' ongoing war on terror, and the continuing U.S. interest in destroying deeply buried bunkers (reflected in the Bush administration's efforts to develop new nuclear weapons to destroy underground targets), one might assume that the W-76 upgrades are designed to be used against targets such as rogue states' arsenals of weapons of mass destruction or terrorists holed up in caves. But this explanation does not add up. The United States already has more than a thousand nuclear warheads capable of attacking bunkers or caves. If the United States' nuclear modernization were really aimed at rogue states or terrorists, the country's nuclear force would not need the additional thousand ground-burst warheads it will gain from the W-76 modernization program. The current and future U.S. nuclear force, in other words, seems designed to carry out a preemptive disarming strike against Russia or China."
"Critics of missile defense argue that a national missile shield, such as the prototype the United States has deployed in Alaska and California, would be easily overwhelmed by a cloud of warheads and decoys launched by Russia or China. They are right: even a multilayered system with land-, air-, sea-, and space-based elements, is highly unlikely to protect the United States from a major nuclear attack. But they are wrong to conclude that such a missile-defense system is therefore worthless -- as are the supporters of missile defense who argue that, for similar reasons, such a system could be of concern only to rogue states and terrorists and not to other major nuclear powers.
What both of these camps overlook is that the sort of missile defenses that the United States might plausibly deploy would be valuable primarily in an offensive context, not a defensive one -- as an adjunct to a U.S. first-strike capability, not as a standalone shield. If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China), the targeted country would be left with a tiny surviving arsenal -- if any at all. At that point, even a relatively modest or inefficient missile-defense system might well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strikes, because the devastated enemy would have so few warheads and decoys left."
The article that inflamed that russians was the output of the Council of Foreign Relations. They're the same genius's that advocate gloming Turkey onto Europe and Mexico onto the USA.
This group has been out of favor since 9/11
Likely the hermaphoridite who wrote the article suggesting a first strike against the Russians or the Chinese was not feeling very powerful.
Its a shame the Russians can't hear the sound of the CFR's screams.
The Russian population is shrinking. By any real definition that is dying.
Who in the hell wrote that article? Something that feeds Russian paranoia, and that rationalizes the ChiCom arms buildup, surely must have been written by a homegrown left-wing, ding-bat, "internationalist" traitor. At some point we may have to use our entire arsenal against a rogue state, such as Iran or North Korea. If that day comes, we really don't want to give the Russians or the Chinese reason to regard any major military muscle moves we may have to make against countries that share a common border with them as a possible first strike against them.
Perhaps we were the idiots for trusting them in the first place ? Iran just stated they have been working on developing their new underwater missile for 6 years. That means the Russians gave them the plans and technology in 2000.
Looks like the Iranians have promised the Russians a warm water port in exchange for nuclear plant development (eventual nuke weapons), underwater missiles (now operational), multiple warhead 'radar evading' missiles (reported test no confirmation) and god knows what else.
This is an old argument. I remember the same thing being said about the Sprint/Nike System that was done away with by the ABM Treaty in the early '70's. If the tiny system that we have deployed at Ft. Greeley & Vandenburg ever gets expanded, they might have an argument.
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