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Retired Cold Warrior here.

My credentials: I graduated from the Hudson Trade School for Wayward Boys (service academy), studied nuke war strategy, contributed as an engineer to Reagan’s Star Wars programs, and had success forecasting the downfall of the Soviet Union over 10 years before it occurred.

My observations:

Russia wants their damned Empire back! The Czars spent hundreds of years expanding it, the Marxists continued this expansion, and the current leaders are just as nationalistic.

The USA and its allies need to let limits and make those clear to the Russians. For example, while the Russians could keep Crimea (which had been “given” to Ukraine), they cannot re-conquer Ukraine itself which was independent for much of its history and wishes to remain so.

As for Syria, keeping Assad in power and preventing Persian Gulf oil and gas pipelines from competing with Russia in Europe is clearly the Russian goal. Despite the protest from our Persian Gulf “allies”, I think we should leave this one alone. Maybe the pipelines should go through Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon instead? That could be very profitable for those countries.

There are no Good Guys in Syria to speak of. Furthermore, the USA is a major oil producer just like Russia, Saudi Arabia, et al. Why are we helping one competitor at the expense of another?

The best US strategy to deal with this is to COMPETE with Russia as a supplier of hydrocarbons to Europe. We should be shipping oil, coal, and LNG as fast as we can. Russia’s threatening posture against European customers can result in more profit for the USA. What’s not to like?

Reagan’s strategy against the USSR was to bankrupt them by lowering the prices for oil, gold, and diamonds which were their sources of hard currency. The current oil glut and Russia’s foolish decision to rely upon hydrocarbon exports has accomplished the same for us now. When Russia’s economy is smaller than Spain’s, they do not pose much of a threat to Europe.

As for defense, YES, we should maintain a commanding edge over all competitors. However, we need to be very careful about where we commit forces. In retrospect, it turns out that conventional victories in North Africa and the ME don’t always produce better end results.

One area that DOES pay rich dividends is a robust anti-missile capability.

Few people realize that the most important benefit of Star Wars was not to defend our cities against Russian nukes. That was the public window dressing.

With even a limited SDI, we could prioritize and defend Navy ships in port, air bases, and missile silos thus preserving a powerful second strike capability.

This is what drives the Russkis nuts. A limited missile defense checks the threat of a Russian first strike. They always planned to use a first strike BOOB (Bolt Out Of the Blue) attack to remove our nuke forces. This would leave our cities as hostages and force check mate.

At this time, Russia is only a super power in the area of nuke arsenal. If that is negated, they lack the threat to defeat Europe.

Reagan’s advisers, some of whom I worked with, understood this.

In summary, we need to find as much common ground as possible with the Russians. We have common enemies such as the islamonazis and common competitors. We should be working together when possible.

I vote for peace through strength.