[Alberta's Child]

NATO has added 12 new member states since Germany was re-unified. It’s remarkable that anyone here would still consider Russia a major threat — especially when we’ve been using their rockets and the former Soviet launch facilities in Kazakhstan to get our astronauts into space for years.

[Zhang Fei]

[NATO has added 12 new member states since Germany was re-unified. It’s remarkable that anyone here would still consider Russia a major threat — especially when we’ve been using their rockets and the former Soviet launch facilities in Kazakhstan to get our astronauts into space for years.]

---

And Russia is 20x the land area of those Warsaw Pact states combined. The rocket thing was a major mistake. We gave up our independent satellite launch capability to pander to the Russians. They reciprocated by annexing 1/5 of Georgia. The lesson here is that territorial expansion is part of the Russian national identity. No amount of talking will change that.

The Russians gave up nothing, really, in dissolving the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. They had merely run out of resources to continue their tyranny over lands that did not want them there when they began their occupation. Are we supposed to reward them for pulling out of Afghanistan, too?