US Missile Defence in E. Europe - the view from Russia

[White Haven]

The telling issue I see here is that the Russians seem set on beefing up their own ability to murder vast quantities of people, rather than mirroring the rest of the world and sinking that money into ABMs themselves. One makes things more tense, one could theoretically end up in a more secure situation for themselves. A Damocles scenario isn't exactly safe, and I would assume they're not stupid enough to assume it is.

[Tanasinn]

snip

The fact of the matter is that the United States just brutalized a largely-secular, doing-almost-nothing middle-eastern country, despite outcry from even its allies. We found justification. It's not at all unfair for Russia to get nervous in the face of such erratic behavior, particularly now that the cold war's over and this sort of shit should be history. Any nation with the political means that just ignored this kind of behavior out of a country that patently doesn't like them is being willfully overoptimistic.

[K. A. Pital]

You don't plan for ten years or twenty, you plan for fifty or a hundred.

Exactly. So what if the next Russian leadership is even more anti-US? What if it supports proxy wars against the US? Would the strategic nuclear planners just think "THIS IS UMPOSSIBLE!" and say "WELL, AMURICA IS OUR FRIEND NOW, RIGHT?!" That's just fucking impossible.

Even more so it is because America, despite it's sole credible adversary expiring into thin air and dissolving, maintains an enormous attack appartus in the form of Airforce, Navy and Army which proceeds to bash up countries in world at will.

Maybe Russia isn't worried about itself, but what if the US decides to invade, say, Kazakhstan to seize it's oil remnants in, say, 50 years from now? What would Russia do? Wiggle it's tail? Or say: "Just fucking dare, and you're vapour" which has been the American motto for what, 50 years of the Cold War?

[B5B7]

I get the feeling that if the Russian defense budget could accomodate the construction of naval, air, and space-based ABM systems, the Russian government would certainly deploy these systems.

Well, why didn't the USSR break the treaty? It had the ability to create space-based elements of ABM and quite readily pondered such projects. It could also put ABM elements on Cuba, such as an EW radar and a small interceptor fleet. Why didn't it do so?

I don't know about Russia's current government willingness' to spend on it, but I think since the treaty is defunct anyway pondering Russia's possibilities is irrelevant.

Russian paranoia is historical, not just from Cold War.

Yes, because people didn't invade Russia so many times in history, and the US in particular didn't once upon a time plan to nuke the hell out of it once upon a time, and didn't massively overspend on nuclear offensive forces when Russia barely tested it's own nuclear device and had virtually zero means of delivery! That's right boys, nothing like that happened. It was all stupid, paranoic Russians!

US nuke spam attack on Russia - no economic/political justification for this.

NOW.

Its conventional military forces are mainly defensive, it is economically draining for them in offensive ops.

Purest bullshit. America has the largest Navy in the world and conducts offensive operations far beyond it's own borders. You can't spout a Navy like that and claim it's "purely defensive".

So over next 2 decades US will become more technologically advanced. And the rest of the world won't?!

Yes, won't. The technological gap isn't closed as easily as you think, moron. Especially in military matters, where you can't just import shit and say "OOOH, now I have those nifty technologies! Nevermind my country is a shithole which can't make such technolologies at all!" - that shit just doesn't fly in the military, and a 30 to 500 billion gap in funding obviously creates disparity in military capabilities. Sorry, your objection is moronic.

I obviously didn't make clear what I meant by "Russian paranoia". You interpreted this as meaning I was saying Russia was paranoid. The intention in saying it was "historical' is that there is good reason for it to be anxious - Napoleon, surrounded by enemies, etc. Sorry that this did not come across in my original statement that had too much brevity.

Also, my statement about the US forces also wasn't very clear - I wasn't saying that their forces were defensive, but it is less expensive for them to be used defensively than offensively [as with say the cost of their Iraq operations], and Americans are rather sensitive about how costly offensive ops are (as any nation rationally would be).

As to the technology matter, I will have to disagree with you there - not all non-US nations are 3rd world "shitholes". It is quite possible for massive military spending in one area to be defeated by lesser spending on a countermeasure. Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, are all at same general tech level - US puts more funds into military [mainly construction & maintenance of its huge forces, moreso than research], but one needs the general tech level to support the new research eg even if US had huge wealth in say 1920 it couldn't build atomic weapons until achieved the appropriate theoretical science & nuclear technology.

I notice you ignored the part about NBC & Delta developments [because it doesn't accord with the ideas about US surging ahead of everyone else technologically?]. Let me explain this further - historically there have been occasions where one side is defeated (or defeated more easily) because the other side uses a new weapon the other side doesn't have or has ignored. USA can have thousands of nukes to destroy everyone else, but how do they benefit if the others can also destroy them, despite having no or fewer nukes because they have cheaper but just as deadly biological and chemical weapons [of course the benefit of the US destroying rest of world doesn't seem to have much to offer in itself].

General Schatten - thanks for "the support" but I actually was talking about the US (& I was thinking more about the army than the navy). You are of course correct that the statement would also apply to Russia.