What's Russia's game plan?

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by alexander

Forgetting that US signed the Missile Defense System contract with Poland?

Yes and not just Poland- UK and other Euro/NATO States as well.
France has missile silos all over the countryside (I stumbled across one once)
Also USA is renovating old warheads at home and building more as well.

Russia has always historically been paranoid (with good reason) and these sort of actions of the USA are provocative in the least.
It is as provocative as Russia putting missile sites in Cuba.

[alexander]

Yeah, unfortunately Russian history makes them the way they are, that is they don't trust anyone outside of themselves. Life made them this way Just all the wars, invasions, and conflicts they got involved in, the hundreds of years of wars with various easter empires, hundreds of years of wars with Germans, the Poles trying to constanty overthrow the gov-t, occasional French conflicts, and wars with Britain, and the Turks, so forth this has been a problem for many years that has hardened russia's outlook on the outside neighbors...

[Boerseun]

That could be said about practically any European country you'd care to mention...

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

That could be said about practically any European country you'd care to mention...

Portugal ?
Spain?
Greece?
Italy?
Switzerland?
Sweden?
Denmark?
Turkey?
Malta?
Baltic states?
Russians have never really been a full member of the EC.
I feel sorry for their people. They have suffered so much for so long.


USSR or Russia has been invaded by everyone sine time immemorial.Chinese, Mongols, Japanese, Turks, French, Germans, French, Germans, Germans.
So why would you not be paranoid about the USA plonking an IBM 100Km from your border??

Read "Stalingrad" if you really want to understand their fear and paranoia.
Also probably the root causes of the "Cold War"

[freeztar]

The big question is: Would they really nuke Poland? What would be the consequences?

[Buffy]

Gotta love Dan Froomkin...

Originally Posted by Dan Froomkin, Washington Post, 8/27/08

This is what it's come to. On Monday, President Bush issued a statement very sternly calling on Russian leaders not to recognize the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries.

Within hours, the Russians went ahead and did it anyway.

So on Tuesday, out came another statement, in which Bush very sternly told the Russian leaders they shouldn't have.

What explains Bush's manifest lack of leverage? Russia, fat on oil profits, is clearly intent on reasserting its sphere of influence, and an act of provocation by Georgia gave them just the excuse they were looking for. But there's something almost personal about the way Russia is flouting Bush's warnings. Is it because of all those times Bush poked the bear? Or is it because our military is otherwise occupied? Is it because Bush has squandered America's moral authority? Or is just because he's a lame duck? Maybe it's on account of Bush's demeaning nickname for Vladimir Putin. Take your pick.

"Pooty-Poot" (the nickname referenced above) sure knows when he's holding a royal flush, and he's letting Mr. Shrub suffer for his indiscretions and incuriosity...

People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power,
Buffy

[alexander]

Originally Posted by B, wait i mean Mr. B :)

That could be said about practically any European country you'd care to mention...

Actually no it can not, not to the extent that Russia has seen it. Also you have to remember the ancestoral inherritance of the russian people as a whole.

So why do i disagree with you, even though i always say Boerseun is the man. This has partly to do with the fact that i specialize in russian history, i also enjoy and read about european history, to be able to relate and contrast these two societies, and they were so vastly different, they should be considered as such. Europe has always been at war, and that is a fact, from the roman empire, to the events in the 40s it is fair to say that europe has seen its fair share of conflict. It has taught them to trust some allies, to never underestimate their enemy, to invest into war technology, and to progress. These are not all bad things, not at all, it drove europe to industrialize, and join together in one giant economic entity, and everyone is always eager to try new things.

Russia was different, waay different, and here are a few things to remember. It is a very, very conservative country rather it is filled with very conservative people. The country was, for many hundreds of years, a set of city-states, each governed by a knyaz', with very little, to no central management. The country was plagued by war, from Tatar-Mongols, who reaked havoc in Russia for over 300 years. At the same time countless attempts to conquer Russian regions, such as that of Kiev region, were attempted by both German and Polish forces. Then Russia united, and they were still not in the clear, continuing wars with the ottoman empire, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Polland (which at some point tried to set up a coup in Russia, overthrow the tzar and put their own queen on the throne). And all this closed Russia more and more, less and less people wanted to change their ways, or be influenced by the outside. Peter made the first big stride towards the west, but even then Russia was a 100 years back from the other countries, and it continued and continues to this day. You gotta remember here, Britain industrialized in the late 1700ds, France followed close by in 1795, Germany followed in the second wave of it 1870, russia didn't start industrializing till WWI and was still a huge mix of industrial and feudal/farming mix until past WWII. This, even in today's world, is reflected in how people from outside are viewed in Russian people's views of people from other countries, while todays population is used to them, and tolerate, they are still viewed and concerned about, though not in a feared way, but certainly not in a very trusting way either....

hope that kind of explains my thought...

[alexander]

Originally Posted by freezy

Would they really nuke Poland?

Payback time? Though they did get their butts kicked real bad, last time Polland sent a bunch of knights into the country, to overthrow knyaz Alexander (probably heard of Alexander Nevsky, you would have if you read any early Russian history, well mid 1200ds)

[Michaelangelica]

People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power,

Nice turn of phrase Buffy

Thanks Alexander for the history.
Didn't Catherine the Great really do a lot to bring Russia into the modern world?
I read her biography. That and Stalingrad are the only two books I have read on Russia
Was she before or after Peter?

I think Stalingrad explains a lot about Russia. It is a mos terrifying book. You cannot believe the privations Russians (and Germans) went though)

Churchill knew that after WW2 Russia would appropriate buffer states which became USSR. This would stop any future invasions of the "Mother Country"
That's why Churchill wanted the Yanks to invade via Greece rather than Italy. But he lost that fight.
Secretly arming the Greek partisans didn't help him a lot either. Different factions just seemed to shoot each other.

The other interesting thing about USSR is that the Yanks had virtually no reasonable intelligence on Russia in 1945. So the USA (was it "Wild Bill" Donovan?) just appropriated the German Secret Service. (Russian Dept.)
I am positive that a big part of the reasons for the long Cold War after WW2was the paranoia of the new German, now CIA agents , working in USA.
Read Stalingrad and you will see how bloody terrified the Germans were of the Russians.

It is interesting that before WW2 the USA were appalled by the whole 'spy and spying thing'. In British terms they thought it "Just wasn't Cricket". It was neither proper or polite. Many in high office, in politics and the forces, thought it "grubby" and not the way one should conduct a war.
The appropriated German Intelligence staff and SS soon changed USA attitudes.
Sadly, as a result, since WW2 we now have a string of CIA intervention in S. America and many other places-often illegal . Now we have graduated to the quintessence of disregard for other humans in Guantanomo Bay, Abu Grahib etc, etc etc,
The Nazis really were good teachers.

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

Nice turn of phrase Buffy

Yes, indeed! Look it up! And while you're at it, read the rest of the speech too!

Originally Posted by alex

It is a very, very conservative country rather it is filled with very conservative people.

Yep. And what you have to realize is that Putin's "re-Sovietization" of Russia is *very popular* mostly because its perceived as taking the country back to a "more stable" time (conservatives don't remember the bad part of the past, just the good parts, and that's why they don't want change...true not just in Russia, but everywhere).

I think the important thing to remember though is that this trend is not one of renewed Imperialism--indeed, I think the Russian public would not support it--but when it's "wars of liberation," where in this case Georgia was in essence stifling the self-determination of South Ossetia, its really easy to support. And of course the long-running conflict in Chechnya is all about fighting Terrorism.

Liberation? Fighting Terror? What is there that Bush could possibly disagree with?

But Russia is not the Soviet Union, and in spite of seeming roll-backs, Putin can't do whatever he wants without political cover like this. Stop giving him political cover, and it will be much harder for him to justify to the Russian people and the rest of the world what he's doing. Even now, he's smart enough to know that he can't just "invade Georgia": he can get away with "providing protection" to South Ossetia and maybe Abkhazia, but he can't just take it over or he'd lose the high moral ground of "not doing what the US has done in Iraq."

The campaign generated so much heat it increased global warming,
Buffy