Maybe it’s about which policies you favour? Threats from China would encourage naval spending and would threaten businesses which are heavily dependant on outsourcing. Threats from Russia would encourage missile spending, army and airforce, and would also focus the US on defending the interests of Saudi Arabia. The US and Russia have very few genuine conflicts. Russia and Saudi have a bunch, and the US and China have a bunch. By conflicts here I mean situations where if one wins the other must lose.
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Sure. For example, here’s Greenwald marveling at how Democrats are mad at Russia all of a sudden (as he sees it), and concluding that their outrage must be cheap political theater. In other words, he either can’t see that espionage and election interference by a foreign power might actually outrage Americans, or he can’t believe that anyone would swallow the “official story” that Russia would do such a thing, or he’s pretending one of those two things. (But like I said, I don’t think lying is his style, since liars are basically admitting the possibility that reality doesn’t support their version, so it’s one of the first two.)
Of course, I’m sure when you asked for examples it wasn’t to do the whole “aha but I dispute something about your example so therefore I win this internet argument” thing.
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They, Iran, have huge issues with Israel and vice versa. Israel has bombed them within the last decade, as well as co-authoring Stuxnet with us to attack Iran’s nuclear efforts. They clearly have an ongoing cold, occasionally almost hot, war with Iran.
I thought that Israeli program of murdering Iranian scientists was a pretty nasty policy to add to the list. Was it 5 physicists who have been killed?
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https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-foreign-policy-appointees-are-set-to-provoke-war-with-iran/
The propagandists are already beating the war drums:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international-affairs/312237-trump-administration-should-hold-iran-accountable
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Actually, those missile defense systems can only effectively shoot down short-range ballistic missiles and not ICBMs, Protecting against a modern solid-fuel ICBM is well beyond our technical capability.
MAD lives just fine.
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Okay, I believe him.
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Whether it is well beyond current technical capability seems to be in question. From what I read, the Aegis sea based systems can’t do it for sure. However they are improving all the time. They used one to down a satellite not so long ago. However land based missile defense systems designed to deal with ICBMs are being developed by the US and have made progress. The consensus seems to be that if there was an attack of multiple missiles there is currently little chance they would work. But I think President Bush said it would probably work to stop a N Korean missile.
But isn’t the crucial thing where the interceptors are relative to the launched missiles ? I thought the idea was to intercept an ICBM before it reaches it’s apex. Which is why it is threatening to be ringed by ABM systems.
So yeah, MAD probably exists right now but for how much longer?
It is simple physics. In order to destroy an ICBM at boost phase (which is the only thing the missile defense systems for Eastern Europe could possibly do), you have to accelerate faster than the ICBM. We can accelerate faster than an ICBM right now for a very short period because our missiles don’t have to hold as much fuel, but nowhere near as fast as we’d need to if the ICBMs are launched from more than 100 miles away.
Someone would have to invent a propulsion system several times more powerful than what we have today that could only be used for interceptors and couldn’t be adapted for ICBMs in order to make it work.
Now, sub-orbital interceptors are a completely different beast. We don’t need to place those anywhere near Russia as they intercept in low earth orbit. Their issue is less technical than economic. You’re basically trying to kill an ICBM with a far more advanced ICBM. If you get into an arms race with someone, for every anti-ICBM you build, they can build at least one ICBM. The economics get even worse once you figure in the kill rate of the interceptors.
Reentry interceptors are also possible, but it is a lot harder to make sure the warhead is neutralized (but not blown apart raining nuclear material on people) than the missile carrying it. So you end up with the problem of warheads simply going off near the intended target as opposed to exactly at on target.
So yeah, MAD probably exists right now but for how much longer?
I doubt it would disappear unless we had a shield that could protect the entire US from the whole world launching at once.
I don’t see that happening with actual interceptors. If some breakthrough happened and directed energy weapons or railguns became 100x more powerful and we had power systems to support them, maybe then, but we’re getting into SDI territory there.
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I think its much more likely that the US has far more common interests with China than with Russia. China is the US’s second largest trading partner, after Canada. Third largest if you only count US exports. Russia doesn’t even make the top 25. The US has every economic incentive to get along with China and practically no incentive to accommodate Russia.
However, with Bannon and his judeo-christian centric worldview pulling Trump’s strings, it seems like he’s going to be more favourably inclined toward Putin and his capture of the russian orthodox church (which was the issue that got Pussy Riot sent to sibera) than he is towards China’s official secularism.
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I’m not sure if judeo-christian is the correct term, if we’re talking about Steve Bannon.
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So I’ve read most of this thread and I’m thoroughly confused. I frankly don’t know what to believe anymore in regards to who precisely did what and who’s telling the truth about what they know happened. Gut feeling is generally to trust no one, but especially don’t trust clinical narcissists. Let’s face it, to get into the politics game these days you have to be more than a lot narcissistic. But to be suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is another level. From my meager observations Trump and Putin check off a lot of boxes of NPD. That said there are a lot of question marks about their relationship, Trumps financial dealings being front and center.
So what am I left with? A feeling that an ill wind blows from whatever Trump and Putin’s relationship happens to be for the general state-of-things - which frankly hasn’t been great, but it could get a whole lot worse. And if I look at things from the standpoint of climate change (what I consider to be the major issue of our time) we were pretty royally fucked even if HRC got elected, but now it looks like the coffin has already been made with Trump and Putin standing with hammers to pound in the last few nails. I’m trying to follow the money kids - you’ve got an oil man, Putin, and an emotionally frail character who just named the CEO of the most powerful oil company on the face of the earth with known business ties to Putin the secretary of state. If there wasn’t any collusion on Putin’s part to put Trump where he is, boy, he’s the luckiest guy (let alone ex-KGB agent) I’ve ever seen.
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You don’t need to “defend Putin” to see that America is slowly and systematically whipping itself into an anti-Russian frenzy like we haven’t seen since the 1970ies, if not the 50ies. Uncomfortable result of the presidental vote? Must have been the Russians (and not a voting system that has been severely broken for decades, how dare you) . Botnets attacking shit? Must have been the Russians (because if we ever knew that cyber crime was an international issue, it sure feels nicer to point a finger). Doping in athletics? Pin it on the Russians (that could not happen here, right Lance??). This unhealthy pattern includes liberals, like among this website’s authors and commenters. It feels like you’re collectively losing your grip on reality in that regard, and I have no clue where that is coming from.
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One might argue that the gains to trading with China have accrued to wealthier Americans (who have tended to live on the coasts). Americans who are from states where manufacturing was a significant employer would suggest that trade with China has damaged their interests. One might argue that the US does not need to reduce wages paid to those in manufacturing to be competitive. Access to its markets are more important to China than access to Chinese manufacturing.
There is, of course, a lot of history behind such sentiments. In the 19th century, Slavophiles and Westernizers clashed over the right path for Russia. There was obviously the fierce rivalry with the United States in Soviet times. Since then, there have been low points, often connected with American actions in the world. (The NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 and the American invasion of Iraq are examples.) But nothing like the current opinion of America, which this year sank to its lowest level since the Soviet Union collapsed nearly 24 years ago, according to polling by the Levada Analytical Center in Moscow.
Anti-Americanism is more potent now because it is stirred up and in many ways sponsored by the state, an effort that Russians, despite their hard-bitten cynicism, seem surprisingly susceptible to. Independent voices are all but gone from Russian television, and most channels now march to the same, slickly produced beat. Virtually any domestic problem, from the ruble’s decline to pensioners’ losing subsidies on public transport, is cast as a geopolitical standoff between Russia and America, and political unrest anywhere is portrayed as having an American State Department official lurking behind it.
“America wants to destroy us, humiliate us, take our natural resources,” said Lev Gudkov, director of Levada, the polling center, describing the rhetoric, with which he strongly disagrees. “But why? For what? There is no explanation.”
Putin cranked up the volume after protest movements in late 2011 and 2012, which he blamed on the State Department. It wasn’t until last year, when the crisis started in Ukraine, that anti-Americanism spread even among those who once eagerly hopped on planes to Miami and Los Angeles.
Fed by the powerful antagonism on Russian federal television channels, the main source of news for more than 90 percent of Russians, ordinary people started to feel more and more disillusioned. The anger seems different from the fast-receding jolts of the past, observers say, having spread faster and wider.
The years of perceived humiliations have “led to anti-Americanism at the grass-roots level, which did not exist before,” said Vladimir Pozner, a journalist who for decades was a prominent voice of the Soviet Union in the United States. More recently, he has to explain the United States inside Russia. “We don’t like the Americans, and it’s because they’re pushy, they think they’re unique and they have had no regard for anyone else.”
Anti-American measures quickly suffused the nation, ranging from the symbolic to the truly significant. Some coffee shops in Crimea stopped serving Americanos. Activists projected racially charged images of Obama eating a banana onto the side of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Russians cheerfully flocked to exchange Western-branded clothing for T-shirts with pictures of an Iskander missile launcher that said “Sanctions? Don’t make my Iskander laugh.”
Somebody wants a war.
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No they just want a foreign enemy to keep domestic unrest in check. Sometimes it backfires and they do get a war, like in Saddam Hussein’s case. But Putin does not actually want war with the US, he just wants the brink of war.
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Being on the brink of war is one of the reasons we can’t have nice things.
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You certainly do, seeing as there’s no widespread hatred of Russians and a very real concern for state sponsored interference with our democratic process. We aren’t warmongering or with any Cold War detritus that we had in the 70s and the 80s.
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In fact, all the criticism seems more directed at Putin then at Russia, at least to me.
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I’d agree that there is a lot of paranoia that’s resulting in unfounded/poorly substantiated Russia-blaming but it needs to be understood in context. This Vermont thing- paranoia and overreaction. Claims of Russia actually hacking voting machines - paranoia and overreaction. But that paranoia and overreaction is a result of the fact that Russia has been engaging in a massive cyberwarfare campaign to manipulate the US election in support of Trump, a Russian puppet who not only has a shocking number of connections to Russia, but has had staff that were on the Kremlin’s payroll, whose single contribution to the GOP’s platform was to soften language on Ukraine, and whose talk on crippling NATO, dropping sanctions on Russia, etc. all suggest a very, very strong support of Russia where there are good reasons to be concerned. Russia really was a belligerent in the expansionist Russia-Georgian war that expanded Russia’s control in Ossetia. They really were a belligerent in the expansionist Russia-Ukrainian war that not only resulted in Russia illegally occupying and annexing Crimea, but also supplying rebels with SAMs that shot down a civilian passenger jet. They really are building up bases and troops on the border of Estonia who they’ve engaged in past conflicts with.
US-Russian relations are more fraught due to Putin’s ever growing belligerence, not because liberals in the US is looking for some scapegoat.
Also there’s the fact that Russia was involved in a massive ongoing campaign to manipulate the outcome of the elections not only by hacking into the DNC, the DCCC, and Podesta and releasing document dumps to Wikileaks to manipulate voter’s opinions (esp. aiming at alienating former Sanders supporters and alienating undecideds by adding to the propaganda campaign Clinton’s corruption). But that wasn’t all they did, they also supplied many internal Dem. campaign documents to the GOP to help them in the Pres. and House races at the onset of the general including all their oppo research. That really happened. It takes a good while to go through the whole body of evidence to builds the attribution to the GRU, but there’s evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt that this happened. It’s a really fucking huge deal, so it’s not surprising that people who aren’t Trump fans are holding a poor opinion of Russia and treating this like it’s a really fucking huge deal.
The fact that there was also massive scale penetration testing against US election system infrastructure, apparently by Russia (we only have DHS attribution and it’s not absolute, so this should be taken as likely but not certain), weeks before the election that successfully managed to break into a few systems in FL and elsewhere probably also added to the paranoia about the electoral outcomes.
Did Russia manage to hack voting systems? There’s no good evidence to believe it. Did they try? There’s enough evidence that it’s at least possible.
Did they attempt to manipulate the election not only by releasing internal campaign documents to campaign opponents, but also releasing data to Wikileaks attempt to manipulate public opinion? Yes. Did Russian intelligence also create propaganda and use massive sockpuppet botnets on Twitter/FB to manipulate trending news and promote fake news to attack Clinton and promote Trump? There’s enough evidence that it’s likely.
So that “uncomfortable” result of the vote where a Russian puppet with various connections to Russian oligarchs and Putin got elected after Putin deployed many significant resources to help ensure it, you shouldn’t be shocked to see people drawing some connections, nor given the massive and unprecedented level of malicious interference by Putin, be surprised to see some people getting more paranoid and making some dubious connections.
There have been a lot of reports on botnets recently, mostly on Mirai, but I haven’t seen any attribution of that to Russia anywhere ever. The GRU’s attacks on the DNC/DCCC/Podesta and the attacks on the election system infrastructure weren’t botnets. Private security researchers who have been investigating Russia’s involvement have seen some significant attempts at DDOSes botnets though I don’t think that’s what you mean.
So I don’t pay a lot of attention to sports, but are you saying the mass scale Olympic conspiracy didn’t happen? Are you talking about APT28 breaking into WADA? Yes, that happened, and Russia contacted the press to try to distract from their own scandal. I don’t think that other orgs/people also doping changes that reality, does it?
There is a lot of paranoia and baseless jumping to conclusions about Russian manipulation of various events. It’s coming from a series of very serious and ongoing Russian cyberwarfare operations on US political targets. attacks There’s been a massive disinformation campaign from some sources, esp. Glenn Greenwald, to deny facts, instill FUD, and attempt to manipulate public opinion to minimize and deny the reality of ongoing Russian aggression. It feels like that manipulation might be affecting you.
There’s a lot of claims of a return to a Cold War, but given the reality of a Russian puppet heading into the White House soon, that’s a muddle-headed distraction to the very real concerns of Trump and Putin working together to create an alliance of the US and Russia both run by right-wing illiberal ethnic nationalists embracing a new ideology that’s a new and dangerous descendant of fascism. The reality is that our coming issues are far more serious than a Red Scare/Cold War. We’re more looking at an arrangement between Trump and Putin that’s a new Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact posing a far greater risk to global stability and security than the Cold War.
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Citation needed.
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