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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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The escalations of tensions from 79-85 is described as the 'Second Cold War' after things actually started to calm down a lot since Russia focused more on interior matters from like 73-79. It's what got the military explosion of projects like Star Wars going full steam.
Everything going on right now is more of a repeat of that.
edited 22nd Oct '16 11:11:51 AM by Memers
Thakfully this time Russia has no promises of freedom, justice, and equality to inspire 'Not throwing away my shot!' feelings in young scrappy hungry men across the ex-Colonies. All they have going for themselves is criticism of the USA, and vaguely Conservative/Plutocrat politics, which won't exactly get underclasses fired up and ready to die. Their naked greed and regional darwinism also paint them as less-than-ideal allies.
With such a poverty of dreams to offer, Cold War III will be limited to long-time Russian allies and the Russian Sphere.
edited 22nd Oct '16 11:13:34 AM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Almost zero. Russia will back down from the no-fly zone or try to ignore it - which, essentially, would mean that everyone else would stop flying except Russians (and only them - not their friends) and American multi-role fighters maintaining air superiority against everyone else. That would be a tricky situation, but neither side would be willing to be the first to shoot.
Other than Syria, the places where Russia is trying to expand its control - such as Ukraine and the Baltic states - are already pretty much settled by now. Russia's grip on Ukraine is too firm for anyone to do anything about it at this point, so everyone's basically given up. As for the Baltic states, they're NATO members. Russia won't invade.
Clinton is very unlikely to want to expand US military involvement anywhere, because it would be very unpopular with her supporters, and unlikely to get approval from Congress. The only exceptions are Syria and Iraq, where Clinton will probably eventually end up giving the rebels and Kurds more support than they're currently getting. Despite what she said in the debates, I don't believe that you'll get away with it without sending in some forces to support the locals. You'll end up sending a relatively small contingent to one or both of Syria and Iraq to defeat ISIS and perhaps to support anti-Assad forces, and it will probably end up costing you a lot, but not as much as you'd pay for letting ISIS and Assad just win.
Of course you can't really control for situations that might arise during her presidency. She'll just have to react according to the advice of the experts in the milirary, and it's basically a matter of luck whether she'll have to engage somewhere.
Going to war against a major military power like Russia, Iran, or China will be very unlikely. Even protecting an ally under attack will probably not be enough to drive the US to engage. Everyone else will also be deterred by the extreme degree of the military supremacy that the US has over the rest of the world. (I mean, you're spending more on your military than Russia and China combined, and most of the other top military powers in the world are already US allies.)
edited 22nd Oct '16 11:15:45 AM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.@Best Of: Make Mexico a tributary state of the US by force of arms, and suck all the money out to feed Washington?
I apologize for being off-topic with this, but given that Wikileaks was brought up here, I have this to ask: Is it wrong to believe them in general if you ignore everything about the elections, with this
as an example?
Now to something on-topic: Post-election day, how long does it take to count every single vote for the entire United States?
edited 22nd Oct '16 11:25:19 AM by HallowHawk
I wonder how popular that move would be among the American voters - and Congress, as well.
Trump has done the traditional first 100 days in office thing in Pennsylvania, according to the BBC
. The highlights picked in this article:
- restrictions on White House officials becoming lobbyists after they leave office;
- term limits for members of Congress;
- the cancellation of all payments to UN climate change programmes and the redeployment of those funds to fix US infrastructure;
- the start of the process of "removing the more than two million criminal, illegal immigrants" - and the denial of visa-free travel to countries who refused to take back their citizens
Of course, a more credible source
had already reported on Trump's real plan for the first 100 days of the new presidency. Check it out.
I meant to add this about the last article I linked: did you hear about the election getting an extension? Here
's more information about that.
Barring a nightmare scenario like Russia moving into the Baltic States in force, I don't really expect Clinton to push for a war with Russia. And even then I don't think she wants a war with Russia, just that she is willing to do what has to be done to keep Russia from threatening our NATO allies. Something Trump is not committed to.
And I should add that under that nightmare scenario, the US might be able to get Russia to back down purely with a show of force and without landing an actual shot. While in the absence of a US response could plausibly lead to something like Britain or France panicking and deploying their own nuclear arsenal against Russia.
Says the headline of the New York Daily News, followed by perhaps the longest anti-Trump editorial any paper has put out so far. It's nothing that hasn't been discussed here before, but it is a handy reference to pretty much all of Trump's horribleness and organized by subject matter to boot!
I find it interesting that the Daily News appealed to American citizens' sense of honor to oppose Trump. Being on Tv Tropes all the time, my first reaction to the word "Honor" is to add "before reason right after. This is a clear case of Honor and Reason going hand it hand though.
The Tea Party and the rest of the Know Nothings frequently use buzzwords like "freedom" and "liberty" as rallying cries for whatever stance against the government they're making an issue of at the moment. The closest they ever get to acknowledging government as something good is when they wave around the "Second Amendment."
Meanwhile the Democrats this election cycle have been reclaiming the traditional patriotic elements that the right wing have always tried to tie to themselves to make the Democrats seem unpatriotic. Wyldchyld even mentioned earlier that Clinton wore red, white, and blue to each debate. More interesting though is that their rallying cries are distinct from the Right by their association with government: "respect democracy!" and "Save the Republic!" come to mind.
I'm becoming increasingly convinced that relations with Russia are going to get worse before they get better so long as Putin is in charge. Putin's 64. He's not a young man anymore. I think he's growing increasingly desperate as he becomes more and more aware of his own mortality. Especially since he relies quite a bit on his image as a strong-man. Perhaps his increasingly hostile and brazen actions are out of a burning desire to see some measure of Russia's past glory (as he remembers it anyway) restored before death claims him.
Disgusted, but not surprised@Best Of: The most plausible US/Russia war scenario is already happening: Russia and the US are backing different sides of the Syrian civil war and using our proxies to fight, with limited (not sure if there's none) direct conflict between our forces.
The Red Line might have led to an escalation of said war, except that Obama wimped out and did not follow through with his commitment to break the Assad regime. Similarly, Hillary might end up deciding that Assad needs to go and escalating said conflict, but that's currently doubtful as the local fighters are running close to exhaustion.
edited 22nd Oct '16 12:11:54 PM by Ramidel
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Oh that is a given, someone is eventually going to have to blink. And well tensions with China are a crapshoot too, they are who Trump seems to want to fight without the help of Japan and S Korea.
Proxy Wars like this are the biggest sign of Cold War really, when a Proxy War stops being Proxy that's when things turn hot.
Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran/Iraq, Syria/Iraq, etc.
edited 22nd Oct '16 12:23:51 PM by Memers
Read this. All of it. The Clinton campaign is my spirit animal omfg.
New Survey coming this weekend!@Parable: The Democratic leaders may be co opting patriotism, but their base is more apathetic, and in many cases downright hostile to the United States and a nation and an identity. That said I really like Hillary's red white and blue outfit rotation.
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.![]()
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edited 22nd Oct '16 12:44:11 PM by blkwhtrbbt
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

Putin is basically a one man version of The Remnant. Unfortunately, he's the one in charge of Russia.
Disgusted, but not surprised