http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/2594541/Russia-vows-missile-defence-deal-response.html Who else is being reminded of the bad old days of yore. Or to everyone else in the world,The 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s when Russia was the USSR and there was threats of World War 3 made every other day? This whole thing is actualy starting to scare me.
Yeah, this does remind me of the cold war. Though this time there's Russia, the U.S. and China as world powers.
Honestly, I am not scared but I am concerned. We (USA) are involved and it has me a bit nervous...the Cold War is back, of that I am almost certain. Russia was never to be taken for granted as a "silent" country...I think that is what happened, they were quiet for a while and now that they are noisy, it is taking people by surprise. This situation is one I knew was coming sooner or later and now that it is happening, we just need to pay close attention.
China was a major player in the original Cold War as well. But we no longer have a divided Germany, Cuba is not the threat it was, and Russia has fallen several notches in power from the Bad Old Days. We don;t have Vietnam as a focal staging area either, and Iraq is not in th esame position (before anyone suggests it). On the other hand, we have some new wild cards like North Korea and Iran to be concerned about. Still, I'm not hauling out dusty, crumbling blueprints for backyard fallout bunkers either. Gone are the days of Red Hysteria and Tail Gunner Joe, and good riddance!
me and anyone following the news, who's over the age of 'couldn't-care-less' teens... what scares me is the whole darn human race!
take that back... while i really dont mind all that much about world politics (it's hard to in the sheltered life ive been blessed with) this whole russia business is quite concerning. im not scared so to speak, because i thoroughly believe that if worst came to worst we'd come out on top. but i pray it doesnt in the first place and in my (entirely uneducated) opinion im not to sure it will.
That's a very sweeping generalisation, Maia... And I think it's shortsighted to say the Cold War ever ended. As long as there are countries with differing ideologies, and the potential power to strike beyond their own borders, there will be international tensions. That said, Russia's recent resurgent behaviour does worry me more than a little.
Yes, it made me wonder too when it broke the news that bad old Russia was rearing up it's head again. If you rememebr the Ruussians started flying bombers out towards the UK earlier this year. We didn't worry too much as those bombers were obsolete and some were in danger of falling out of the sky through bad maintenance and old age. They were more of a threat to the crews than to us in the UK. But it made me think were the Russians getting back into that Imperialistic type mood again. If they are then it means trouble. I don't think Russia are the force they were say 20 years ago, they lost a war in Afganhistan and lost their eastern European empire and most of their nuclear fleet is washed up on the shore and rusting away. They don't have stealth technology and their economy is still fragile. I think the shortage of world oil gives them a certain clout in the world and they are run, by all accounts, by some type of Russian mafia organisation. The problem is their mentality is still in the mould of being ruled by absolute tyrants, democracy is alien to them and that is dangerous. If Mugabe, the tyant ruler of a bankrupt nation, can cause so much trouble in the world how much more can a nation like Russia with a large population (200 million) and nuclear weapons.
Back to M.A.D. For you young'uns, that was the basic defensive strategy from the mid 1950's until the fall of the Soviet Union in the mid 80's. The acronym stands for Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). Under this theory, nuclear war could be avoided if all countries possessing nuclear weapons were GUARANTEED to be annihilated if they started such an exchange. An all-out nuclear war would generate a holocaust such that virtually all substantial human communities on Earth would be destroyed either by the initial bomb blasts, by the high levels of radioactive fallout or by the subsequent "nuclear winter" that would destroy most food sources on the planet. Incineration, sloughing off your innards from radiation poisoning or starvation . . . those are the prospects for 95% of humans if we allow our "leaders" to act stupidly.
Well that's not true... Nine states have nuclear weapons, and I don't see how any other country can "kill us all".
the 'cold war' only refers to the stand-off between the superpowers, the old ussr and the us... all that other stuff is what you called 'international tensions' but not a 'cold war'... and as for the teens bit, i didn't intend that to mean that no individual teens care about global affairs, only that teens in general don't follow such stuff, being more caught up in what goes on in their own lives...
I think Russia believes that M.A.D. may be in jeopardy with the Polish missile defense system. Granted it may only be 10 now, virtually only protecting from a rogue nation (IE Iran), but where does it end. At 10 or 20, 30, etc.? I think they have a valid argument but what they did in Georgia was a bit of an overreaction and pretty much backfired.
M.A.D. was always in jeopardy! The so-called "super powers" just didn't know it. I have a novel in process called "Queen Exchange", in which M.A.D. is actually used as a tool by a radical organization to achieve their goal of global domination. A group of dedicated extremists worked for over 20 years to place "their" people in positions of control over one of the superpower's intercontinental ballistic missile systems. These are cause-driven ideologues and not "nationalists", despite many years of "proving their patriotism" as they earned their jobs inside control rooms of a large number of missile silos. The novel examines the anticipated severity of damage and patterns of damage by a world nuclear war. In addition, the bad guys evaluate the expected duration and extent of any nuclear winter. Since my radicals are not loyal to any country, only to their political philosophy, they have no concern for the complete destruction of the two superpowers...hence book's name, Queen Exchange, taken from a chess move in which both sides sacrifice their strongest pieces, believing they each have a stronger development of their weaker pieces. It is a fiction based on a personal concern I have held for MANY years. Perhaps this would be a good time to release this story??? BTW - I sarted writing this back in the early 80's. When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, I put the book away, thinking (and hoping) it was now irrelevent. Perhaps such a story would remind my fellow citizens of OUR responsibility to control OUR governments.
Well, I can see why Russia doesn't like the Missile Defence system. It's basically the equivelent of them putting missiles in Cuba, which as I recall, the US threatened nuclear retaliation over. I do sympathise with Russia, who seems to be in a no-win situation, given America's military superiority, but I think invading Georgia was overkill. Personally, I think a big worry is Russia and China deciding that they're both sick of US disaproval and dictation, and combining forces against the west. Then we're humped.
