Well yeah, the Soviet Union was too powerful for the world, it took all we and the free world had just to survive and protect ourselves from the Russians conquering the world and maintaining empire that for Hitler had been an unrealistic fantasy.
We won that war and the world survived and today we cannot allow that empire to reassemble and reconquer our allies and the free nations of Europe.
Russia today is just a 140 million people nation with 1 year draftees that can barely run itself, there really isn’t a country there big enough for us to surrender to.
“Consider the situation today. East Germany no longer exists, while Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and every one of Russia’s other erstwhile Warsaw Pact partners are now members of NATO. So are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which in 1989 were parts of the Soviet Union itself. In 1989, the Red Army had almost a half-million troops and 27 maneuver divisions (plus enormous quantities of artillery and other units) on the territory of its three main allies. Today, it has a total of seven divisions in its entire Western Military District, all of which are based on its own territory. Indeed, the entire Russian army today boasts about 25 divisions, fewer than it had forward deployed in its Eastern European allies during the waning days of the Cold War.
Today, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Germany alone field more divisions than Russia has in its Western Military District.”
Russia is a nuclear superpower.
And it can field a well-equipped, well trained professional army.
This is not your grandfather’s Red army.
The point stands - what are our our vital interests in taking on Russia as the protector of the pro-Russian population in its Near Abroad?
I can’t think of any reason we want to get involved militarily in someone else’s civil war.
And no Russia is not going to back down on its right to police its own backyard in accordance with its own version of the Monroe Doctrine.
It will not allow NATO to finish its creep up to its borders. In Ukraine, for Russia, those are the stakes.
And you -actually- believe Czechs and Germans in 2015 would send actual soldiers, to fight in an actual war, in eastern Ukraine? On the exact same battlefields the Germans grandpas did? McCain has a bridge to sell you,,,
Good. Let them take care of this issue then.
Yeah, Russia is a former shell of itself. On a conventional basis, I think even the U.S. Army of the Vietnam era, circa 1968-1970, could take Russia of 2014, even with the equipment we had in 1968-1970. Still the crumpler is that thy have nukes and can still tear us up pretty bad. Even so, the invasion of another sovereign nation is not to be taken lightly, we can’t go to war over it ourselves, but I think there are ways we can express our outrage and perhaps help out the Ukraine with materials. If I could magically wave my hand, I’d give the Ukraine 5000 M-60 tanks and 500 F-15’s. I think the mistake they made was to give up their nukes, at one time, the Ukraine was like the 3rd or 4th largest nuclear power in the world.