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To: governsleastgovernsbest

I’ll say just two words: Star Wars. The nickname given to SDI. It’s what bankrupted the USSR.


5 posted on 12/23/2016 6:11:51 AM PST by Gaffer
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To: Gaffer

Its always a mistake to underestimate Trump no matter what the topic. He’s light years ahead of most everyone.


9 posted on 12/23/2016 6:14:12 AM PST by rodguy911 (Go Sarah go! America home of the free because of the brave.)
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To: Gaffer
The nickname given to SDI. It’s what bankrupted the USSR.

Yep... retired Soviet generals admitted to that.

10 posted on 12/23/2016 6:14:53 AM PST by ScottinVA
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To: Gaffer

The Russians are bankrupt already. But the Chinese military budget will surpass the US in a few years if they keep growing at 6%.


11 posted on 12/23/2016 6:16:05 AM PST by Helicondelta (Deplorable)
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To: Gaffer

YES. Even Russian Generals said it.

Carl Sagan was an idiot for mocking it.

Dead Ted was wrong too.

But I think there’s gonna be a lot of money in military equipment maker stocks :)

I wonder if there’s an ETF for that!


13 posted on 12/23/2016 6:20:26 AM PST by dp0622 (The only thing an upper crust conservative hates more than a liberal is a middle class conservative)
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To: Gaffer
“let it be an arms race because we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”

Would you expect any less?

This is a negotiation. He is letting the Russians and the Chinese know what his opening terms are. What else is he supposed to say?

17 posted on 12/23/2016 6:31:05 AM PST by Former Proud Canadian (Gold and Silver are real money. Everything else is a derivative)
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To: Gaffer
SDI was the easy thing to point to for the USSR’s collapse. It wasn't. It was Reagan and Casey. At that time the best scientific computer was the DEC VAX. It was so important to the advanced design of weaponry. To fund the arm's race Russia had to drill deeper to get more oil. As you drill deeper the design of the drill heads change. Russia needs the VAX to do the design work. At that time Russia was buying on the black market the VAX’s. Reagan told Casey to make it stop. We knew the VAX’s were entering Russia through Finland. The price didn't matter. Well old Casey flew to Finland and met with the powers to be. He explained our laws and how Reagan was upset that they were supplying USSR with banned equipment. He also showed them the embargo orders that Reagan had signed for Finland. Stop the shipments to Russia of be a Nordic Cuba. The shipments stopped. Russia couldn't design new drill heads and their black gold supply died. They ran out of oil money to fund their economy and Star Wars at the same time.
18 posted on 12/23/2016 6:32:13 AM PST by Kozy (new age haruspex)
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To: Gaffer

The Donald has been studying carefully how Ronaldus Magnus dealt with the then Soviet Union, and is applying the same sort of solutions in today’s context. Like Reagan, Trump has inherited a vastly weakened and woefully under-prepared war making apparatus, and this is an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Force the Russian Federation to spend themselves into economic oblivion, if that is the way they want to play the game, otherwise the Russians can gear back a little and play a much longer game of forging a more solid economic base, and rely less on military buildup. We are going to build up our second-strike capability to such a degree that any attacker will very carefully consider the consequences if their first strike is less than a knockout punch.


24 posted on 12/23/2016 6:46:41 AM PST by alloysteel (It is OK to use the greeting "Merry Christmas" again. Happy birthday, Jesus!)
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To: Gaffer; governsleastgovernsbest

“I’ll say just two words: Star Wars. The nickname given to SDI. It’s what bankrupted the USSR.”


That is partially true. There were numerous factors and numerous players.

1) Reagan began the biggest military buildup we had seen since the 1950s (when we created the nuclear triad, fought the Korean War and built numerous classes of fighters, bombers and ships, all for less than 10% of GNP). The Soviets realized quickly that they could not overpower us in Europe with existing forces, and began to build up their own forces - which they really couldn’t afford to do, as they were already spending about 20% of GNP on defense, which is a crushingly high burden in ANY economy, let alone one with the built-in massive inefficiencies of Socialism.

2) We did our level best to cut off their supply of hard money from exports. Reagan leaned, HARD, on the Euroweenies to NOT accept the Soviet natural gas pipeline (which would have raised $10 billion/year for them, and allowed them to dictate policy to the Euroweenies - especially during the winter). Putting Pershing II missiles into Germany over great objection showed the Euroweenies and the Russians alike that Reagan had steel in his spine. Additionally, we convinced the Saudis to produce oil like crazy, so as to drive the price of oil down - I remember that for a week or so it even hit $8/bbl. Soviet oil exports became nearly worthless, and they even had to shut down a lot of production because they were losing money hand over fist. We incentivized the Saudis to do this by allowing them to invest in our (booming because of the tax cut and oil price cut) economy, sold them damned near anything they wanted to defend themselves against Iran’s mullahs and a possible Soviet invasion of the Mideast, and gave military guarantees of the security of both their country and their regime (why else do you think that we rushed half a million guys and their equipment - enough to have defeated a Soviet invasion of Europe - to the Gulf in 1990-91?).

3) We had lots of unrest in Eastern Europe, a large part of which was fomented behind the scenes by the anti-Communist Pope, JPII. Don’t wonder too much why there was an assassination attempt against him in May, 1981 - even though it was a Moslem who shot him, no one will ever convince me that the Soviets were NOT behind it (and there is some agreement among people who know a LOT more about it than I do - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II_assassination_attempt ).

4) We (and our allies - particularly Israel in terms of electronics) simply built better weapons. This started even before Reagan, but accelerated under him. I was taking a class in Military Strategy from Edward Luttwak at Georgetown in the Fall of 1982. He had been an advisor to the Reagan transition team, and was a (rather highly) paid consultant to the Pentagon after Reagan took office. At the beginning of the 1982 Lebanon War, Israel shot down over 80 Syrian aircraft in a single day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mole_Cricket_19 Luttwak told us that there was intelligence (that had previously appears in Aviation Week and Space Technology (A.K.A. “Avaiation Leak” - so he didn’t violate any security protocols) that the Soviet General Staff had come to the Politburo and basically told them, “We cannot beat the West because their technology is far better than ours, and is pulling away from us quickly - work out the best political deal that you can to save us.” That, by the way, is why they installed Gorbachev - a reformer - instead of another half-dead, lock-step Communist to continue doing the same old thing.

I would argue that SDI was a very important part of our military build-up, but was far more important as a psychological matter within the minds of the Soviet leadership. They had witnessed, during the 1960s, the US start from WAY behind them in rocket/space technology and then, on the whim of Kennedy’s “we will land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade and bring him back alive” speech, proceeded to do exactly that. We completely outstripped them, and as part of that process built an enormous space industry infrastructure that just buried the Soviets. They never forgot that - and the chief lesson that they learned was that if the Americans set their minds and money upon achieving some technological goal, no matter how fantastic and ambitious it may seem at the time, they will achieve it and completely outclass the Soviet Union in the process. So when Reagan proposed SDI and then spent a bunch of money to lay the groundwork for it, they took it seriously - maybe a bit too much, because the stated goals were incredibly ambitious for the technology of the day. We could do that now and over the next decade or so (especially with the improvements in laser technology that have occurred and will occur over the next 5-10 years), but then it was impossible - though the Soviet leadership believed that we could at least negate a large portion of their nuclear arsenal.

Under Trump, we have a far greater economic advantage over the Russians than the US did over the Soviets. Russia has large foreign monetary reserves, but is depleting them quickly. The Russian economy is certainly stronger (which is to say, more capitalistic) than under the Soviets, but they don’t control Ukraine, and don’t have the buffer of Eastern Europe. They are much more of a Potemkin Village than most would believe. If there is an arms race, Trump is correct that we will beat all comers (especially the Russians), and without too much difficulty, at that. China has a lot more money than Russia, but its technology isn’t as good and its population is nowhere near as educated as the US population (yes, even as pitiful as our students are at times). We will have twin gigantic stimuli now, as in the 1980s - a huge tax cut and a massive increase in oil production that will cut the cost of this key cost input of our economy. We will bury THEM.


48 posted on 12/23/2016 9:05:08 AM PST by Ancesthntr ("The right to buy weapons the right to be free." A. E. van Vogt)
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To: Gaffer
...Star Wars. The nickname given to SDI. It’s what bankrupted the USSR.

Yup.

Putin has forgotten the lesson Ronald Reagan taught Russia. The US has a more robust economy and can afford an arms race -- Russia can not.

Might be time for a refresher course.

* * * * * * * * *

The American economy is the underpinning of our military.

The Kenyan's l-o-o-o-ng recession, and massive over regulation of US business was intended to weaken us. It was pure evil intent, not stupidity.

60 posted on 12/23/2016 10:10:36 AM PST by CurlyDave
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