Posted on 01/19/2003 5:09:33 PM PST by TheMilkMan
Where will Russia be in 20 years? How did that song go? "In the year 2525, if man is still alive..." I am pessimistic about mankind in general, and the coming tribulations vis-a-vis the religion of peace.
Russia has undergone an amazing transformation. As a snot-nosed punk I worked a little while at the old US embassy during the Brezhnev days, then visited for a month in '93. Russia had nose-dived then, and seemed to be beyond hope. Then when I lived there off and on '98 - '01 I was amazed at at how fast it was modernizing and improving (except for a little setback in August of '98). They went from matchs that would not light and cardboard that fell apart in your hands to a cheap version of Germany. You have not lived until you have almost blown yourself up lighting a Soviet hot-water heater ;-)
But, the old Khrushchev crackerbox apartments are making way to "luksus" and "evrostandart", medieval meat markets (when you could find them) transformed into Aldis. Restaurants serve salt in shakers, cops do not pull you over as much for driving an expensive car, billboards exort you to chew Orbit without sugar. Even the beer is better.
The big question now is China. In order to survive in the short-term, Russia has been equipping and educating her natural enemy. Russia's population dropped severely, a lot of military-age kids were not born or immigrated away, and the remaining 150 million is disproportionally aged. There are now ten Chinese for every Russian, and Russia's resource-rich far east is a tempting target.
If Russia can hold on to her eastern riches, she may even eclipse the US. Her downfall might be China, or her restless growing Moslem population, or even her criminal under and overclass.
It all depends on this coming generation. This makes me guardedly optimistic.
Russian and Chinese leaders face 3 centers of nuclear military power with which they have to deal.
Geopolitical Strategies of Russia, The 'Commonwealth of Independent States' and China
The Commies are coming, the Commies are coming...
The Specifics of Perestroika in China
See my homepage for more.
1. The US having been attacked within the past 2 years by "terrorists" aided by one or more anti-Western nations of the Trans-Asian Axis, resulting in the complete destruction of the World Trade Center and surrounding buildings.
2. A military and economic Axis between Russia and the PRC.
3. An ever expanding band of nations, overtly supported by the PRC and Russia (aka USSR2) all of who are either harboring anti-Western terrorists, or, are arming heavily, in some cases with WMD, in preparation for war against the West.
4. A slow consumption of Latin American nation states by Castro style communism. Once consumed, they overtly partner with either the PRC, Russia, Cuba, rogue nations, or all of the forgoing.
5. As the US slowly mobilizes to oppose the coming resurgence of anti-Western conquest, an "anti-war" movement, funded by international Communism, is creating an increasing political problem for Western leadership.
6. As the US continues to disarm, based on pie-crust treaties and geopolitical blindness brought on by the Perestroika Deception, the sum total of nations in the Trans-Asian Axis (e.g. Russia, DPRK, PRC, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Ukraine, Belarus, others...), when considered collectively, are engaged in an arms race including both nuclear and other weapons systems, which the US has yet to start running in.
7. Beyond the obvious hot spots such as the Near East, SW Asia and Korea, a number of strange undertakings are to be noted in other regions. For example, in ASEAN, Myanmar lengthens runways, builds her air force and cooperates overtly with the PLAN and Pakistani Navy to prepare for.... what? Meanwhile, the PRC builds superhighways and railroads leading to the frontiers with Laos and Myanmar, and, helps those nations to build additional connecting roads toward the south. To the East, the PRC island hops, illegally taking over one after another small island and islet in a slow burn march toward that critical choke point, the Strait of Malacca. Russia sells MiG-29s to Myanmar and sends nuclear technologists, who are joined by two escaping US scrutiny in Pakistan, for unknown programs.
8. More and more, the geopolitical behavior and treaty cheating of the "former Soviet bloc" comes to resemble that undertaken by the Bruning administration during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Meanwhile, that of the PRC simply comes to resemble that of the Third Reich.
To the tin pan critics hammering TheMilkMan's post - Is all of this not painfully obvious?
I'm talking about the the maskirova operation that has been in operation over one hundred years...the sham "defeat" of the Native American tribes. They are lulling us into a false sense of security- when the time is right, when their agents in the schools and in govermnet have made us ashamed of their so-called "conquest", they will rise up, and push us into the sea.
I agree that the so-called collapse of the Soviet Union is a charade. Nuclear submarines rotting pierside are obviously fakes, and so forth. But surely someone of your sagaicty will admit the much more pressing danger, the more insidious threat posed by the "quiescent" native american tribes.
BM, if you'll agree with me they pose a threat, I will let you in on an even bigger secret- the threat posed by the ancient Egyptians...Everybody only thinks those mummies are dead.
So, before you casually dismiss the possibility that Golitsyn was, and is, being proved right.... we need to see how the continued modernization of the Russian nuclear military can be explained...in spite of a supposedly crushing economic collapse. The Russian navy was indeed allowed to lapse into rust...but that would be just the kind of gesture Golitsyn suggested would put us off our guard. They always were a land power. Having a huge navy was extremely threatening. But meanwhile the strategic rocket corps was modernized and made SDI-proof. Specifically, they have refined and continue to improve their national anti-missile defenses, the SAM-300/400s...and associated radar systems such as Krasnyorsk. And deploy the Topol-M, a missile that apparently eclipses our own vaunted MX, with equal accuracy, and the capability of just as many warheads, and superior mobility. It is essentially an off-road-mobile. Our MX never got out of the equivalent of vulnerable Minuteman silos. The Topol-M also featured three key capacities that permit them to boast of defeating SDI:
(1) MARV or MAneuverable Re-entry Vehicles. This would allow for them to essentially frustrate any hit-to-kill technology now in the offing. In plain language, they can dodge and duck the defense.
(2) FOBS or Fractional Orbital Bombardment System. The range of this missile is so great that it can literally hurl its payload around the world the long way around, and come at a target such as the U.S. by coming around from the other side, i.e., a South Polar vector. Assuming our space-based assets had already been targetted by either ASATS or EMP weapons (say from a proxy-state such as North Korea) we could easily be vulnerable to this kind of attack...even assuming we went back to a launch-on-warning posture. This is because a FOBS attack evades our northerly-oriented BMEWS or (formerly DEWS) radar picket detections of their launches, and catches us unawares. The Topol-M features guidance CEP in the same ballpark as our own MX, and hence could conceivably succeed in a first strike against our hardened land-based assets. And of course, in port submarines and bombers, caught off-guard are just toast.
(3) Stealth. They apparently have developed a plasma 'sheath' which their Topol-M's RVs can deploy to render them radar invisible. This would accentuate the difficulty at either detecting the attack in time, or doing any tracking for any hypothetical SDI intercept capability.
The question then occurs, with their continued (and rather blatant, in-your-face, post Moscow 'disarmament treaty') retention of their massive SS-18 force, and their dogged persistence in developing and deployment...currently... this first-strike weapons system....why? If they are our buddies, or just economic rivals, why this collossal investment in a 'destabilizing' system? This persistence continues in the face of (a) our interim failures to deploy any robust NMD or SDI, and (b) our extreme-trust shift away from launch-on-warning and survivable C4I with Operation Looking Glass, almost a complete stand-down, witho a no-launch-on-warning (take the hit) retaliatory policy, (c) our imnmediate retirement plans for the whole of the MX force (d) the degraded performence demonstrated by the Clinton-Upgraded Minuteman-IIIs. The list goes on.
Now PsyOp could well be right, and a dissimulation campaign 'got away' from the Kremlin. This hypothesis would allow him to admit that the phony 'putsch' against Gorbachev and the fleeing of the alleged perpetrators to Spain was in fact intended to implement part of such a deception campaign. But, the strategic rocket corps is still in the hands of the communist hard-liners. Just when does that part of their scheme (actual control of the main weapons, as their doctrine called the land-based mega missiles) get out of their (presumably FSB/KGB-directed) control? And just when do the Communists get out of the Duma? And just what precisely would prevent reactionaries who were in on the scheme before from re-taking the reigns of power and implementing the designs if it looked like we did in fact disarm enough to make it work????
And btw, on a touching side note, despite the allusions to the Buran 'restaurant'...Putin did plan on resurrecting Buran...
Sorry, old news. Gotta move on. Dunno if you heard, but 3,000 Americans were murdered in NYC on September 11, 2001.
There are other ways to display my "Rightist pedigree."
America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
New Link: Download 8 Mb zip file here (60 minute video)
Now, I shall leave you all with this food for thought!
So, unless you believe that Yossef Bodansky, Kagan and Kagan, and even advisors to Bush, are wild eyed, anachronistic paranoids, pale from life in their bunkers, then you might want to reevaluate your geopolitical assumptions!
I'll make a note of that.
America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
New Link: Download 8 Mb zip file here (60 minute video)
To think all those years in grammar school I was, in reality, putting the king-sized smack-down on those schoolyard bullies. I can't tell you how many knuckle's I've broken with my teeth, and how many knees I've dislocated with my groin.
As they say, we play checkers and the Soviets play chess. I guess we're screwed.
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