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Sean,

Perhaps you missed the other post I left on the last thread. But I'll rephrase it since it must have lacked clarity. Russia has other enemies besides the US. I grant that they exercise their forces with us as the hypothetical enemy, just as you would be disingenuous to say we do not do that same thing. I went into some detail as to why your source is unreliable. Golitsyn-based conspiracy theories are not taken seriously by any Russian experts that I know of. I do not mean to be offensive, but some of the sources people use when documenting a Russian plot to lull us into complacency then suddenly annihilate us are, to put it mildly, so ridiculous so as to lack any credibility.

(eg. Perestroika was a plot hatched by Andropov (and later Gorbachev) to make the US *think* that the USSR and communism had fallen, but after destroying an economy that was once comparable to the US to the point where it is equivalent to that of Portugal, after letting the military disintegrate to the point where they spent years bleeding in little Chechnya, one of their 89 regions, and after allowing their nuclear arsenal to fall from 10,000 highly MIRVed strategic warheads ten years ago to something less than 2,000 de-MIRVed ones today - - now is the time after 20 years of decline and degradation to unmask the secret plan to catch us off guard and let us have it - - these plots sound like the crazy Japanese guy that emerges from a cave 2 years after Hiroshima ready to fight Americans with his bare hands - - divorced from reality)

Are there still communists? Sure. Are there politicians and generals in Russia who hate us with a white hot passion? Sure. Are there people on the rise who could end up being worse than the communists (national socialists - - my prediction is that Sergey Glazyev, not the communist or liberal-democrat, should come in second in the Presidential race). Absolutely.

But if you are asserting that Russia is our number one threat right now, and folks were to take that seriously and act accordingly, then you would drive them into the arms of our *true* enemies and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. We need all the friends we can get at the moment.

We run through our strategic exercises, as do they. Yes, these are big. That is because they have no conventional deterrent to speak of. This is all they've got. China can start massive conventional war games across from Taiwan if they want to rattle cages. We can send the 82nd Airborne to make a show of force. The Russians cannot do anything except rattle what they have left - - their missiles and bombers.

I am sure that NORAD exercises against Russian scenarios all the time. As they would against Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian target sets. But we can do this quietly on computer screens. We have no need to "prove" our strength. We took down Afghanistan in 2 months after the British could not last century and the Soviets could not in the 1980s. And we sliced through Iraq like a hot knife through butter. We don't need to act like Dr. Strangelove. But the Russians are paranoid and weak and threatened. So they do.

And the Russian people are humiliated and prone to chauvanistic impulses at the moment. So this is a big crowd pleaser before the election. (Imagine if they had won the cold war - - you walk down the street of any American city and a quarter of the signs are in Russian, McBoris Hamburger stands and Siberian Fried Chicken on every street corner, Russian TV shows in the theaters, rubles in your pocket because the dollar doesn't mean diddly anymore, European nations and former NATO members are one-by-one joining the Warsaw Pact (including the UK and Canada). Russia has set up base in Cuba and Mexico to fight their war on terror. American majors and colonels are selling blood at the local blood bank to feed their families. We just sold the rusting hulks of what used to be our last two aircraft carriers to South Korea and India for junk metal, we have to partner with the Russians on an international space station because we cannot afford to send astronauts into space . . .this is why some yearn for Stalin . . no one wants to be beaten tortured and killed, but they want to be great again.

Most likely, this is a pre-election stunt to pander to the nationalist impulses.

If it is the real thing, then it is like meeting a dog on a street that is baring its fangs.
You are assuming it is directed at you. I am telling you to look over your shoulder because it is baring its fangs at the mugger standing behind you.

They don't want to mix it up with us. On 9/11, they de-escalated their strategic alert level and posture to send us a signal of non-aggressive intent.

Like I said already, this Russian business is a bunny trail. Instead of trying to fixate on *what* they are doing. You would be better off focusing on *why*.

It is not us.