"Go ahead, make my day."
And, he'd probably have the support of the American people when they realize the potential for nuclear war was at stake.
Sad and scary times.
It's ONLY Obama's weakness that would even put such a scenario on the table.
ONLY that.
They could get to five capitals in two days.
Staying there is another issue.
And Obama wouldn’t know about it until he saw it on the news.
"Go ahead, make my day."
I noticed the only source for this conversation is Poroshenko. No context for the statement is provided.
I’ll take a wild guess at how the conversation went.
“You are doing an all out attack on East Ukraine with the Russian army!”
“If it was true we’d already be in Kiev by now and beyond”
The cold war is over. Oh wait.....
Meanwhile, the Chinese continue their buildup west of Taiwan at a rapid pace.
Putins talking big, but he don’t have the support at home for such a moive. Obama might renig on NATO obglizations but most of the rest of NATO wont and they only have to start the responce before we get drag in.
Frankly Russia isn’t strong enough to take on France, Germany, Poland, and whatever is left of the UK tomorrow.
I think that many posters here way underestimate the Russian mil and vastly overinflated NATO/US mils relative capabilities.
Statistics are no guide to anything, except more statistics.
The US has only tried its weapons on third rate mils using way out of date Russian equipment, manned by poorly trained soldiers whose only aim is to collect a salary. Knowledge of modern US/European relative weapon effectiveness against modern Russian weapons is only theoretical, not demonstrable.
One only needs to listen to US and Russian mil exercises to see the difference between the two. For instance, underwater river crossings by armored vehicles: there are obvious logs coming down a river (which will damage the tank or knock off the air tube killing the crew) - the US tanker waits to cross, the Russian tanker goes anyway. The US advance is halted, the Russian advance continues.
Or: Russian mil units always communicate positions via code, US units, despite training to the contrary, often gives positions in the clear. No one knows where the Russian crew is, the position of the US crew is known, down to the apple tree it is hiding behind.
Calling up a Russian unit in Russian - (pretending to be another Russian unit) is met with angry demands for ID, doing the same thing in reverse to a US unit is met with “hey what’s up, etc”. The penalty for a Russian unit not using code is immediate execution of the whole unit, for the US unit is maybe an Article 15 at some future date (just the guy who made the call).
US helicopter survival time in combat with Russian forces was estimated to be 15 seconds ...
It all may well come down to who achieves air superiority first and maintains it, as well as who has the shortest, most survivable, and efficient supply routes.
The devil is in the details, not the statistics. The Russian Bear is not gone, just hibernating.
I'm not sure about that...but I'll bet Beijing troops could be in five Siberian capitals in two days.
Putin is looking in the wrong direction.