Red6: "Please decide what it’s going to be!
—Are the Russians this huge threat.
—Or are they in reality weak in conventional terms.
But don’t play it both ways like many here do, pretending Russia is a huge threat, but then not, however it fits into their argument at the moment."
The answer is, by their nature, Russian leaders have always been insanely evil, but never stupid or suicidal.
For an example, we can consider Stalin in 1939 -- his whole idea in signing the pact with Hitler was to encourage Hitler to invade France and other Western countries, let them fight it out until Germany was fatally weakened, as it had been in the First World War, then Stalin could easily invade and complete the Communist Revolution throughout Europe.
Stalin never fantasized that Soviet Russia was the most powerful military in the world, but he could well imagine ways to weaken his enemies enough to make the USSR just strong enough to win.
Nor did Stalin underestimate Hitler -- because Stalin knew, factually, that Hitler could not be ready to invade the USSR before 1942.
Stalin did not think Hitler was crazy enough to invade the USSR before Germany was ready for war on that scale, and therefore Stalin ignored warnings to the contrary.
Stalin was correct in calculating that if Hitler invaded in 1941, Germany was not yet ready and would therefore lose the war.
Stalin was incorrect in supposing that Hitler was an entirely rational actor.
My point here is to illustrate that historically, the mind of a Russian leader is highly calculating, precise and brutal, like any predator overlooking the Serengeti Plain at the herds of prey, he's searching for weaker animals and tactics he can use to attack them.
Maybe he can create panic in the herd, force them to flee and that will expose the ones who can't keep up.
Likewise, Vlad the Invader knows he doesn't have to be the strongest military in the world, he just has to spook the herd (i.e., NATO), so that he can pick off a weak victim here and there -- Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova... and if those work out, why not Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania next?
And surely Belarusians understand that once Lukashenko unfortunately falls from his balcony, or suffers a heart attack, Belarus too will be annexed into the belly of the Russian Bear.
Indeed, that could happen rather quickly if Vlad the Invader uses Belarus to launch his nukes against Ukraine and/or NATO.
There won't be much left of Belarus to oppose Vlad's annexation.
And whyever do Kazaks imagine they are somehow independent of Mother Russia?
Bottom line: regardless of GDP's or military hardware numbers, Russia's Vlad the Invader, China's Xi-snake and Iran's Moolah Mullahs see weakness and division in the Western style democracies and that becomes their opportunity to "spook the herd" and so pick off our weakest members.
So the issue today is, can we and our allies stand strong enough to deter the New Axis of Evil Dictators, and if not deter them, then defeat them militarily?
Everything else is just a lot of noise and nonsense.
