I suppose it's monetarily/mechanically true, but it's almost like saying you can afford a new car when your life insurance pays out.
Russia has been working on strategies for limited use of nuclear weapons; they don't believe in MAD. It's called Escalate to De-escalate:
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-02/escalate-...
https://www.defensenews.com/smr/munich-security-forum/2018/0...
https://thebulletin.org/why-russia-calls-limited-nuclear-str...
It's as crazy as it sounds; a miscalculation could destroy humanity. Consider that their ability to significantly influence foreign publics through social media could be valuable for the de-escalation portion. No doubt we'll see people claiming (false) equivalency between Russia's and the U.S.'s actions - 'they bombed Japan, we bombed Ukraine'.
With the cults-of-personality in place throughout Russia, China, North Korea, and the US, I'm nowhere near believing that such a person is in the right place, but I suppose that's the difference between hope and fact.
I think I have an idea of who will be invading, escalating, and hoping there won't be consequences.
Would having a single known enemy make for a more unified and ultimately productive world?
Probably sounds ridiculous to anybody steeped in the current wave of anti-Russian hysteria in the American media (or the earlier wave in the 80s). Why somebody might be producing warmongering propaganda against Russia I don't know, but clearly I'm supposed to take it as an unquestioned first principle that of course Russia is out to get us (as if we weren't busy "getting" ourselves) and of course Putin is the bogeyman -- Putin, a guy who has something like an 80% approval rating among his people and whose every public speech seems to be about conciliation, cooperation and peacemaking. Something isn't quite right. (Probably both sides are full of shit.)
Anyway no one has ever invaded Russia and won, including Napoleon and Hitler. Russians are proud of that. Their navy is about 2/3 as big as the US, but if what you're defending is most of Asia (an ocean of dirt) maybe that's not the biggest concern. Anyway if China does join in, their navy is comparable to the US's, and together with Russia's, it'd be bigger.
The Russian air force is tiny (same for China) but given that all our aircraft carriers are basically sitting ducks for all the various Russian carrier-busting missiles they have nowadays, our air superiority might not matter as much as we'd like to think. Also they tend to stretch money further. Their jets are fairly cheap, indestructible metal cans with loose tolerances... kind of like flying AK-47s... while ours are exquisite and expensive (because they're made out of porkbarrel) and you have to walk the airfield and pick up every little bitty piece of debris before you take off, otherwise it might suck something in and choke... so the equivalent of a flying AR-15 that always jams.
This is way off. The USN is about 4x the size of the Russian navy and about 5x that of China.
That's clearly not true, as recent history shows, unless one has a fairly broad definition of what Russia’s “own territory” is.
No, it wasn't, though much of it was politically, through conquest, part of Russia for a couple centuries (and a bit more of of it for just over one century) prior to the formation of the USSR, and there was certainly an intense effort by Russia to colonize Ukraine with Russians to break it's distinct culture during that period where much of it was under the Russian imperial rule.
Clearly, you view Russia’s own territory as anything that has ever in the past been subjugated by Russia independently of where modern nation-states lie, and in that respect, sure, Russia may be primarily concerned with fighting wars to re-establish empire in those places.
But that's not a sign of a peace-loving nation, but instead of a warmongering imperialist one that prioritizes restoring it's “glorious” past.
Pride in this myth is one of the reasons often given for why the New Chronology and the associated conspiracy theory of how all of what is held to be history prior to the middle ages is a fabrication (and much of that of the middle ages, too), since that allows the idea that the Mongol invasion never happened.
> Anyway if China does join in, their navy is comparable to the US's, and together with Russia's, it'd be bigger.
Numerically, maybe, but numerical comparisons aren't comparisons of capability. (Ditto with the comment on Russia’s Navy.)
Except the Mongols.
It is much cost-effective and efficient to engage in low-intensity sabotage while making an innocent face, scaring the population, and balancing in the gray zone.
The false equivalencies appear on every issue that casts the Chinese or Russian governments in a bad light. Speaking of the Cold War, IIRC my history, the KGB liked to use them in their propaganda.
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27éta...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état
The US looks great when compared to Stalin era USSR. When compared to modern day Russia, it's hard to argue we have the unquestionable moral high ground.
It's very easy. Putin is a dictator and the Russians have no democracy, undermine others, poison people, etc. The U.S. doesn't have clean hands, but there is no comparison.
As for your other two issues, the US has had no issue undermining elections for years, and runs a public assassination program in addition to anything that remains secret. There is a comparison, and both sides are awful.
Yes it does. Democracy (the concept) is moral because it gives self-determination and liberty to people. Of course, everything, including democracy, is very imperfect in execution.
> the Russian election. And though they're obviously rigged, the US one isn't some glorious opportunity for the will of the people to be heard either.
Again, there is no comparison. It's like saying Hitler and the U.S. both used internment camps in WWII, therefore they are morally equal.
>Again, there is no comparison.
Yes, there is. On basic principle, the choice between two is not far better than one choice. Beyond that, some of the things done to rig American elections are worse than what Putin does. For example, in 68 Nixon interfered in Vietnam peace talks to ensure election. What would have happened without that is unclear, but it potentially cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
Yeah and it even has its own yankee response meme called "whataboutism". If we want to go peak "whataboutism" here, the founding of the US was based on the ethnic slaughter and enslavement of millions of aboriginal and african peoples. American culture and corporations have a hand in nearly every corner of the world. If you want to get into the head of Russian paranoia towards the US and the anglosphere in general, look at the US for what its ruling elites have historically demonstrated itself to do, to dominate everything that exists by any means necessary which includes wiping out inconvenient peoples both culturally and literally.
> If you want to get into the head of Russian paranoia towards the US and the anglosphere in general, look at the US for what its ruling elites have historically demonstrated itself to do, to dominate everything that exists by any means necessary which includes wiping out inconvenient peoples both culturally and literally.
That's quite a statement. The Americas are generally free, independent democracies, including U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico. The places conquered by the US in WWII soon became, free, prosperous and completely independent allies, Germany and Japan being the leading examples.
In fact, at the end of the war the US was the only nuclear armed power, had half the world's GDP (!) with a fully functioning economy while competitors were physically and economically devastated, and had a massive military spread around the globe. They could have chosen to become dictators to the world; instead they withdrew and helped form international institutions, such as the UN, World Bank, IMF, GATT/WTO, and others, to promote international peace and prosperity.
Yes, the US also did bad things, but the parent's statement is false and, of course, Russia does not compare.