We are bringing back the world into the 20st century, this will be a big problem.
I don't see a problem with this.
>overthrow governments
The middle east is migrating to democracy and has the least amount of dictators in charge in my lifetime, thanks to US foreign policy. While I think foriegn policy is hard to judge, annexing land Russia-style for "fuck you" reasons is very different than overthrowing dictators murdering their people and those people begging for US/NATO/UN intervention, which we sometimes provide. The world tried non-interventionism and it got us WWII. Better the US/NATO making these calls than autocratic powers with annexation agendas like China or Russia.
US/Western policy in the region can hardly be described as pro-democracy. We've been propping up dictators and overthrowing democratically elected regimes from Iran in 1953 to Egypt in 2013.
How's that democracy working out in Libya and Syria?
Many (probably pretty much everyone actually familiar with the situation) would argue that things were better under those dictators.
Go read Obama's Cairo speech, do impassioned, if only he believed in his own words.
No, instead we watched a people overthrow a corrupt regime, establish a democracy, and then continued to fund the mitary junta and ignore the country as it becamenobce more a dictatorship which just recently sentenced its former president to death.
Egypt, neighbor to Israel, and the largest secular middle Eastern country by population is too important to the supposed US political interest to allow democracy, especially if that democracy doesn't agree with our policies. It is entirely morally bankrupt, anyone who defends such policy is a warmonger.
How was India immediately after its colonial rule? Or South Korea after the war?
Its incredible how people conveniently forget how long transition periods are for societies that were previous non-democratic to a democratic one. Ten to fifteen years from now it will be a very different picture. Migrating to a democratic capatalistic economy is an incredible thing. GDP comparision between North and South Korea below:
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/default/files/image...
It was rough for the South Koreans until the 1970s then its been all gravy. They went from war ravage rural wasteland to the most envious economy in about 20 years.
My idea in the initial post was to have people think about one point of view about this deal. In particular because it seem people are mostly from the left here, but there is a real Reaganian aspect to the move.
Get off your myopic high horse, both the US and Russia are imperial empires bathed in blood.
The deposed former president of Ukraine, who happened to be close to Russia, had been democratically elected - his removal most certainly wasn't democratic by any stretch of the imagination. You can tell infer the US's political attitudes if you parse the language of US media / politicians at the time. If they are "protesters" rather than "rioters" or "insurrectionists" - they are friends. I perfectly understand that it furthers US interest to pull out Ukraine from Russia's sphere of influence.
Just my $0.02, as an outsider.
The same is true for Russia, if Russian-Canadian relations are tense that's not as nearly important as whether its neighbor Ukraine is bombing civilians on its border.
America is not exceptional, your argument requires we treat America and Russia with different moral thresholds, that's insane.
You're on an American site, on the American made internet, using American root DNS, using American made TCP/IP, using an American OS, writing in American English, and on a site about American entrepreneurship in the American silicon valley/tech industry discussing America's space program, which is the envy of the world.
There's a reason we're not all talking on some Chinese or Russian site.
How nationalistic do you have to be to believe there aren't Russian or Chinese tech forums?
America had an amazing run 1950-2000, comparable or even superior to the miraculous breakthroughs which happened in Germany from 1900-1945, that didn't make Germany above reproach, in fact it confused the moral with the technical, which you are doing right now.
Fascist.
Considering Putin is playing politics with space, namely limiting critical RD-180 sales after the west criticized his illegal annexation of parts of Ukraine, as well as funding and arming rebels who are purposely targeting civilians, well, what exactly do you want us to say here? Engage in more mindless political correctness? Sing kumbaya around the campfire as to not offend Russiophile HN'ers?
Putin's Russia is bad. They're dishonest partners and the US should keep its space policy under its national borders for sanity reasons. Look at the early retirement of the ISS. Russia is taking its modules and leaving the project in a few years, again as punishing the west for criticizing their illegal annexations. Previous to this the ISS was thought to be a project with a decade or two of service left.
Also, Putin's mismanagement of his economy means he just cut the Russian space program by a third and what's left is good at flying Soviet-era Soyuz and building Soviet era RD-180's but can't keep post-Soviet Proton-M's from exploding. From a practical stand-point, ignoring everything else, we simply don't need or want their tech now that the RD-180 based rockets are being made redundant/replaced and Orion/Dragon flying astronauts in the next 3 or so years.