At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area. But this latter type of insecurity was one which afflicted rather Russian rulers than Russian people; for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form fragile and artificial in its psychological foundation, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries. For this reason they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned truth about world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within. And they have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it. - George Kennan, 1946
Sounds like Cuogs to me.
Or Quooks. The Ruskies have always had an inferiority complex vis-a-vis the traditional great powers.
Washington isn't a great power, first off.
Second, I've always wondered how the world would have reacted if the Germans and the Japanese just decided to go after Russia first and left everyone else alone.
I get the feeling the rest of the planet would have given a collective "meh" while it unfolded.
We are the 2nd greatest power in the West and USC really respects us more than Oregon or UCLA.
Second, yes, this is a very interesting counterfactual. People forget that the Russians and Japanese did fight a tuff little war in 1939 before the European war got under way and the Russians won (pay back for 1905 I reckon). Obviously to get to Russia, Germany had to conquer Poland first and we know that when they did this French and British declared war, but then proceeded to do nothing but sit behind the Maginot Line. Would they have decided to attack Nazi Germany at some point if Hitler had never decided to invade the West? Who knows?
I can't imagine that in the event both Japan and Germany invaded the USSR in 1941 Roosevelt would have cut off Japan's supply of US oil. We might very well have gone "meh".
Fear of a Japanese attack on the Soviet Far East in late 1941 is precisely why FDR had Acheson put the Japanese oil embargo in place in August. He understood that a Eurasian continent divided between fascist Germany and imperialist Japan would be absolutely disastrous for the United States.
True. And Roosevelt certainly did everything he could at the time in terms of economic warfare to bait Japan into taking sucker punching us?. But what if the Japanese had decided to take the risk of focusing solely on securing their raw materials in the Dutch East Indies and not preemptively attacking HI and the Philippines? Would we? have still found a way to declare war on Imperial Japan regardless?
No
Ok, Pacific War Superiority Guy, what am I missing? We cut-off their oil supply, stoped selling them all other raw materials and froze their assets. What other economic pressure could FDR applied?
We? did those things. But not to goad them into war. If that happened, well, that solves our neutrality problem, but we couldn't count on them doing that. What those economic measures did was effectively keep them from being able to contemplate taking advantage of Soviet weakness and attacking them from the east when the Sovs were getting their testicles handed to them by the Germans. FDR didn't have a source in the Japanese Foreign Ministry like Stalin did, so he didn't know (like Stalin did) that the Japanese had already made the decision to strike south (the knowledge of which allowed Stalin to transfer forces from the Far East to the western front for the defense of Moscow).
FDR was pretty good at geostrategery. He realized that American security rested on keeping the Soviets afloat as a continental counterweight to Germany and Japan.
Most of you need to fast forward past 75 years ago to the here and now. Russia, China, NK, none of them will lay a foot on our soil until they’ve either hacked our power grid or disabled it with an EMP or Both to shut it down. 15 years ago, terrorism was the main threat. Now it’s the disabling of power grids and infrastructure.
All of Which makes this Russian hacking into our elections process Twice as egregious. And it’s why the people that have Their head buried up Trumps ass need to wake up. Our power grids are archaic and are mostly handled by hundreds of private entities. This country is done in 6 months if our power grids are disabled.
Trump being a Pussy to Putin on this issue will embolden our most dangerous enemies in the here and now. Cyber warriors and the countries that employ them. Wake the fuck up people.
This is true. Our Air Force goes in the order of power, water, communications, and eliminate infrastructure you don't control.
Iraq went from modern to 6th century in 96 hours under this doctrine.
We're? doing a pretty good job of disabling our own infrastructure and power grid through general malaise, choosing shit like wind and solar over nuclear plants and abundant fossil alternatives.
You had me until you blamed wind and solar.
Go look the Northeast- they've gone all in on wind and solar. They are scheduling rolling blackouts. Expensive and inefficient delivery method. It's not windy there and the sun doesn't shine all that much.
The Ruskies and Chinese don't have to hack our? power grid. We? fuck it up ourselves.
Scheduling rolling blackouts? Common throbs. Did you read the ISO-NE report? Coal and Nuke retirements have more to do with cheap gas than renewables. The report makes it pretty clear that the risk is not being able to import enough gas during the winter. This is how competitive electricity markets work. Coal and Nukes can't compete right now. Rick Perry figured this out already in his DOE report that was supposed to blame renewables.
Most of you need to fast forward past 75 years ago to the here and now. Russia, China, NK, none of them will lay a foot on our soil until they’ve either hacked our power grid or disabled it with an EMP or Both to shut it down. 15 years ago, terrorism was the main threat. Now it’s the disabling of power grids and infrastructure.
All of Which makes this Russian hacking into our elections process Twice as egregious. And it’s why the people that have Their head buried up Trumps ass need to wake up. Our power grids are archaic and are mostly handled by hundreds of private entities. This country is done in 6 months if our power grids are disabled.
Trump being a Pussy to Putin on this issue will embolden our most dangerous enemies in the here and now. Cyber warriors and the countries that employ them. Wake the fuck up people.
This is true. Our Air Force goes in the order of power, water, communications, and eliminate infrastructure you don't control.
Iraq went from modern to 6th century in 96 hours under this doctrine.
We're? doing a pretty good job of disabling our own infrastructure and power grid through general malaise, choosing shit like wind and solar over nuclear plants and abundant fossil alternatives.
You had me until you blamed wind and solar.
Go look the Northeast- they've gone all in on wind and solar. They are scheduling rolling blackouts. Expensive and inefficient delivery method. It's not windy there and the sun doesn't shine all that much.
The Ruskies and Chinese don't have to hack our? power grid. We? fuck it up ourselves.
Scheduling rolling blackouts? Common throbs. Did you read the ISO-NE report? Coal and Nuke retirements have more to do with cheap gas than renewables. The report makes it pretty clear that the risk is not being able to import enough gas during the winter. This is how competitive electricity markets work. Coal and Nukes can't compete right now. Rick Perry figured this out already in his DOE report that was supposed to blame renewables.
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FDR was pretty good at geostrategery. He realized that American security rested on keeping the Soviets afloat as a continental counterweight to Germany and Japan.