Talking bollocks thread #3

You are comparing apples and oranges. 1 USD buys a lot more in China than it does in France. In terms of PPP, China exports way more than France in military hardware.

I agree, but the ruble buys less than the US dollar too and Russia is second behind the US... so if we compare apples with apples then the Russians should be number one.

But the real question is how much does China export actually.

They show lots of weapons but how much do they actually export?

How much repeat business do they actually get?

It´s more about how many money do they earn from the weapons exports. It´s the same with the us of a which subsidizes a lot of these export contracts. In the end the company/oligarch makes money but the state not so much.

US exports are based on US loans or aid money given to other countries with the restriction that they can only spend that money on US weapons.

The US pretends they are being generous giving out all this money but normally it is loans that have to be paid back and the money can only be used on US weapons so it is not really being generous at all... it is basically subsidising US MIC sales.

PapaDragon wrote:

mnztr wrote:http://www.navyrecognition.com/index.php/news/defence-news/2020/december/9448-russia-plans-to-upgrade-admiral-vinogradov-antisubmarine-ship.html

Outstanding, keep going

First large batch orders for corvettes and supply ships and now this

Only thing left is to sort out whole Gorshkov clustefuck and we will be able to say that surface fleet is finally getting it's shit together

Won't come in time for Biden's war against Russia anyway though

PapaDragon wrote:

flamming_python wrote:

PapaDragon wrote:

mnztr wrote:http://www.navyrecognition.com/index.php/news/defence-news/2020/december/9448-russia-plans-to-upgrade-admiral-vinogradov-antisubmarine-ship.html

Outstanding, keep going

First large batch orders for corvettes and supply ships and now this

Only thing left is to sort out whole Gorshkov clustefuck and we will be able to say that surface fleet is finally getting it's shit together

Won't come in time for Biden's war against Russia anyway though

No worries, ships won't be used in that one anyway

If Putin and co. hadn't been fucking around from 2000-2010 and started reforming the military, reconstructing shipbuilding and infrastructure, not to mention re-industrializing the economy and launching import substitution - 10 years earlier than when we were forced to in 2014; then we wouldn't be in this situation. Even with the Rose and Orange revolutions as a warning bell, then the S. Ossetia war, our elite continued to live comfortably with their French riviera mansions, Swiss bank accounts and keep talking about their 'western partners'. Right up until those bank accounts were frozen and they were personally sanctioned and barred from entering the EU.
Cunts.

As it is yeah ships won't be used in that one. We don't have enough modern ones for a credible task force that can show the flag and support friendly nations in North Africa, the Caribbean, south-east Asia or other sensitive regions for the US and EU.
We'll just have to play to the limited set of strengths we can count on, and our considerable but still constrained accomplishments since 2014. And right on our borders too, not further back from them.

flamming_python wrote:
If Putin and co. hadn't been fucking around from 2000-2010 and started reforming the military, reconstructing shipbuilding and infrastructure, not to mention re-industrializing the economy and launching import substitution - 10 years earlier than when we were forced to in 2014; then we wouldn't be in this situation. Even with the Rose and Orange revolutions as a warning bell, then the S. Ossetia war, our elite continued to live comfortably with their French riviera mansions, Swiss bank accounts and keep talking about their 'western partners'. Right up until those bank accounts were frozen and they were personally sanctioned and barred from entering the EU.
Cunts.

As it is yeah ships won't be used in that one. We don't have enough modern ones for a credible task force that can show the flag and support friendly nations in North Africa, the Caribbean, south-east Asia or other sensitive regions for the US and EU.
We'll just have to play to the limited set of strengths we can count on, and our considerable but still constrained accomplishments since 2014. And right on our borders too, not further back from them.

This is OT but it deserves an answer I think

I saw this from the last conference by Putin and I think it explains that demanding is easy but implementing is not:


After the 90's Russia was simply about to disappear. I don't think it is easy to overstate how lucky was Russia to have survived and be where they are now. But yeah, the neighbour's grass is always greener...

LMFS wrote:

flamming_python wrote:
If Putin and co. hadn't been fucking around from 2000-2010 and started reforming the military, reconstructing shipbuilding and infrastructure, not to mention re-industrializing the economy and launching import substitution - 10 years earlier than when we were forced to in 2014; then we wouldn't be in this situation. Even with the Rose and Orange revolutions as a warning bell, then the S. Ossetia war, our elite continued to live comfortably with their French riviera mansions, Swiss bank accounts and keep talking about their 'western partners'. Right up until those bank accounts were frozen and they were personally sanctioned and barred from entering the EU.
Cunts.

As it is yeah ships won't be used in that one. We don't have enough modern ones for a credible task force that can show the flag and support friendly nations in North Africa, the Caribbean, south-east Asia or other sensitive regions for the US and EU.
We'll just have to play to the limited set of strengths we can count on, and our considerable but still constrained accomplishments since 2014. And right on our borders too, not further back from them.

This is OT but it deserves an answer I think

I saw this from the last conference by Putin and I think it explains that demanding is for easy but implementing is not:


After the 90's Russia was simply about to disappear. I don't think it is easy to overstate how lucky was Russia to have survived and be where they are now. But yeah, the neighbour's grass is always greener...

And just whose fault do you think that whole state of affairs was in the first place?

I think this is the fundamental bone of contention between me and other posters here.

You guys seem to think of Putin as some saviour come in to put Russia back on the right track and correct the mistakes of the 90s. That he came out of the blue to restore Russia's power and prestige. In actuality, it was circumstance that forced him and his gang into this route, and they ended up with some success in it.

What I'm telling you, Putin was around in the 90s, part of the same group of power in the 90s, and a product of the same corrupt political class of the 90s. He was the 90's, Yeltsin's man and his chosen successor. Berezovsky's man even.
And Putinism is just the end stage of Yeltsinism, as I've said before.

Putin did not assert Russian interests any more than Yeltsin did. During the later period of Primakov, Yeltsin was already asserting Russian interests in Yugoslavia against NATO wishes - just not very successfully.
Putin didn't have anyone in his cabinet that Yeltsin did not. The same Chubais, the same Sobchak.

He didn't turn his back on the West any more than Yeltsin did either. All he ended up doing, he did only because he was forced to. In the early 2000s Putin and his people were still talking about Russia joining NATO, the EU. He opposed the Iraq war but then so did Schroder and Chirac. After 9/11, Putin convinced Central Asia leaders to open up bases and transit for US-NATO operations in Afghanistan.

The main difference was that in the 90s, the West was content to leave Russia's sphere of influence in the ex-USSR alone. But Russia's intervention in Georgia, Moldova, the ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 90s - is not really any different from its policies there now. Just that the West respected Russian interests there. Because Russia was still giving Western multinationals preferential access to its oil fields with ridiculously unfavorable to it production-sharing agreements, and because NATO had other priorities in Yugoslavia and Iraq.
Wanting to boost Russia's coffers and shore up his power base, Putin turned on Khodorkovsky and his people and nationalized Yukos. That's what turned him into an enemy of Washington. But if Yeltsin had ruled up to that time, he may well have ended up doing the same thing himself anyway. Putin restarted the Chechen war and won it - but actually that conflict re-erupted while Yeltsin was still president too, and in circumstances where the Chechens outright invaded Dagestan - not because of some master plan Putin implemented. It was just another circumstance, another opportunity that was taken and it happened to have been concluded successfully this time.

So yes, screw the early 2000s. This should have started back in the 90s. The mistakes of the 90s shouldn't have been made, and Putin shouldn't have continued with them as long as he ultimately did. The USSR shouldn't have been disbanded. This was all the same group of people responsible, and some of them you can still find in Putin's circle today, believe it or not.
And it was the West's hostility that basically turned Russia and put its political class right back to where it started in - in a Cold War, isolated from Western bank accounts and rivieras, building up new strategic weapons and conducting import substitution. Just a bit more efficiently and smartly this time around, which I do actually give them credit for.

PapaDragon wrote:

flamming_python wrote:If Putin and co. hadn't been fucking around from 2000-2010 and started reforming the military, reconstructing shipbuilding and infrastructure, not to mention re-industrializing the economy and launching import substitution - 10 years earlier than when we were forced to in 2014...

There is this Serbian saying: "If grandmother had wheels she would have been a truck"

Had they tried that before 2014 they would have had masses of liberals, commies, fake nationalists and usual rabble in the streets screaming about how they betrayed "democracy" how they are stealing their "European future" and demanding regime change

2014 was not wakeup call for government, it was wakeup call for population and only after that the actual work could begin

Before that only thing that mattered for rabble was getting attaboys from Brussels

What masses?

The liberals were only ever present in the capital, some in St. Petersburg, but mostly they've only ever been the corrupt thin slice of intelligencia that's featured in Western-funded NGO media like Echo Moscow or Radio Free Europe; servants of the 90s oligarch class

Commies were systematically repressed and destroyed during the 90s and eventually that old dino Zyuganov agreed to play ball and play the part of a self-censoring opposition in return for a cushy eternal seat as head of the party with the Kremlin's blessing

Nationalists were around but they were never a particularly organized force, then or now.

Putin could just as easily have started import-substitution in 2004, as soon as the first Soros-funded rent-a-mob took power in Georgia and then the Ukraine. Support for an assertive Russian policy was already high due to Yugoslavia and as seen by Putin's popularity when taking on Khodorkovsky. He wouldn't have provoked the West; protectionism and rebuilding domestic industries is what plenty of countries do around the world, and if Russia wanted to restart gas turbine production and weave off dependence on Motor Sich; that would have been Russia's sovereign right that couldn't be contested by any amount of propaganda. And the population by and large would have praised his efforts.

Sorry I don't buy this whole argument.

flamming_python wrote:You don't have friendly nations in North Africa, the Caribbean and South-east Asia in large part because Soviet track record of pussying out every time USA would threaten to use big fireworks

What you have now is group of potential friendly nations that you need to prove to that you aren't pussies like Soviets were

It will take a while so that leaves plenty time to build new stuff in time when you would need them for real

Until then it will all be about usual dick-waiving and for that those canoes will be more than enough

Oh you mean like over India when the USSR backed down? Wait that didn't happen. It was Pakistan and the US that got lost.

Somehow Cuba survived too, even if Fidel Castro was left disappointed that he wouldn't get the opportunity to personally shoot down an American bomber in a MiG like he wanted to during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Russia has enough friends in places. Venezuela, Cuba, Egypt, Syria, Serbia, Vietnam, India. The last 3 are turning to the US. But one can hardly blame them. Having balls is not enough. It's also important to have naval power to spare to back up your friends, like the USSR demonstrated next to India, and not to mention - an advanced, industrialized economy that Putin was certainly in no hurry to restore for most of his rule.

Well, Vietnam was pushing Russia to reopen cam Rahn Bay navy base and Russia was able to afford it and have ships and subs there. But for some reason they said no. This was two years ago. Maybe plans may change but it obviously had all to do with China.

Russias navy development is slow. But most of it had to do with each shipyard having their own ships competing and it was slow. If they really put effort in, we saw how quick they can do it

Anyway, I think now they finally have a plan. Just took too long

Ok going full OT now...

flamming_python wrote:
And just whose fault do you think that whole state of affairs was in the first place?

Communist nomenklatura, obviously. They had a superpower and destroyed it worse than a big war would have done.

I think this is the fundamental bone of contention between me and other posters here.

The fundamental issue is that ideology imposes a certain explanation of the reality so it avoids many people seeing the reality with clear and open eyes. For some Putin is a dictator, for others is a tool of the MI6, for others an oligarch or whatever. For me he is a really good statesman that luckily for Russia was allowed to care of the situation when it was needed the most. I don't know what most Russians think, but probably is closer to my opinion than to the other ones.

You guys seem to think of Putin as some saviour come in to put Russia back on the right track and correct the mistakes of the 90s. That he came out of the blue to restore Russia's power and prestige. In actuality, it was circumstance that forced him and his gang into this route, and they ended up with some success in it.

For sure he did not came out of the blue, that is what I have said some other times to you I believe. The elites rule, democracy has not existed since civilization started (both are simply incompatible!) and the only difference is sovereignty and legit elites or transnational ones that loot their own country. I don't really care why the Russian elites went the way they did, probably because they were as a whole threatened to the level where they saw the need of reinforcing the nation. I am not interested in explanations of state policy based on morality, things don't work like that. You seem to judge Putin for being part of some elites in the 90's, but what he did afterwards when he had the opportunity leaves no doubt what his preferences are. Prophets of doom can say whatever BS they want, facts are cold and hard and they say Russia has recovered incredibly and the policies are increasingly more assertive. You can always say this could have been done before, but you don't have access to the kind of data the Kremlin has so it remains an opinion. The quote I posted above just shows the kind of thought needed to steer the country when it is weak and cannot enforce sovereign decisions. You guys seem to think empires like US do not employ force and only take voluntary vassals, it is simply ridiculous.

And Putinism is just the end stage of Yeltsinism, as I've said before.

And that is the end stage of communism, but you probably will say Gorbachev and Yeltsin were not true communists. Every person is different, even if they live in the same era.

Putin did not assert Russian interests any more than Yeltsin did. During the later period of Primakov, Yeltsin was already asserting Russian interests in Yugoslavia against NATO wishes - just not very successfully.
Putin didn't have anyone in his cabinet that Yeltsin did not. The same Chubais, the same Sobchak.

You are just providing proof for my argument that the policies were determined by the level of power of the state and not by the will of the politicians. What could have done Putin to revert such situation, launch a nuclear war when the country was decomposing and the power of the state was in the hands of gangsters? You are not interested in the reality. If you were, you would see the transformation of Russia in 20 years which is difficult to believe. Always in the same direction and always step by step, as the reinforcement of the country allowed it. But for most communists revolution is the way, so they cannot accept the progressive transformation of a country and despise Putin for not having shot all oligarchs dead on the spot... they conveniently forget those oligarchs were communists themselves.

Further arguments are again just an interpretation of the facts from the optics of Putin being a traitor the same as Yeltsin but you don't explain why the results of his administration are the absolute opposite... as said this just shows bias and the incapacity to judge on merit anyone which is not "pure" because he does not profess the same ideology as you. He could, but he did not want because in reality he is the enemy of the people, he is "one of them" etc. All BS and scare stories for people that struggle to understand how the world works and that to make things real wishing is not enough, but hard cold requirements need to be put in place first. This applies to import substitution and all the rest, you willingly ignore the kind of internal resistance that needs to be defeated to implement such measures. Trump is the president but the state aparatus has stolen him the election in his face, how do you explain this if he is the one holding power?

PapaDragon wrote:Commies and commie sellouts

What people are ruling Russia at present do you think?

You mean same circumstances under which commies didn't do jack shit for nearly a century?

Nobody gives a shit about motivation, it's results that matter

Commies achieved far more in the 70s, 80s, during the whole period of stagnation and perestroika - than Russia did in the 90s and 2000s. In comparison, it might as well have been a golden age.

Maybe they should have taken it up with their commie buddies who were wearing fresh democracy suit?

Also, commies complaining about repression, this is a thing of beauty

Grow some backbone, son!

I'm not complaining about repression.

Putin had my approval in the 2000s too. I liked his policies, what he did manage to implement at least - nationalizing Russian oil/gas, throwing the oligarchs if not out but at least backstage, inviting foreign auto manufacturing to the country and some other manufacturers, resolving the conflict in Chechnya, opposing the Iraq war, clearing the streets of petty crime and businesses of blatant mafia infestation, and so on.
And hindsight is of course 20/20, it's with that benefit that I can see now that not nearly enough was done; and knowing what I do know I would have been a critic of Putin back then.

But then I'm a nobody, and unlike myself I would expect national leaders and their teams to have some foresight too. They didn't

Putin could just as easily have started import-substitution in 2004. He wouldn't have provoked the West; protectionism and rebuilding domestic industries is what plenty of countries do around the world....

Oh , you still actually think that Russia gets to be treated like other countries?

Back then there wouldn't have been any reason for them to object, there were no serious issues of contention between Russia and NATO. They would probably have criticized it in the media, supported the same sell-out liberal opposition they always have anyway to oppose it, and laughed at it like they laughed at China in the 90s as well; but who cares. They would have invested themselves in the end and not likely have taken it for much of a threat.
Nowadays they're sounding the alarm over China. But can't do much about it.

Well China certainly did not waste the 2000s, nor the 90s. And it managed to avoid the ire of the West until relatively recently too; at least open ire - of course Washington has always been working on encircling the country and keeping the Japs, Taiwanese, Filipinos, Thais, Koreans, etc... manned and equipped. Until of course the same Filipinos and Thais recently stopped listening to Washington and started to pursue their own ties with Beijing. Now the Koreans are toying with the idea of doing the same. What's Washington going to do about it?

I mean what's your argument anyway, that Russia should have avoided reviving its industrial and high-tech economy 10 years earlier because it might have provoked a hostile Western policy? That happened anyway, after wasting a decade, and now China is on the cusp of surpassing us too in many key parameters.

You got lucky with Pakistan being morons, don't try to present it as something that happened because of something​ Soviets did (also it was so long ago nobody gives a shit anymore, you soundly fucked up everything before or since)

Kept your ungrateful ass churning out methane too, don't remember NATO daring to bomb Yugoslavia from the 40s to the 80s; not to mention swindle them with Western loans and appeal directly to federal autonomous republics bypassing the federal center in Belgrade.

Don't remember NATO daring anything in Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Georgia, Soviet Moldova, flooding Soviet-friendly countries like Syria with terrorists or anything of the sort.

Whatever we were doing, we were doing that part better than now at least. And without the dick-swindling confrontations that you are so fond of.

Also you lost in Cuba, you turned tail and ran while agreeing to keep information about pullout of Jupiter missiles from Turkey a secret

USA won Cuban Crisis and Cuba is became example to everyone that stay away from communism

Nonsense, it was a win-win. A little confrontation followed by a mutual withdrawal of missiles and a breather from the tension that was building up over Soviet ICBMs.

Every time Americans reached the the red button you would bend over

Why did you even bother with making nukes if you were too much of a pussies to use them?

Because using them would defeat the whole point of building them. Which is not to use them and dissuade anything else from using them against you especially. We expected the same courtesy from the West and got it. That was the entire point of making nukes. End of.

Back then, Washington and pals were not half as brazen with the shit they're pulling now. They were actually reasonable countries. Because they respected Soviet strength, and still remembered Uncle Jo. Who moved the entire Red Army a couple hundred extra km's to the West uninvited during an exercise just after Germany was defeated.
And you're complaining the Soviets had no balls. The US knew better than to try their luck. A pissing contest in Cuba is not worth even a pinch of salt compared to installing and supporting a Ukrainian Nazi state that sends infiltrators to kidnap Russian citizens from Russian territory is it now? Yet that's the situation today.

PapaDragon wrote:

flamming_python wrote:What people are ruling Russia at present do you think?...

More efficient than commies

They are the commies, the ex-commies rather - the faction of them that decided to pull the rug from under Gorby's feet while he was busy collapsing the country anyway, declare their own country to dissolve his legitimacy and of course enrich themselves as the new kingpins and owners of masses of industries that they did nothing to earn in the process.

Those people are the ones we have in charge.
And I'm not even making a moral judgement. Just pointing out that the same people we have in power now are the same group that came to power in the 90s, with the same way of thinking and plans, just having to adapt them for present day conditions, Sochi instead of the Alps, and so on.
But they're always reaching out with feelers to their Western partners requesting sanctions to be removed so that they can go back to business as usual, kids in British and Swiss boarding schools, the lot. About the lot of their own people, their education, their healthcare, their vacation resorts - they have started to work on, but only in the last 5-6 years.

It amuses me too when praising Putin for protectionism. Who was fighting tooth and nail to have Russia accepted into the WTO the whole time, that world-wide Western-finance dominated promoter of free trade? You'll never guess who!  

flamming_python wrote:A single music record by a shitty American hair-rock band was worth more so average Soviet prol that entire building he was living in alongside it's entire content, humans including

There were no achievements

1/3rd of all scientists born on Earth during the 70s were born in the USSR. 3rd largest economy in the world
I call those achievements

And just sticking to the military stuff we discuss - well where did all the present day platforms in use originate from if not this period. That we can't seem to replace or are in no hurry to replace. BMP-1/2, T-72 series, MiG-29, Su-27, Il-76, Mi-24, Topol ICBM.

By commie standards it was definitely a golden age

By standards of civilized world not was unthinkable darkness and disaster

According to who?

How did people live around the world in the 70s, do you know?

How did they live in England, in Italy, in Ireland, in Spain, in Greece?
Not even taking as example - how did they live in Malaysia, in China, in South Korea, in Argentina, in Taiwan?

Yet looking around the world I can see now that yeah sure, our standards of living have advanced since the 70s/80s. But most of the rest of the world's have advanced rather more.

No they didn't because it was reward for helping them fuck you guys over

There's no such thing as 'reward' in geopolitics PD

I would expect a poundshop coffee-table Machiavellian in training like yourself to know that by now

You turn one side against another and as soon is one of them is finished you gang up on the remaining one. That's their reward.

And that's exactly the attitude that was taken with China. But Washington and pals didn't do much of note during the 90s and 2000s, their hubris blinded them and they just decided to invest, make money and offload production there, using the taxes from corporate profits to fund wars in the Middle East and expensive colonial adventures.

Russia was barely a footnote, it had already been consigned to history as a has-been country, and only with the intervention in Syria did the West finally start turning serious attention on it, leading to the next coup in Kiev.

Don't see why a sly industrial revival and in general, revival of medicine, education, the military, etc... would have fundamentally changed this attitude

Russians are not equal to others, get it into your skull already

Neither is anyone else. Chinese/Japs/Koreans/Vietnamese (yellow peril/gooks/chinks/etc), Red Indians (savages), Iranians (sand niggers), Arabs (sand niggers), Mexicans (wetbacks), Italians (greaseballs), Krauts (nazis). Actually I think we get off rather lightly all things considered; no dehumanizing stereotypes, just deriding of the country itself.
America is not the only country like this either, not saying it is.

It's all about who's in the targeting reticule at that moment and challenging America. I don't subscribe to the theory that Russia has always been the enemy and always will be the enemy, priority number 1. They are equal-opportunity haters. Back when Washington was still battling the British and the Red Indians, Russia was viewed as a friend.
The neo-liberal wing in America hate Russia but as Trump showed they're not the only faction with influence. There are others who advocate better ties with Russia to counter China, and so on. Russia was derided during the 2000s too and Putin had non-stop slander written about him, but actual Russian-American relations were not that bad. No reason why they would have gotten substantially worse if Russia had started to revive up its own production capacities. As long as it didn't start making problems for America - which it only really started to in Syria as that was just a security threat and simply too much for Russia to accept when it came to Western dominance in the Middle East.

For someone who keeps pulling trivia from Cold War history you know surprisingly little about it

You're the one grasping at straws here

Between 40s and 80s NATO was keeping Yugoslavia safe from getting bombed by Soviets

Was that before or after Tito was supplying the Greek communists in the civil war there?

You think Yugoslavia and USSR were friends? Dude...

They weren't, and if Stalin had his way - Tito would have died 10,000 times; but the Soviet Union certainly wouldn't have tolerated a scenario like what happened in the early 90s with German/US/Turkish support to separatists in Yugoslavia following the dismemberment of its financial system, nor the NATO intervention against what was left of it later that same decade. And it had the power to dissuade it.

Here's a pointer on modern-day history though - it wasn't the Soviet Union, nor Russia, that bombed Yugoslavia in the end. You got the wrong guy.

It was definitely a win-win for Americans

For Sovs it was defeat that signalled to Americans that they run the show now

USA was celebrating while Khrushchev got couped out of office

It was game over, they saw through your bluff

What bluff?

The USSR sent missiles to Cuba; they withdrew them, but the Americans gave their assurances that they'd remove theirs from Turkey too. Sounds like we got something for nothing.

And what 'run the show', if it was later followed by Detente that gave both sides a breather? You're pulling history from your ass. The Cold War carried on for a few more decades following that and the USSR was never on the back foot until it ran out of money, started to make reforms too late and Gorby gave Washington and its men the keys to the place.

Americans were using them

Americans were ready to use them on you at the moment's notice and every time they were about to you would back down

Quite a selective interpretation of history. Using them would mean their own destruction too. Them showing red lines at every step only goes to show that they were on the back foot. Once again where were these CIA coups in the Ukraine, in Georgia, incursions into Central Asia and so on? Or even into Warsaw Pact countries or client states in the Middle East? Miles better situation for our security then compared to now.

In the end they won, Soviets were destroyed and millions of Russians died anyway without a single shot fired

All because Americans had balls and Sovs didn't

No they had money and we ran out. Our political class also ran out of ideas other than how to enrich themselves. It had nothing to do with 'balls'. 'Balls' or not is a function of your international position, your level of desperation, and what tactic you employ with what probability to achieve which desirable goal. It varies from situation to situation.
Hitler had balls, while Stalin was trying his best to avoid provoking him. What became of the first and the second?

PapaDragon wrote:

flamming_python wrote:They are the commies, the ex-commies rather - the faction of them that decided to...

Okay, let's cut this short here because it's trivia anyway:

In the 90's area that modern Russia occupies today was not a country, it was a failed state, a bad joke, a disaster zone, a rotting corpse, a decomposing carcass, a gangrenous cancer on the human species, a monument to failure of the mankind and a cautionary tale

Sometime in the early 2000's what is now Russian Federation coalesced into existence out of that septic tank

And that's all there is to it, blank slate

flamming_python wrote:1/3rd of all scientists born on Earth during the 70s were born in the USSR. 3rd largest economy in the world
I call those achievements...

In the 70s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Grain_Robbery


They had nothing to eat, 3rd largest economy may ass

You think commies can't fake financial papers? They set new standards

All those ''scientists'' and not a single one could figure out how to get some food for prol trash? Some dumb scientists there...

flamming_python wrote:Neither is anyone else. Chinese/Japs/Koreans (yellow peril), Red Indians, Iranians, Arabs (sand niggers), Mexicans (wetbacks), Italians (greaseballs), Krauts (nazis). ...

And they are ALL above you

Jesus man, you talk like that volunteer field-nigger Jhelb who thinks he is white just because he can get sunburned

None of you will ever be anything else but trash to Euros, deal with it already

flamming_python wrote:Using them would mean their own destruction too...

And they were ready to use them at all time

Better Dead Than Red

Thy had balls and they prevailed

Lesson for next time, learn it well

flamming_python wrote:No they had money and we ran out. Our political class also ran out of idea...

And here is where discussion ends

Yeah I'd agree, I think we're about done here bud

Next time maybe stick to the curriculum though, instead of all this shite.

Will admit I have not bothered to read all of the above... but it started with comment that Russia is not ready for Biden...

Except Biden is just Obama and Russia got through that just fine.

Putin has made mistakes but not mistakes anti putin fanboys suggest.

Russia has a good hand in terms of resources and intellectual capacity, but in terms of military might they are only just catching up in most areas... not including numbers, but in quality.

Ironically much of HATO is going backwards... the much vaunted Royal Navy is actually rather small... western armour reserves are pathetic and in most areas depend on US forces for numbers. German talk of negotiating from a position of strength is hollow rhetoric.

What HATO does not fundamentally understand is that Russia does not want to invade europe and take command like hitler or napoleon... europe is no longer a resource worth taking... most of its valuable resources would be totally destroyed in the attempt to take them which renders the very idea of seizing parts of it moot.

Russias interest in the EU has two directions.... a place they can trade and make money with, or a military threat formed by numbers of hostile countries that want to cause Russia harm. The EU has repeatedly shown it follows the commands of the US and the US does not want Russia and the EU to be friends and trade partners... that leaves one path... or should I say the EU being Americas bitch and doing as they are told leaves one option on the table... no trade... bad relations... and the west is a threat.

Russia does not want to capture the EU, but if the EU threatens Russia then Russia needs the means to destroy the EU.... in that sense the US and EU essentially tearing up the INF treaty and the ABM treaty and not renewing the new Start treaty is actually making things much easier for Russia because a light blocking force of conventional military power backed up by a large tactical and strategic nuclear weapons force is exactly what they need going forward.

Using nukes will be a drastic step so they need conventional options below that that they can use to make HATO see reason. Striking Brussels and a few other key targets on HATO territory using conventionally armed hypersonic long range missiles will be the first slap to say we mean business... further attacks will be nuclear... and they wont be another slap... they will be a double barrel shotgun blast to the face... argument over.

Thanks to the INF treaty being gone much smaller cheaper weapons can be directed at targets in the EU... and thanks to the ABM treaty systems like S-400 and S-500 and other larger systems can be used to blunt any attack from France or the UK regarding nuclear weapons.

No more START means they can stockpile enormous numbers of warheads to deliver anywhere else if they have a problem... but I suspect they wont...

The painting of Putin as some creature of the 1990s comprdor maggot "elite" under Yeltsin is detached from reality.
Putin was playing the role of some technocrat and wormed his way into position to become Prime Minister when
Yeltsin inevitably screwed up. It is clear that Putin fooled Berezovsky. I have Paul Khlebnikov's book "Godfather
of Kremlin" which at the end makes the serious mistake of treating Putin like Berezovsky's stooge in the same
way that Litvinenko was the oligarch's stooge. Putin proved his non-oligarch credentials when Yeltsin was
forced to accept him as Prime Minister after the NATzO attack on Serbia since the Russian Army basically staged
a coup against Yeltsin. Putin put the oligarchs in their place. This resulted in Berezovsky running to the UK
and Khodorkovsky doing jail time. Both should have been shot.

At no point during Putin's leadership positions (Prime Minister and President) did he every show any loyalty to
the maggots who took over under Gorbachev and broke up the USSR. Any attempt to put him in Yeltsin's
camp is pure revisionist BS. And funny how ideologues use the term "Putinism". That is like talking about
Trudeausim or Rooseveltism. There is no ideological machine forcing this "ism" down people's throats. All
the Putin haters are just bitter that their favourite ideology (both the rotten commie one and the liberast
neoliberal one) does not get much support from the Russian "bydlo". Well, those "bydlo" are smarter than
all of these ideology lemmings by orders of magnitude. Ideologues have been the scourge of Russia and
for the first time in a long time we have real pragmatism and "bydlo"-priority politics instead of some social
engineering atrocity.

Russia today is clearly out of the hole dug by the liberasts during the 1990s and way ahead of the USSR
in terms of technological and economic capability. The "bydlo" majority is doing rather well in "Putinist" Russia.

Americans were ready to use them on you at the moment's notice and every time they were about to you would back down

Even if u know the Cold War history, ur interpretation is dead wrong: it is the US who backed down in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Tibet, Cuba, Nicaragua, Angola & Iran. The VMF also saved India from the American intimidation & bombing; under Andropov, its SSBNs off US coast forced Reagan to negotiation table. Soviet armed Egypt & Syria kept the US armed Israel with its nukes in check for decades. L. American juntas, Australia & NZ were forced to spend $Ms on American & French aircraft. The Brits paid dearly for keeping the Falklands. Since 1991 until recently, NATO kept bleeding in Iraq & Afghanistan.

In the end they won, Soviets were destroyed and millions of Russians died anyway without a single shot fired

since then, Ms of refugees & migrants flooded Europe & USA, leading to increased crime, instability & economic hardship. After 9/11/01, over 2x more started dying in car accidents on US roads as more stopped flying, sending planes to the desert storages.

All because Americans had balls and Sovs didn't

both had them. The Russians now know what the West is really worth, so don't count chicks before they hatch.

kvs wrote:The painting of Putin as some creature of the 1990s comprdor maggot "elite" under Yeltsin is detached from reality.
Putin was playing the role of some technocrat and wormed his way into position to become Prime Minister when
Yeltsin inevitably screwed up.   It is clear that Putin fooled Berezovsky.   I have Paul Khlebnikov's book "Godfather
of Kremlin" which at the end makes the serious mistake of treating Putin like Berezovsky's stooge in the same
way that Litvinenko was the oligarch's stooge.   Putin proved his non-oligarch credentials when Yeltsin was
forced to accept him as Prime Minister after the NATzO attack on Serbia since the Russian Army basically staged
a coup against Yeltsin.   Putin put the oligarchs in their place.   This resulted in Berezovsky running to the UK
and Khodorkovsky doing jail time.   Both should have been shot.

At no point during Putin's leadership positions (Prime Minister and President) did he every show any loyalty to
the maggots who took over under Gorbachev and broke up the USSR.   Any attempt to put him in Yeltsin's
camp is pure revisionist BS.   And funny how ideologues use the term "Putinism".   That is like talking about
Trudeausim or Rooseveltism.   There is no ideological machine forcing this "ism" down people's throats.   All
the Putin haters are just bitter that their favourite ideology (both the rotten commie one and the liberast
neoliberal one) does not get much support from the Russian "bydlo".   Well, those "bydlo" are smarter than
all of these ideology lemmings by orders of magnitude.   Ideologues have been the scourge of Russia and
for the first time in a long time we have real pragmatism and "bydlo"-priority politics instead of some social
engineering atrocity.

Russia today is clearly out of the hole dug by the liberasts during the 1990s and way ahead of the USSR
in terms of technological and economic capability.   The "bydlo" majority is doing rather well in "Putinist" Russia.

IMHO many people don't understand that the Russian elite itself is a very variable group of people and Putin has to coordinate all of them to move the country forward.
Sometimes it works, sometimes we see mistakes like with the entire Medvedev presidency. And of course you will agree with me on Nabiullina.
Balancing also means avoiding the most radical of moves, which I assume to be the only reason that Chubais is not behind bars or hanging from a tree in a public square somewhere.
I think if we are to take the last two decades, we really see Putin cementing his own ideology post the 2014 Ukraine crisis. Before this I still believe he was still open to a new leader in the west reaching out his/her hand. Call that optimism or naivete or what have you.
Since then the emphasis really has been on the military, Christianity as a foundation of the Russian ethos, technological independence and financial stability. He has also clearly become much more invested in the historical importance of our past achievements. Writing articles about world war two, referencing events as far back as the mongol yoke, etc. I think he now has grown into a much deeper understanding of history and feels that he must live up to it.
Yes he was moving towards those things in his first terms, but I think the man himself finally settled on what he sees Russia as.
Anyway that's just my opinion.

We are in overall agreement, but I would not attribute the emergence of any national ideology to Putin. He let it emerge itself
through consensus. The new ideology is a milder version of the Japanese and South Korean managed capitalism variant but
with no concentration of power in the hands of the "chaebols". So command economy elements are retained where they
work at the large scale, and free market (in as much as markets can be free) business activity is possible on all other
scales. The oligarchy does not rule in Russia, it has been made subservient to the government. That is a good thing since
we see what free range oligarchy does for Ukraine.

Putin has been as close to a perfect leader for Russia as possible. Instead of ramming some new order down the throats
of Russians like all the other social engineering criminals, he let Russians figure out what they wanted. There has been
a gradual realization that not every aspect of the USSR was bad. So instead of taking the idiot route of totally undoing
the USSR legacy like all the limitrophes, Russia has found a new equilibrium that rectifies the main problems with the Soviet
economy and political system. So no one party rule and not absolute GosPlan. But some laissez-faire BS koolaid is not
drunk either and the need for a guiding hand (as opposed to a phony invisible one) is recognized. At least in Russia
this guiding hand is from the elected government instead of private star chambers like in the west.