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Comment by greendragon | Hacker News Reader

You're right, Putin shouldn't stand by idly as America builds a missile shield around Russia to negate their ability to launch nukes...

We already have a deterrent for war with Russia. Russia knows this, I think the US is forgetting it.

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A lot of countries forget a lot of things US & other major nuclear powers conveniently forgot how they negotiated Ukraine to surrender worlds 3d largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for "security guarantees". US is acting prudently in building up missile shield around Russia since in the event of russia collapse who knows what will happen to their nuclear weapons.

There was worry with the collapse of the USSR that Russian nukes would be donated to terrorists. It was a very common theme in 90s fiction. It ended up not happening at all, in fact the only major nuclear proliferation since then has been from Pakistan to North Korea, which is not mentioned by the western media because Pakistan is a very important ally against the Soviets. Wait...

The worry was more then reasonable the lucky outcome of worst scenario not materializing is not an evidence that there was no risk.

I don't even think a missile shield is necessarily bad, but it is a little troubling to see the attitude of taking offense that Russia just doesn't do what it's told. Forgetting Russia is a superpower too.

Should other countries have a plan in case of USA collapse? At least our codes got upgraded from a string of 0s... But I imagine there are some foreign officials worried. Russia has started calling America "not-agreement-capable" after recent events in Syria and a UNSC meeting.

Russia is not a super power and to be honest I am not totally sure even USSR ever was.

How are you defining a superpower such that Russia is not a member and maybe the USSR wasn't one?

I don't have a good definition but their ability to project power is/was greatly exaggerated.

Russia can do whatever it wants in its jurisdiction.

But it cannot be allowed to dictate the bilateral terms between other countries. If Ukraine or Poland wants to be in NATO, it's not up to Russia to say "no". Especially given the histories of those countries, and Russia's role therein.

And that's basically what that "OMG NATO is surrounding Russia" thing boils down to.

"it's not up to Russia"

It is if they have the power to stop it. The whole "moral justification" part is for plebes like us. If powers feel threatened by the movements of other powers in neighboring countries, they will act[1]. How they spin it to the public is secondary.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis#Quarantin...

Sure but it didn't get them very far

Which is why it is important to everyone else to stand together make sure that Russia doesn't have the power to stop it.

Ukraine never had nuclear weapons. Those where Russian nukes stationed in the regions of Ukraine.

The Kremlin had operational control of all nukes pre and post the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

There was no negotiations required to get them back except for a procedural "note of record". They would have been taken by force if necessary.

Have fun with your powertrip Russia was one of the republics of USSR, so far Russia has one success story in taking something by force and most likely it will play out very similar to the fate of USSR.

One would have thought that the Russians would know this better than anybody after the USSR's collapse but military might is meaningless if you don't have the economic might to back it up.

Russia is little more than a petro state whose economic fortunes are almost completely related to the price of oil.

Putin should be focusing on broadening the Russian economic base but is instead engaging in stupid military endeavors that are only kidding Russia friends. The EU would love to trade with Russia but his European tinkering had made it impossible for them to do so. The US is obviously not a fan. Give it a few years and he'll probably piss off China too (or they'll find the US and European relationships more useful) and the Ryssians will have little more to do than reminisce about the time they annexed Crimea.

Well as things stand now Russia's GDP is less than GDP of NYC :) So how they still believe they can be a super power is beyond me.China is far from being Russia's ally they are using the current situation to take over Russia's resources and make Russia extremely dependent. It looks like the end game is peaceful return of the territories that Russia annexed from China or installation of puppet government at some point.

People die and kill for just a few square meters of land, you're delusional if you think the Russian nation will just let itself be destroyed without fighting back. Nominal GDP is not a good way to measure wealth, GDP PPP, industrial output and other stats are better. Russia is not a superpower but no one can deny that Russia is an industrial power. Your hate of Russia disgust me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use#Russia

Lets remember how things unfolded last time was there much fighting? The China has fairly simple working strategy they stimulate immigration into formerly annexed parts at current rates in a decade +/- they will be local majority population.

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