I envision a future where nation-states governed by strong-dictators shoot down each other's mars attempts while also denying climate change exists.
It is basically what dung beetles do. They roll things up until they're bigger. The bigger the ball, the faster it grows from size. Like making a snowman.
I'm referring to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEAP-4iUirY
To answer your question, in this sense: I mean to say that the more space debris there is hurtling through our orbit capturing other space debris, the more likely we are to end up with micrometeroids building up mass, momentum and velocity until we just end up with an extremely hostile environment for our satellites and vehicles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari
There is an established term, Kessler syndrome, effectively a runaway debris cascade:
They’ve got massive problems internally, most of their armed forces run on vapors, are they hoping to sell this to the highest bidder? Just a few last chest thumps before they become less relevant? They still have some good lead in some highly technical areas like weapons and rocketry and ancillary technology, but most everything else is being wasted and no one seems to care there. It’s a slow degradation. So much potential just wasted.
They could work with Europe, even the US, if they just reset the way they play. Play your part—you’re not the old USSR any more.
This is why:
> They’ve got massive problems internally...
An external enemy to blame does wonders.
Cuba and North Korea have done this for decades; it works well.
Literally.
“Look, Saddam has weapons of mass destruction!”... One destroyed country later: “So we were wrong.”
Take Ukraine as an example. Russia had a lot of capital invested there, 70% or so were speaking Russian at home. Next thing you know, there’re all those new tv stations literary coming out nowhere(like Espresso TV) and financed from abroad, fueling the rage. Nuland handing out cookies at Maidan. How do you call that? The country I was living in had it government overthrown in a matter of months.
That’s just a world we live in, big countries play big.
It’s like Venezuela threatening to invade Columbia. I guess they could try, but they have much bigger issues to deal with than showing they “have more soldiers”.
Perhaps it's the communist past that made them this way. Imperial Russia made a huge effort to westernize and modernize, but after the revolution, they kind of slid backwards, into some weird "self-sufficient but still world power" way of thinking.
They have nothing to speak of when it comes to the economy, it's mostly natural resources being exported, and it's all owned by a few very rich individuals. Sad state of affairs.
To be fair, a lot of their population does care and has noticed that Putin has failed to deliver on his promises. They're aware that their income / standard of living is facing a decade plus decline (they're on year seven of that now). In the past good times Putin utilized the oil price boom to very aggressively consolidate his power, install a new authoritarian system, wipe out a lot of human rights and all free press. Now he's formally dictator for life. He was busy while the people were enjoying the momentary prosperity that the oil boom brought. Pretty fucked up frankly, the Russian people get a moment's reprieve from a century of horrors, and another dictator uses that time as a distraction to hijack their brand new, fragile democracy. Now they're trapped and from everything I've read, they're largely aware of it. They see what's happening to their standard of living gains. And up to recently they've had pretty easy outside access to the Internet and what's true or not true (which is why Runet has often been filled with anti-state and anti-Putin memes). The problem is: once a system like that is installed, and the python begins to squeeze, how can you do anything about it? Short of armed, massive, violent revolution. The Russian state won't allow protests, whatever force is used against them, they're capable of and willing to responding with far greater force.
Things didn't get better until Putin took charge. This wasn't a dictator making his way in through the back door during a period of good times, this was a dictator who was credited by Russians (correctly or otherwise) for bringing about those good times.
[1]The guy who pretty much let let any manoeuverer leach off the state bringing about the beginnings of its plunder by later oligarchs.
Russia has no capability to project naval power to this region.