(July 19, 2018 at 12:29 am)Rev. Rye Wrote:(July 19, 2018 at 12:08 am)CapnAwesome Wrote: Exactly. You have to be actually at war with someone to commit treason. We aren't at war with Russia. People call them our enemy, but I can't really see why. They are no more or less our enemy than half the countries of the world.
I think it boils down to a couple things:
1) The Russians used to be our biggest enemy. Technically, the Soviet Union was our enemy, but in practice, the Soviet Union was over a dozen smaller countries whose governments were subsumed by Russia.
2) With ISIS falling and our Middle Eastern enemies being a lot more nebulous than they were during the Bush administration, there's a vacuum in our desire to fuck some shit up.
3) Russia is A) acting in ways diametrically opposed to what America is supposed to be for (even if those ideals were just barely honoured by America), B) Powerful enough to potentially be a world superpower again, and C) Actually fairly dangerous, even if the danger hasn't actually reached us.
It's not enough to actually be an enemy; In my post, I specifically called it more of a rival than an enemy, but that distinction seems to be lost on a bunch of people.
1. Ok
2. Ok
3. A) fair enough, B) not a chance. It has outsized military and intelligence capability for its economic strength because it is a wasting but still present legacy bequeathed by its Soviet past, but its minuscule economy and moribund demographics will prevent it from sustaining a major international role beyond its immediate borders over the long run. C) yes, but part of the reason why Russia restored some of the abilities lost with the fall of Soviet Union was a visceral sense that the US And NATO has been hell bent on taking over nearby nations that has tradtionally been in its sphere of influence of without which it can not maintain long term territorial security in order to make it permanently impossible for Russia to pursue an independent role in the world.
Yes, what putin has done is really a response to the Clinton and Bush policy from 1992-2008 to strip Russia of her traditional sphere of influence and to meddle in the domestic politics in Russia and nations traditionally in Russia sphere of influence boomeranging back on us. However, success in international arena does follow from letting my enemy do onto me what I’ve already done to him. So the fact that we enthusiastically meddled in the domestic politics of Russia and her traditionally satellites is no reason to not retaliate viciously against Russia doing the same to us.
