Is an arms race between US and Russia necessary?
Some background material below;
Russia suspends nuclear missile treaty in tit-for-tat with US
Some background material below;
Russia suspends nuclear missile treaty in tit-for-tat with US
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Is an arms race between US and Russia necessary?
- Thread starter danieldemol
- Start date
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
We had that in the NATO Warsaw Pact years.
But it does raise a valid question as to where the limit lays once you have enough munitions in your own stockpile to blow the world ten times over.
nPeace
Veteran Member
No sane person will engage in an arms race with the US.
It's more a power race - a show of power, in a world where one nation wants to be supreme in everything, and control.
Some just flex their muscles, and say, "Bring it on."
...and the super power is lust itching to do so.
IMO.
Omg the cynicism! Luv it.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
I think Putin is still pretty Soviet minded. He's not afraid of an arms race against America, because he's been there before. It's doubtful restoring the Soviet Union as the Soviet Union is the goal, but annexing former Soviet Union members, political detractors meeting an uncertain fate, and now this arms race does seem to suggest building up Russia is a goal. He may be ex-KGB, but he's still hardcore messing with the kingpin Capitalist country.
nPeace
Veteran Member
My apologies. You are right. I made a mistake of comparing the expenditure.
However I just looked at the weapons stockpile.
USA vs Russia | Comparison military strength
So mankind will continue to build more junk to pile on the earth and send into space, and for what? Power and military war games, while the poor struggle to eat bread.
Well, I guess that's what world power means to a humans.
What's the good in that?
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
It's definitely also a power race, but I also very much doubt Putin is afraid to stand toe-to-toe against the US again in an arms race. No matter what, mutually assured destruction will still dominate relations because it is beyond redundant for either side to add more nuclear weaponry to their already exceedingly powerful nuclear arsenal. Either side has enough to destroy the world. so continued displays are definitely acts of grandstanding. It's totally unnecessary, but it's same "biggest dick" contest we saw during the war.
Yet there is not enough money for education or Medicare or for the poor?
True democracy doesn’t exist. If the people really had a say wouldn’t we insist that the $trillions poured into weapons was instead channeled into universal free Medicare, universal free education and universal employment? Wouldn’t then poverty would be a thing of the past as would the millions of child deaths from preventative diseases?
So where is the will of the people here when so much money is wasted on destruction and death instead of investing it in life using our taxes?
People have handed over their souls to leaders who have betrayed our interests for their own. People need to take our world back from these maniacs who are not using our taxes for us citizens.
It’s our fault for allowing ourselves to become so attached to worldly things like alcohol, drugs, gambling and materialism which these people promote so we will be distracted by pleasures and let them do what they want.
This is why I am building a new world and why I believe we need to all join to getter and take back our world from those who are raping our resources and using our taxes to invest in death and destruction instead of improving the quality of humanity’s lives.
True democracy doesn’t exist. If the people really had a say wouldn’t we insist that the $trillions poured into weapons was instead channeled into universal free Medicare, universal free education and universal employment? Wouldn’t then poverty would be a thing of the past as would the millions of child deaths from preventative diseases?
So where is the will of the people here when so much money is wasted on destruction and death instead of investing it in life using our taxes?
People have handed over their souls to leaders who have betrayed our interests for their own. People need to take our world back from these maniacs who are not using our taxes for us citizens.
It’s our fault for allowing ourselves to become so attached to worldly things like alcohol, drugs, gambling and materialism which these people promote so we will be distracted by pleasures and let them do what they want.
This is why I am building a new world and why I believe we need to all join to getter and take back our world from those who are raping our resources and using our taxes to invest in death and destruction instead of improving the quality of humanity’s lives.
I think we get a terrible return on our defense spending for starters. What we're doing is shoveling money to defense contractors who are getting rich on our taxes. We should be able to spend $100 billion less on defense and get an equally good or better result.
Then we could take $50 billion and put it to helping the poor, improving health care, fixing our infrastructure etc. The other $50 billion should go to reducing the deficit.
Then we could take $50 billion and put it to helping the poor, improving health care, fixing our infrastructure etc. The other $50 billion should go to reducing the deficit.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
That's like saying Britain was in a power race with Germany in the
1930's. That's a shallow assessment.
Currently America is in a new race against China. Until recently
the world welcomed the new and open China of Chairman Deng
for instance. Now we know there's something more sinister going
on with espionage, creating fake islands, repressing overseas
dissidents, clamping down on domestic opposition, teaching the
"thoughts of Xi" etc.. So we challenge China, and it's not about
flexing muscles and bringing it on. There's a lot more at stake.
Jumi
Well-Known Member
Of course there is, but that would mean a couple of less state of the art missiles, bombers, maybe even a carrier. Dark humor aside, the US is spending more money on healthcare than European countries, but it's just not used efficiently. Price gouging doesn't seem to be seen as an issue, but think about this:
Someone's making a killing.
ajay0
Well-Known Member
I consider it a great failure of the UN and other institutions working for international harmony.
It shows that we still have not learned from the lessons of the past two world wars. There has been occasions in the cold war when we missed nuclear holocausts by mere chance.The real war ought to be against illiteracy, poverty, disharmony and conflict, global warming ...
The quality of leadership in the U.S and Russia is also poor, and there are no good international leaders or leadership at the moment to bring forth a space of international harmony and dialogue.
The psychological reality of national boundaries seems more important to these myopic leaders than the existential reality around them.
PureX
Veteran Member
Arms races are a great way of funneling huge amounts of tax money to the wealthy capitalists invested in producing them. That's why we keep having wars and threats of wars, especially when the republicans are in charge. Also, the republicans can't win elections based on their record for peace and prosperity. They need threats of external attack to win elections because the public seems to imagine that they are better suited to fend off such an attack. Or perhaps, it's just an effective way of distracting the public around election time, from all the damage the republicans have done to them in every other way.
An election is coming in a year and a half and there's no way the republicans can win it given their current policies, behavior, and candidates, so look for another war for oil, or for "democracy", or for whatever other reason the greed-mongers can manage to float past the public. Because it's their only hope for getting people to be stupid enough to vote for them, once again.
An election is coming in a year and a half and there's no way the republicans can win it given their current policies, behavior, and candidates, so look for another war for oil, or for "democracy", or for whatever other reason the greed-mongers can manage to float past the public. Because it's their only hope for getting people to be stupid enough to vote for them, once again.
Kangaroo Feathers
Yea, it is written in the Book of Cyril...
makes perfect sense... until the Russian idealogues say "well no sane person will engage in an arms race with Russia..."
For future reference, only Americans believe in American exceptionalism. If you base international policy on the idea that other countries are going to believe the US is anything unique or inherently special, you're going to have some rude surprises.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
If you go to diving places like Truk in the Pacific you can see
lots of WWII stuff just rusting away. Same in the Guadalcanal.
It's scandalous that America manufactured and threw such
armaments at the Japanese when they could have spent that
money on their own poor.
Same with the D-day landing in Normandy. And for what? Power
and military war games, while the poor struggle to eat bread.
Get my point? Putting everyone in the same category when it
comes to war misses important points.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Oh sorry, I thought the current defense issue was Russia violating
missile treaties, menacing its neighbors and threatening to swamp
the east coast of the USA with a mega nuclear tsunami.
And I thought the defense issue with China was its ongoing espionage,
island building, threats to its neighbors and provoking marine and air
incidents.
Turns out it's all to do with the Capitalism and the Republicans.
Looks like we have yet another Marxist assessment of a successful
nation that few want to leave, and many want to join - including refugees
from Russia, China, Vietnam, Venezuela, Cuba, Cambodia, North Korea
and Nicaragua.
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I don't think it's really necessary for the US and Russia to have an arms race. But then again, I never thought it was necessary during the Cold War.
What we really need is a more coherent, consistent, transparent, and honorable foreign policy. Instead, we mistakenly aligned U.S. interests with that of other governments and political systems whose policies and interests are incongruous with our own.
Also, we've never been all that honest about why we have all these entangling alliances and strange bedfellows when it comes to our foreign policy and national security objectives.
Our leaders claim that it's all about "democracy" and "freedom," but that's always been a bald-faced lie.
Others might take a more cynical view and argue that it's more about "national interests" and global economics, although if that's the case, then we undermine our own position by propping up puppet governments in order to maintain a certain false image that these governments are "independent" and "sovereign."
If it's all about economics, then we'd be far better off simply annexing these territories and making them into colonies. Our failures have occurred due to wanting to eat our cake and have it, too. From Iran to Cuba to Vietnam, we've been wanting to pass off this image of "defending freedom" while still pursuing our own "national interests," but such duplicity hasn't worked all that well for us in the long run.
Nowadays, since Russia is no longer communist, there is no obvious "ideological" barrier here. The only reason other countries would align themselves with Russia might be to employ a counterweight to US military adventurism around the world. If we stopped engaging in that kind of foreign policy, then no country would have any real reason for aligning with Russia, and Russia would have no reason to align with them.
It seems that Russia's main national security goal at this point would be to shore up their own defenses and improve their strategic/geopolitical situation around their own borders. On their western frontiers they have NATO and the US nipping away. To the east, they have China and the rest of East Asia as a potential rival (although Russia and China seem to be getting closer these days). To the south, they have the Middle East and all of its current turmoil.
In contrast, the US is nowhere near in any kind of precarious situation like that, so the US has far less of a justification for saber-rattling or arms races at this point.
"Necessary" suggests it's optional but compelling. Instead, I'd call it "inevitable".
All nations tend to seek military parity at least to an extent which which lessens
risk of attack & defeat. It would go against human nature for us to suspend this
race.
But there is a useful mitigating approach available to us...better relations.
This is more important than before, since technology appears to amplify
the risk of greater horrors of war.