Got my attention. Read the
article, from today:
Mr. Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who was imprisoned in Russia for selling secrets to the British, was sent to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap. Why he would be targeted years later is unclear, but political and security analysts have said that the attack served as a warning to those who would cross Mr. Putin that, even in exile, they are never beyond the Kremlin’s reach.
Got my attention. Good point. Helluva good point.
...
Relations were already rocky over Moscow’s roles in the wars in Syria and Ukraine, its annexation of Crimea, its meddling in elections in the United States and elsewhere, the assassination of Kremlin foes in Russia and abroad, cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns against other countries and what Western officials have described as a broad, largely covert effort to destabilize and discredit liberal democracies.
...
The crisis over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent and his daughter has driven tensions between the Kremlin and the West to their
highest pitch in decades. The responses raise the prospect of more serious escalations, either public or clandestine.
I clicked on the link "highest pitch in decades" This is from March 26 (We'll be working backward to 2001 from here ;):
Ivan I. Kurilla, an expert on Russian-American relations, and recalls a period of paralyzing mistrust that followed the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
“If you look for similarities with what is happening, it is not the Cold War that can explain events but Russia’s first revolutionary regime,” which regularly assassinated opponents abroad, said Mr. Kurilla, a historian at the European University at St. Petersburg.
He said that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, had no interest in spreading a new ideology and fomenting world revolution, unlike the early Bolsheviks, but that Russia under Mr. Putin had “become a revolutionary regime in terms of international relations.”
Ivan might want to consider those similarities from the personal perspective nd up his life insurance.
From the Kremlin’s perspective, it is the United States that first upended previous norms, when President George W. Bush withdrew the United States from the Antiballistic Missile accord, an important Cold War-era treaty, in 2002.
Got my attention big time. It was the withdrawal from the ABM treaty, huh? I remember that. It was the first time the U.S. had ever withdrawn from a major treaty. Didn't think that was a good idea at the time. I didn't remember that as being the start of the present upsets however. I had remembered it going further back, same issue, but back to the Reykjavík Summit, which was in...1986. Remember that, too. Both Reagan and Gorbachev looked crestfallen when they parted.
Russia, Mr. Kurilla said, does not like the rules of the American-dominated order that have prevailed since then, “and wants to change them.”
Wait. Those are not the same thing. What "American rules" does Putin want to change and why? Not invading other sovereign countries? Not choosing the American president? What does pulling out of the ABM treaty have to do with any of that? Who was president in 2002 again? (long time ago)...Dubya. Of course. Fucking Dubya. MO-RON. Why did Dubya do that? I know it was right after 9/11, duh. Were those ballistic missiles that turned Windows on the World into Windows on the Ground? No. Did Dubya's decision have anything to do with 9/11?
"I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government's ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks."
It did. Just two months after 9/11. MO-RON.
"The 1972 ABM treaty was signed by the United States and the Soviet Union at a much different time, in a vastly different world," Mr. Bush said. "One of the signatories, the Soviet Union, no longer exists. And neither does the hostility that once led both our countries to keep thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, pointed at each other. Today, as the events of Sept. 11 made all too clear, the greatest threats to both our countries come not from each other, or other big powers in the world, but from terrorists who strike without warning or rogue states who seek weapons of mass destruction. We know that the terrorists, and some of those who support them, seek the ability to deliver death and destruction to our doorstep via missiles. And we must have the freedom and flexibility to develop effective defenses against those attacks."
"Neither does the hostility": HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
"Terrorists...seek the ability to deliver death and destruction..via missiles."
How-even in Dubya's brain-could OBL launch a ballistic missile at the U.S.? What, did he have ballistic missile launchers in his cave in Afghanistan? I swear, if a bird had Dubya's brain it'd fly backwards. If 9/11 had been the result of missile launches, Dubya would have grounded plane flights in response.
The two leaders had agreed, President Bush said, that "my decision to withdraw from the treaty will not, in any way, undermine our new relationship or Russian security."
Ivan, did the two leaders agree? Wtf, Ivan?
Mr. Bush said he had given Russia formal notice of the move today. He added that he had forged common ground for a new strategic relationship with Moscow at a number of meetings with President Vladimir V. Putin, whom he referred to as "my friend."
With friends like that...
Putin said the decision to withdraw was "an erroneous one."
"As is well known, Russia and the U.S., unlike other nuclear powers, have for a long time possessed effective means to overcome missile defenses," he said.
"Therefore I fully believe that the decision taken by the president of the United States does not pose a threat to the national security of the Russian Federation."
Et tu, Ivan, a MO-RON?
"Not military conflicts but global decisions like the US unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty lead to a Cold War,” Putin said. “This more in fact pushes us to a new round of the arms race, because it changes the global security system.”
Ivan, you are not a moron, therefore your professorship is restored, but your life is still at stake. Enjoy. The Cold War and the arms race are the same, according to Putin. They did go together, but are they the same? If you have an arms race you have a cold war. If you use your nuclear arms you have a hot war. Can't you have a cold war without an arms race? "I'm gonna fucking kill you." "Oh yeah! Fuck you, mother-fucker!" Stand off in the street between Trump and Biden. Nobody goes to the store to buy Glock. Countries can do that. You don't have to go buy a Glock, causing the other guy to go buy an AK. Why do you conjoin the two, Poot-poot?
March 1, 2018:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday his country has developed supersonic nuclear weapons that can reach anywhere in the world, and are "invulnerable to enemy interception."
During his state of the union address to Russian lawmakers in Moscow, Putin said the weapons cannot be tracked by anti-missile systems.
"We did our best to dissuade the Americans from withdrawing from the treaty. All in vain. The U.S. pulled out of the treaty in 2002," Putin said. "Even after that we tried to develop constructive dialogue with the Americans. We proposed working together in this area to ease concerns and maintain the atmosphere of trust. "But this was not to be. All our proposals, absolutely all of them, were rejected."
"Russia remained a nuclear power, but no one wanted to listen to us. Listen to us now,"
(Note: the U.S. does not believe these new Russian weapons actually exist.)
Yes! That's a garden variety arms race. That doesn't have to lead to choosing the president of the U.S. Consistent with Ivan being a moron, Ivan, don't get too comfortable in that chair, inconsistent with withdrawal from the ABM treaty being the cause of the present upsets.
BUT, BUT, March 2, 2018:
Asked whether his Thursday's address to the Federal Assembly should be considered declaration of a new Cold War and whether the US and Russia are currently pursuing an arms race, Putin said:
"From my point of view, those who make statements about a new Cold War being launched, are not analysts, they engage in propaganda. If you speak about the arms race, it started when the US withdrew from the ABM Treaty."
...Now, both of those could be true ;)
*Addendum. HELD: The New Cold War did not start in 2002 with U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty, Putin's statement at the time in a nationwide address to the Russian people is dispositive. The suspicious Russian mindset did not start in 2002. Well trod path here so no retread: In a sentence, the suspicious Russian mindset goes back to James Baker's lies about reunification of Germany and NATO expansion in 1990 on the breakup of the Soviet Union. NATO then expanded in 1999 (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland), then Dubya withdrew from the ABM, then Dubya again expanded NATO in 2004 ( Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ,Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia), some new members right on Russia's border, started "intensified dialogue" on Ukraine in 2005 and with that Putin had seen enough. When he got wind of it he ran up to Condoleezza Rice and said "Ukraine is ours" and acted on that statement in 2014. Also in 2005 Putin created Russia Today with the explicit purpose of countering "the Anglo-Saxon domination of the media," the beginning of his propaganda war which led to Russia's defeat of the former United States in 2016. Then, "intensified dialogue" with Georgia in 2006 which led to the Russo-Georgian War in 2008 and Russian victory. These were the American imposed "rules" of international order that Putin rebelled against. The New Cold War, therefore, can be dated as beginning in 2004-05 in the brain of MO-RON Dubya.
