lwarmonger

Ok, I think this removes a substantial amount of the disagreement between us right here. I was never suggesting that the United States would attack Russian ships in the Caspian Sea while they are still at sea. I was referring to Russian ships in (or entering) Iranian harbors, and how they would be legitimate targets in a time of war.

Well, you did have a very good point when you said that there is a limit to how independent these nations can become from Russia (after all, their economies are quite integrated), however if you see a large number of Islamic Republics or liberal democracies springing up on Russia's southern border, having overthrown governments loyal to Moscow, it significantly weakens Russia's influence in the area and can also have long term economic ramifications.


Which is exactly my point. The United States and Russia can hurt one another quite badly by supplying weapons to their respective enemies. Better that both nations adopt a "I won't arm your enemies if you don't arm mine" approach then try to get into a bleeding match. I've always felt that since Russia and the United States have so few areas where their interests clash (Iran being one of the few permanant areas, Central Asia is merely a passing area of American interest that will fade with the Afghani intervention), that the two make natural diplomatic (if not economic) partners. It was only a freak coincidence of ideology and post WWII devistation that caused us to become enemies to begin with.

I'm not just talking about Central Asia here, but also the Caucasian states as well (where such an event has occured). I will agree, that Kazakhstan is a useful, stable buffer between Russia and the other Central Asian republics. However, chaos in the neighboring states could easily destabilize Kazakhstan's government (which is not particularly broad based), and in turn spill over into Russia.

Palestine is largely dependent upon Israel for their entire economic existence. That does not stop daily suicide bombings. The Mullahs in the countryside are demagogues, and not particularly rational.

The US would not initiate a nuclear strike on Russia, because we have no need to. Our conventional air and naval forces can hit a large number of retaliatory targets on Russia's coastline. That being said, I don't think Russia would go nuclear for the sake of national pride (the Soviets certainly weren't willing to, and they had ideology partly driving them). The electorate cannot give the orders for a nuclear strike, and Putin, whatever else people may think of his domestic policies, is a rational man.

Actually the Cuban Missile Crisis was a few years before Mutually Assured Destruction came into play. In 1962, Russia had around 300 nuclear warheads (not 300 mounted on ICBM's, 300 total). Now, given that around half of those were prepared for use in the assault into Germany, with a few more for use in depth in the European theater (France, England, ect), that doesn't leave too many for the continental US. With our 5100 nuclear weapons, the United States clearly had the edge in any nuclear conflict. What those nuclear weapons in Cuba gave the Soviets the ability to do, was launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on America's Strategic Air Command before it could respond. This would have severely disrupted our ability to coordinate our nuclear counteroffensive in the event of a Soviet first strike, and went quite a ways towards compensating for Russia's nuclear inferiority vis a vis the United States.

Probably. The United States did not take a very sober look at foriegn policy in the 1960's, while the Soviet Union did. If we had an objective method of analyzing foriegn policy (instead of the State Department), then we probably could have seen the Soviet's real position, regardless of their rhetoric. It was not until the 1970's that we began to take an opproach based on pragmitism instead of ideology.

But the reason we lost that battle was because we had to keep fighting over in Vietnam. And the reason the NVA was able to keep fighting, was because the Soviets and Chinese were supplying them. The USAF turned North Vietnam into the surface of the moon, but it didn't matter because they weren't producing their own weapons. They had no industry to bomb, and so we couldn't really make a dent in their warfighting capability.


I agree that we will most likely not be invading Iran in the near future. It would be both costly, and unwise. The scenario I have been making reference to the most, is extensive air strikes against Iranian infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and military factories. But if Russia suddenly starts upping it's shipments of SAM missiles into Iran because of this, the United States would respond.