An interesting proposal was put forward by the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
A future Trans-Atlantic security pact, RT gave an interesting analysis suggesting that this will in turn end NATO once and for all:
If this came through this would mean a new peace of our time breakthrough, one we haven't seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago, however since then Russia and the west haven't exactly had the best chances of being best friends or allies against each other, and the existence of NATO in a post Warsaw Pact world is a sad reminder that the west hasn't taken off it's cold war parachute pants!
From recent times close incidents that could have brought the NATO countries and the Russian Federation close to a war, two notable incidents would be:
* An incident in 1995 where Norwegian scientists in cooperation with NASA launched a two-stage rocket. This caused a Russian nuclear alert since the rocket was launched from an area where Americans subs operated and the missile had the same launch profile as the launch of a Trident SLBM.
Boris Yeltsin had ten minutes to make the decision of whether or not to authorize a nuclear launch, this was a major screw up considering lack of communications and understanding between both parties involved
* There was also the Pristina airfield incident in Kosovo in 1999, where Russian troops occupied the airfield in the wake of the war, NATO-Saceur general Clark ordered British troops to confront them and kick them out. The British commander in charge refused and stated "I am not going to start World War III for you".
The war in South Ossetia in August of 2008 which saw Russia launching an offensive against Georgia cost 2,000 people their lives (mostly Ossetian civilians murdered by the Georgian Army), the background to Georgia's war planning are much more serious considering it was planning to join NATO (Georgia is not near the North Atlantic, neither is Afghanistan but I guess that doesn't matter), it had been supplied with military hardware by 15 countries just before that war!
From NATO countries the Georgian Army received about:
* 300 APC's from the NATO countries * 100 tanks * 67 artillery pieces * 99 mortars * 150 anti tank systems * 200 portable anti aircraft units
* The French Air Force had been prepared to deliver four Mirage fighters * The Americans were to supply 15 Black Hawk helicopters
The Ukraine supplied a further 90 APC's, their extremist leader Yushchenko has been opting to join NATO but has since been vetoed (from more responsible European countries), so has Georgia which is good since NATO isn't aligning itself with fascists!
That being said NATO has gone too far, the arms business does make strange bed partners and the donor countries of these arms can't be blamed for the damage caused, but with extremists in power from former Soviet countries in eastern Europe could lead Russia and Europe into a dangerous hostile situation.
Russia shouldn't be viewed by Europe as a potential threat any more than any European country should be considered a potential threat, the damage caused by the South Ossetian was a failure for the international community and envisioned some horrible hypocrisy on behalf of the west.
The Russian Federation is a country that has had a lot of history in it's short life and was run into the ground after the USSR collapsed, today it matters, not only for military reasons but for it's size and influence in other parts of the world, a Trans-Atlantic security pact stretching from North America, through Europe to the Russian Far East would more than likely be a more positive change* in the long term for the future rather than trying to decide whether or not to let old Soviet republics with bitter extremists align themselves with most of the great military powers of the west, that would certainly be a disaster waiting to happen!
* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev seldom gets credit for promoting real change!
It's been a long time since America fought a war where it was under any serious threat, and that was World War II, following that war mainland USA was left virtually unscathed after emerging victorious.
However the threat in 1940 was the biggest direct threat to the United States in recent history:
In the liberation of Western Europe the Americans were on the side of common decency and actually liberating the European people from oppression.
The same cannot be said about the war against Imperial Japan, it was high in cost of not only military hardware and the recovering US economy but also on human life, half of Japan was burned and then the two famous nuclear bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were executed, most likely to deter the Soviets!
From then on America took to introducing its free market to the rest of the world setting up military bases overseas and riding on the high seas in massive aircraft carriers, intervening where it served their "National interests".
Such interventions were over economic greed and in several cases bankrupted other nations, but to this day the idea of a foreign army invading was always the threat if America lapsed in securing its far away foreign security interests.
This has seen it develop into a hyperpower with a greater military than the old Roman, British and Russian empires!
But even after promoting democracy militarily in recent years in Iraq and Afghanistan (over 7,000 miles from the US) Americans don't consider themselves a militant nation, however when one looks at the hard facts its hard to ignore the fact that it really is!
The United States may be the sole hyperpower and may be the only superpower left in the 21st century to influence an ideology as the Soviets once had, however in trying to secure the vast resources in Eurasia a whole ocean away to serve their hefty economic needs may lead to a costly war with Iran and Pakistan.
During the 1990's it failed to reach the top of the global market and meantime several new economic superpowers such as China, Brazil and India have emerged.
As the US continues to send its army into the 'empire graveyard' that is Afghanistan while suffering serious economic burdens the eastern world is once again gone down the road of autocracy and communism.
Bottom Line: If the US continues such expensive oversea wars and military developments while swindling the budget it could see itself collapsing entirely in a manner similar to that of the Soviet Union, if this does happen not only may the North American continent be plunged into it's own 'Dark Ages' period of uncertainty, but with a new power in the east rising it may not be able afford the rich capitalistic society it had thrived on.
If this does happen and the world gradually goes down the road reform of the best option available the last years of the United States in history will be seen as wasteful and irrelevant, regardless of how big their military was!
With the United States and Russia getting into a more in depth discussions over nuclear weapons (trying not to sound cynical but I somehow doubt they will get anywhere anytime soon) one cannot help but to notice France launching a new ballistic nuclear submarine the Terrible just over a year ago.
Things are changing for France but one thing they don't want to seem to let down is their nuclear deterrent which today is pretty strong considering the Cold War really ended twenty years ago!
Yet times are changing, the French pulled out of NATO in the 1950's to form an independent military, five years afterwords they detonated a nuclear bomb four times more powerful than the one used on Hiroshima in Algeria, it was around that time France obtained its nuclear deterrent which was of great joy of the president of the time, Charles de Gaulle.
But times have changed.
The Soviets are gone and the there is no direct threat on any of Frances borders, France rejoined NATO a few months after remaining militarily independent throughout most of the Cold War, now meaning that three nuclear powers are in NATO an organization of nations that aren't under much of a threat these days.
The French have obviously acknowledged this since they're plane-based nuclear arsenal is being decreased (which currently consists of 60 TN-81 warheads) by a third (i.e. 20 warheads), thus bringing the total French nuclear arsenal to less than 300 warheads.
But the good old nuclear ballistic missile submarines are still on the high seas.
While this isn't a bad thing and pointing the finger at the French for still having nuclear submarines would be hypocritical considering the island nation of Great Britain just across the Channel possesses just as many.
That being said Gordon Brown is proposing cutting the Trident missile submarine fleet showing the right attitude, while France only launched the Le Terrible a year ago France is at a crossroads whether to use its nuclear ability to promote peace or influence its national interests.
More commonly known as the 'Dead Hand' the nuclear fail safe deterrence system was put online around 1985, this was to save the Soviets from winning 'the' nuclear exchange between it and the western countries if all of its high command were to be killed in a decapitation strike.
It would respond with overwhelming force against the western nations countries, possibly all members of NATO, it was of course kept a closely guarded secret until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It's been theorized that if one side carried out a successful decapitation strike against the other it might have been able to severely hinder a quick and sustained response.
It's these simply facts kind of remind me of that line from Dr. Strangelove in the war room when talking about the fictional Soviet doomsday machine:
"Yes, but the ... whole point of the doomsday machine ... is lost ... if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?"
The joke is that obviously if one had this kind of deterrent it should state just that fact to 'deter' their opponent from attempting a first strike in the first place!
Ron Paul is one of the only politicians that come to mind that tell things how it is about the United States:
Since the Spanish American War of 1898 America in one form or another has interfered with country policies far from its own borders to secure it's interests, this really came to pass after the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazi's in 1945.
Up until 1991 the United States competed with the Soviet Union in the spreading of ideology often destroying smaller countries in the process (Nicaragua comes close to mind there) and setting up parts of the world as buffers against the spread of communism (South Vietnam and Iran) again far from its own borders, however you could argue that this was justified in the name of the Cold War.
Which officially ended in 1991, yet the United States has continued interfering with certain countries far from home launching preemptive wars.
For instance take the 1991 Persian Gulf War:
The US "had to" intervene because Iraq under Saddam Hussein had shown a posture of aggression when he invaded Kuwait, this was true in one sense when you ignore the fact Kuwaitis are ethnic Iraqis and the fact Kuwait 'acquired' its independence in 1961 when it was carved out of Iraq because of its strategic location and the lake of oil that it sits on, you wouldn't be far wrong if you said Kuwait is really just a western oil company with a flag!
Not only that but comparing Saddam to Hitler and trying to display the Iraqi Army as baby murders isn't a just cause for blowing away Iraq's infrastructure and then starving a million of its citizens through harsh economic sanctions before invading the country in its entirety 12 years later.
The cure really did turn out to be worse than the illness in this case!
But what people have said to me is that now Obama is president things are going to be a lot better, no more wars, but still his foreign policy remains the same, America under Obama is far from keeping to its own.
I will ignore the fact that in the past two years the US has set up Africom which puts US forces in 53 African nations spanning across most of the continent.
But what startled me the other day was when asked about why he was sending more and more US soldiers into Afghanistan with no clear sign of a victory he responded with:
“You have to learn lessons from history.”
I'm not sure if he was referring to the lost British Army in Afghanistan from the 19th century, or the fact Jimmy Carter’s administration was responsible for creating, training and arming al Qaeda in the first place and that Jimmy Carter signed an order supporting the Mujahadeen against the USSR in 1979 which spurred the Soviet Union’s invasion that resulted in a decade long bloody war that ended in the Soviets withdrawing after 15,000 of them had been killed and bringing Afghanistan into a bloody civil war that saw the Taliban eventually bought into power!
If only America could have a president that is not oblivious and ignorant to history, I hope that it was a slip up on Obama's half, or even if it was ignorance because if it wasn't then it seems to put forward the fact that he is no better than Bush before him!
Bottom Line: If America and its people restore a country with great potential back to a republic and maybe deal more with internal affairs more than foreign affairs maybe just maybe the federal government will be able to help it's own people!
You know put out wildfires in California or in the case of New Orleans be able to give humanitarian aid to its own people instead of worrying about the rest of the world!
In history the Soviets were always in short failed in defeating the Americans in the space race in which they had started when the world trembled at the sound of their rockets and Yuri Gagarin was the first man ever in space.
As of with the American rockets the Soviets were able to evolve the original designs and plans from the defeated Nazi's, (NASA was founded after the Americans figured out basis of how the V-2 ballistic missiles worked).
The Soviets however were the first to:
Have the first animal, first man and first woman in space.
First multi space craft docking.
First probe to land on the surface of the moon.
Send a probe into the orbit of another planet (Venus) and to land on the surface of another planet (Mars).
First data recorded off of another planet (Venus).
The moon landing in 1969 of the American Apollo 11 was truly a breakthrough for the Americans, the Soviets were unlucky as their massive N-1 rockets planned for such missions had exploded on test launches!
But the truth was while the United States government made a tradition of cutting big government funding for NASA shortly afterwords and focusing their attention for the next five years on sending men and equipment to fight in the jungles of Vietnam the Soviets were sending probes as far away as Venus! (see Venera 9).
Following the breakup of the Soviet Union they were left with the worlds first space station the Mir which was to be (unknown or planned by the Soviets) the main prototype of today's International Space Station.
But with the Cold War well over and both east and west working together in space related technologies one has to wonder the contribution that will be put forward by the former Soviet republics of Russia and the Ukraine.
During the height of the Cold War in the 1980's the Americans were forging alliances all across the world, even arming the Mujahideen, the Contras and other anti-Communist guerrillas, literally throwing anything they could at the Soviets and prepping other countries to put up an absolute bitter fight to the end in the case of a Soviet invasion.
However Sweden had remained neutral (even in World War II) but due to it's close proximity with the Soviet Union and it's strategic location towards Europe and the fact it needed to enforce it's neutrality it ended up fielding a large enough nearly entirely self made military.
But unlike it's neighbors (such as Norway) it never joined NATO or even (knowingly) aided any foreign military personnel or equipment, however the United States had put forward a clever psychological operation to convince the Swedish people to have a lot of fear in the imminent threat posed by the Soviet Union, this meant that the Swedish military could be a buffer and serve the interests of the United States and the United Kingdom.
They achieved this by operating (mostly American) submarines in Swedish territorial waters (including in Stockholm harbour) appearing to be hostile and not warning or telling the Swedish government of these certain operations, the close proximity of these patrols and the Swedes believing them to be "enemy" submarines meant that the government had to take more solid measures regarding Sweden's impressive forces to counter the threat of such a present danger.
Not only that but Sweden (along with several other non NATO countries) had stay-behind agents that in the case of the Swedish military being crippled or Sweden invaded would operate large scale insurgency groups making it truly hell for the invading Reds.
Although geographical size and the military comparison would have made it look like readying up Sweden for a war an attempt of holding off a serious Russian force would have looked futile.
Click to enlarge
However the Soviets probably thought the same when they invaded Finland in 1939.
These days the term 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' were made famous by the series of lies that started the Iraq War, the fear that struck so many people in the west was of Iraq somehow being able to strike them (remember post 9/11 fear) with a nuclear weapon, but throughout recent history the most scary Weapon of Mass Destruction would definitely have to have been the Typhoon class nuclear ballistic missile submarine.
Six of these massive beasts were made during the 1980's and designed to operate in the case of a war between the USSR and the United States, the GIUK gap a resupply line for the US backed Western Europe, this line consisted of several US Naval submarines, destroyers and aircraft carriers, the Typhoon class submarines however didn't even have to bypass any of this since they could simply fire their 20 nuclear ICBM's from the cold Arctic and devastate the eastern seaboard of the United States!
The subs length was about 574 ft which is about the size of three football fields, it could carry 20 SLBM (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile) that specific one most common on the Typhoon class subs (the R-39 Rif) had a range of 8,250 km, weighs 90 tonnes and have 10 MIRV nuclear warheads each giving each one a blast yield of 200 Kt!
With all that it also has several recreational facilities for its crew including saunas and swimming pools, it was designed for long deployment being able to spend up to 180 days submerged under Arctic ice where it was nearly virtually impossible to detect.
However since the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed three of the six ever made were scrapped, one preserved and two remain in service, however these two usually remain in dock (at Severodvinsk which borders the White Sea), however these have been stripped of their nuclear SLBM's, it was rumored they might be modified to carry ordinary conventional cruise missiles or be used for mine laying operations.
However the two remaining active will be reserved for possible future repairs and modernization, and if the US keeps meddling on the Russian border with those fascist creeps like Yushchenko of Ukraine or Saakashvili of Georgia these machines o' war may be quickly revamped to their ordinary nuclear configuration to once again strike fear to those living in major eastern US cities such as New York City and Washington DC!
With the US beginning to militarize space continuing with the Star Wars legacy left by Ronald Reagan Russia is planning a new missile defense that will be able to shoot down ballistic missiles and hypersonic aircraft.
Although the Russian one (which should be ready by 2030) could be in theory used against attackers coming from space that aren't part of the US military the US plan to militarize space is pretty much to be able to bombard any part of the world using space and ground forces with nuclear weapons!
The point behind all of this?
The United States and Russia are pretty much the two biggest kids on the block, they will eventually fight, the sad thing is that these nations have put their main initiative into building better means to kill other people (Russia's defense brought through paranoia of history repeating itself against it again), this was best illustrated through the Cold War which could have sparked a fire at any second that could have killed off a hefty percent of humanity in a matter of hours and send society back the way, the end of the Cold War represented a chance for east and west to unite.
But that never did happen and now we're back to a new Cold War, sadly it's all both sides seem to know to do after the last generation, I've stated before that the universe is huge, yet we don't seem to want to explore it any further than we already have after being able to do amazing things like land in the moon, even the Soviets were sending probes to Venus in 1975, that was over 30 years ago!
Yet superstition and people of various beliefs, different ethnic backgrounds are unwilling to live with each other and fight to the death to decide how to shape this planet, has human nature doomed us all to eventually die on this planet and not use our true initiative to truly work wonders?
It certainly seems that way:
Those UFO's that occasionally buzz Earth (not the USAF test drones and stealth aircraft over the Nevada Desert) could be alien boy racers for all we know who really couldn't give two shits about us and our problems, or maybe they are simply waiting for us to blow each other away before taking what's left as a place for a pit stop.
Relations with Iran and the US since Ayatollah Khomeini stepped off of his plane in Tehran in 1979 showed Iran breaking all rules of diplomacy especially after it seized American hostages in the US embassy in Tehran.
Before the seizure of hostages however one man named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran's current president) opposed the idea stating that it would boost the influence of the Soviets and that the real threat to them was not the Americans but Russia and the Marxists.
Saddam Hussein's Iraq was an alley of the Soviets and when over 70,000 Iraqi troops along with several divisions of tanks crossed the border into the oil fields of southern Iran the Soviets didn't condemn or oppose it and the UN Security Council called for a ceasefire but made no demand for Iraqi forces to withdraw from Iran, yes it failed to condemn a country that invaded another!
Right to the north of Iran was the Soviet border, the Shah's Iran had been America's most powerful ally, for it's strategic location and it's borders, and during the 1970's the Shah was buying up a lot of modern military equipment from the United States such as the 80 ordered (and 79 delivered) F-14A Tomcats which designed and built to defend US aircraft carriers from long distances, along with that ordered were over 300 F-16's but none were delivered, along with that already present were several different SAM networks and some very mobile but highly advanced army units would delay Soviet ground movements towards the south of the country to give the Americans time to defend Iran.
In 1980 that had all changed, the US Navy helicopters failed to reach Tehran to rescue the American hostages in the ill-failed Operation Eagle Claw and the Soviets ally Iraq had begun an invasion, after acquiring information on US estimates that doubted the present Iranian military were probably unable to properly operate it's tanks, SAM networks and fighter jets.
They were in one sense right but the Iranian military quickly rebuilt itself and had sent Iraq on the defensive in 1982 and resulted in a further six years of Iran on the offensive in a bloody war that would cost 1,000,000 lives on both sides!
Apart from that fact both the United States and the Soviet Union supported Iraq, the Soviets keeping open usual business with Saddam's government supplying them mainly with tanks and fighter aircraft as usual, while the US supplied Iraq (remember an ally of the Soviet Union) with thousands of assault rifles, and a handful of UH-1 Huey's for the Iraqi army after 1982 defending their vital oil interests in the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia.
However if the Soviet Union had invaded Iran in lets say the mid 1980's it would have been met with little opposition from the UN until they had crushed the Iranian regime and its accompanying military, it would have put them in a position with a massive eastern border to oil rich waters of the Persian Gulf and right in short striking distance of Saudi Arabia and the other smaller countries of the pro Western Emirates.
It would also have opened up the large strategic land that is Iran for use by the Soviet Army and Air Force as a base in their war against the rebels in Afghanistan which would further isolate Pakistan.
However a war with Iran with Iraq as an ally would have forced the Soviet Union into deeper economic turmoil as Khomeini had truly united the country together under religious ties, as proved by the amount of volunteers that fought off and demoralized the invading Iraqi forces.
However it would have been worth it in one sense in the long term considering that it would have given the Soviets a massive platform for military forces to influence and dictate how things work in the Persian Gulf, along with it's ally Iraq very evenly splitting both superpowers control over the oil rich region, and would have enabled the Soviets to close off America's oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz which could have crippled several western economies, it was here where US Navy warships had to protect their tanker convoys during the 'Tanker War' phase of the Iran Iraq War.
It's an interesting scenario and one which I'm sure was considered by the Soviets and feared by the Americans.
Admiral Yamamoto once said that "you cannot invade the United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."
This rings through to be entirely true today, America has a military bigger than any of their Allies or their enemies and could take on a rather large war economy and fight multiple wars at any one time,
Following discussions on IMdB and one or two on my own posts, the scenarios most people paint are ones of which would be a sea borne invasion by the Peoples Republic of China, a Red Dawn type large troop invasion right across the Pacific, the writer of this comment put in a lot of thought into this scenario, but the truth is since the end of World War II the United States has managed to triumph a military buffer far beyond it's border against other potential superpowers, for example the United States Navy has controlled most of the Pacific Ocean for nearly half a century now.
It is the most modern in the world with a variety of attack submarines, ballistic missile submarines, a single one of their 11 Nimitz class aircraft carriers can hold 90 fixed wing aircraft, are about a mile in a length and have a 20 storey infrastructure and a crew of 6,000, and has more air power than most aggressor states have in their entire inventory!
So with these giant machines 'o war patrolling far beyond the American coastlines in the oceans of the world I doubt a force large enough would manage to breach these defences, and even if they did the United States Air Force is big enough to deter any threat that would in turn fighting a war far from home, and apart from that even if the front line F-15's, F-16's, F-18's and F-22's (* sigh) fighters were outmatched there are hundreds (and I mean hundreds) of older fighters lying in the hot air of the Nevada Desert which could be readied and flyable once again in as little as eight days in case the United States come under such an unlikely threat.
I know I have been focusing mostly up to this stage on air and sea power, the United States Army has some 1,473,900 active troops along with some 200,000 Marines, plenty to defend it's ground when organized properly and very well up there with the largest standing armies in the world.
Infiltration is probably the most plausible thing that could bring down or cripple the United States, the failure to respond to a natural disaster in New Orleans in 2005 and responding by sending in armed soldiers to take peoples guns could in one sense show a serious flaw in the way things between the government and the people are run in America, but this is one eventuality the government is surprisingly well prepared for:
There are some 600 FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) camps spread all across the United States, they are guarded 24/7, but are currently are empty of prisoners, yet fully staffed and ready to receive prisoners if martial law is ordered from the high command, another reason for their existence is in case of some mass exodus of illegal aliens crossing the Mexican/US border, which would be quickly rounded up and detained in detention in these camps.
Other related Executive Orders worth noting (from past and present) I have listed below:
Executive Order 10990 Allows the government to take control over all modes of transportation, highways, and seaports.
Executive Order 10995 Allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
Executive Order 10997 Allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels, and minerals.
Executive Order 10998 Allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.
Executive Order 10999 Allows the government to take over all modes of transportation.
Executive Order 11000 Allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.
Executive Order 11003 Allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.
Executive Order 11005 Allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways (notable pieces of infrastructure that could help defend against an invading force) and public storage facilities.
Executive Order 11051 Specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.
Executive Order 11310 Grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.
They seem to be prepared for it all, however the precision and carrying out of what they are unlawfully authorized to do could have it's initial human error, that being said it is almost impossible in today's militaristic climate to invade North America!
So the new Red Dawn in my mind is going to be a bit of a stretch if they go down the Chinese east invades west in a mass troop deployment manner like in the 1984 original which I also had problems with but nevertheless enjoyed!
* The American super carriers (particularly the Nimitz class) are most definitely an offensive weapon, the geography of the US ensures that a smaller more strategically based Navy could defend their territory (including Hawaii) instead of their current Navy that protects all of their global interests and are also used as a show of power against America's enemies and potential enemies!
The Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959 saw the 82 man guerrilla force enter Havana and take it under socialist control, Cuba was now Castro's and he quickly made changes, preferably showing off his revolution in the United Nations befriending the Soviet Union and nationalizing the free market system the US set up in Cuba during the time of Batista, the new Cuban economy was made up primarily of sugar cane which was burned by saboteurs who supported the US internally in all provinces in Cuba.
It was the only real wealth they had and made the Castro government angry, yet he had most of the country behind him and some 250,000 ready troops to repel any invasion (set up after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion attempt).
After the Bay of Pig's invasion in which 1,500 Cuban exiles trained by the CIA attacked Cuba was foiled before they could reach Havana and they were then abandoned by their American backers, Castro thinking he was safe and that the west couldn't touch him without serious circumstance he decided to export his socialist revolution to other parts of Latin America, the US military in a threatening manner practiced a mock invasion of another Caribbean island using 40,000 joint marines.
This was a big threat to Castro and Cuban forces were readying for an invasion, however Castro one of the worlds biggest believers in communism decided to directly hit the problem at its source, the United States.
Several Cuban people and CIA agents in Cuba around 1962 have stated that the nuclear ballistic missiles that were sent under the Americans noses to Cuba were literally just parked there, right in the public's eye!
What was at stake during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 for the United States was the possibility of nearly all of its strategic bomber bases and several major cities such as Washington DC, New York City and Dallas which were right under the hammer, only a few cities such as Seattle were out of range.
Robert McNamara stated that in 1992 he had learned something he didn't know before, that was that Castro knew the nukes were there, I quote McNarama as saying exactly this:
"I asked him 3 questions. One- did you know there were nuclear warheads in Cuba? Two- would you have recommended to Khrushchev to use nuclear missiles in the event of an American invasion of Cuba? And three- what would have happened to Cuba? He said, "One- I knew the missiles were there. Two- I would not *have* recommended it, I *did* recommend it! And three- we would have been totally obliterated."
Yes, after the socialist revolution that turned Cuba into exactly what 82 man team had envisioned (Che Guevra another notable member), Castro was ready to sacrifice it all in the ultimate fight that would (in his mind) destroy or at least cripple the center of capitalistic imperialism that was threatening the way of life he saw fit for the world.
The 1984 movie Red Dawn wastes little time in getting into the action, less than 10 minutes in Soviet paratroopers land in a football field in Colorado and once there begin to hit vital targets like Mr. Cheesedale a high school teacher and the high school and it's students in general.
Yes a small town in Colorado would was a major focus of Soviet airborne operations!
Later into the movie when the Wolverine resistance fighters (named after their local football team) rendezvous with a downed F-15 pilot whom tells them a lot of what has happened in the world.
Russian proxy forces from Cuba and Mexico (which had a revolution) with sabotage forces disabled American ICBM sites followed by the Cuban and Nicaraguan armies marching into the midlands, covered by a massive Soviet assault of commuter planes flying right over the Bering Strait towards Colorado.
We (the audience) must take it for granted that the US radar operators can't tell the difference between a flock of pigeons and a full scale aerial assault!
Europe are shown to stay out of the war (since they "never" help America with in it's wars), except England that is, Red China sides with the United States (go figure) which results in (hinted) mass nuclear strikes that killed 400 billion of them.
It's not solid but then again this is a movie and we (the audience) are supposed to see it from the point of view of the teen resistance fighters (the Wolverines).
But would a Soviet and Cuban force really put that much attention to a single town in Colorado, what strategic importance does that have?
I wouldn't mind but the huge force (which consisted of tanks obviously carried in their backpacks) nearly had their operation foiled by a single UH-1 Huey army helicopter which observed and fired on them all afternoon and for half of the night!
Not only that but communism is obviously such a malignant disease that it slowly just absorbs places and people, for example a re-education camp (built in a drive in theater) is built nearly instantly in that town, do the Soviets really dislike what was going on in Calumet, Colorado that much that they sacrifice so many resources only to be defeated by six teenage resistance fighters?
Who are freedom fighters and remain freedom fighters by having a defacto leader!
Director John Milius stated he was inspired by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 and the resistance put up by the Mujahideen (then known by the Reagan Administration as freedom fighters), his inspiration really shows in the movie.
That all being said I doubt any American at the time doubted how real a war like this could have been!
Obama and Medvedev's agreements on nuclear arms reduction today has being described as a breakthrough, although that being said I doubt they'll break much ground until that US missile shield that's being established in Poland and the Czech Republic is fully removed since it is (rightly so) considered a threat to Russian security, the shield is supposed to stop missiles fired form neither Iran or North Korea, although I somehow doubt that will ever happen!
That being said the US and Russia still have ample amount of nuclear weapons to wipe each other out, the US arsenal numbers some 8,000 warheads, 2,500 of these are on 15 minute alert to be launched while Russia has 14,000 warheads left over from the Soviet Union.
Towards the end of the Cold War the Soviet Union had 39,000 nuclear weapons while the Americans were "behind" with 21,000 warheads, when Reagan and Gorbachev finally got talking there was a brief moment in which arms reduction became a reality, the Soviets dismantled several of their SS-20 missiles and observers from both sides observed the other dismantling missiles.
This was very short lived, when the Soviet Union collapsed instantly three former Soviet states still had nuclear weapons, Belarus had 61, Kazakhstan had 1,400 and the Ukraine had 5,000, they all voluntarily gave them back to Russia where most of them were dismantled.
The US meanwhile in the late 1990's encouraged Pakistan to build up its nuclear weapons stocks to over 60 nuclear weapons to counter India's nuclear weapons (an ally of Russia), Israel (an ally of the United States) have several nuclear warheads and missiles that threaten every city in the Arab world.
See what I'm getting at, Pakistan and India need to have serious limitations until neither of them have nuclear weapons, this will be difficult since Pakistan built so many nukes because of its size compared to India.
You know my stance on Israel their nuclear weapon should also be destroyed before they get into a war that might end up with them setting the whole Middle East on fire!
So in my mind all of this needs to happen before the US and Russia can talk serious about an end to nuclear weapons, that being said the reason it never got fully underway before the Soviet Union collapsed was because Reagan didn't want to get rid of Strategic Defense Initiative (the Star Wars missile defence), and Obama has already said he is reluctant on removing the missile shield from Poland and the Czech Republic.
After World War II fascism had died, it now seemed that the battle between the ideologies of capitalism and communism was now to start, except that it ended in more of an arms race that ran the Soviet Union into the ground in 1991 and leaving the capitalist power the United States to thrive in a unipolar world.
But I'm going to exam the history of the mid to late 20th century on this one, for instance the socialists in Latin America that were aided in part by the Soviet Union and resulted in the Cuban Missile Crisis which showed the gap between the two powers.
Totally anti establishment
Socialist rebels like Che Guevara in Latin America attempting to fight for a world wide communist revolution, after the revolution in Cuba in 1959 he even helped Castro acquire nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union, Castro whom in 1994 confirmed to former defence sectary at the time Robert McNamara that their intent was to launch as many nuclear missiles at the US and be killed themselves in the process, that's how serious the battle for ideologies had become!
However you'd be a hypocrite and a fool to just criticize the Soviet Union for what they did in the 1960's, the United States exercised its power over the world holding it hostage to it's nuclear weapons and exercising its power and force far beyond its borders.
Apart from being a democracy it took quite a time to give rights to black citizens, a likely World War III had been averted by John F. Kennedy whose logical thinking averted the death of millions and the eventual confrontation between capitalists and communists, he was accused of appeasing communism and often criticized for that;
Many in the US preached that communism wasn't a political ideology, but a way of life, an evil and malignant way of life which spreads like an epidemic and as such should be quarantined, when John F. Kennedy was shot and Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president he changed Kennedy's policy with Vietnam just four days later!
Not wanting the south to fall to communism he had the north bombed for weeks on end, more bombs were dropped on North Vietnam than of Western Europe in all of World War II!
So the containing of communism, but the Vietnam War was a lot more complex than that, the fact that the Americans didn't help the Vietnamese in the French Indo China war in their struggle to gain independence from a colonial power shows that the Americans really wanted a war, what resulted was over 50,000 US soldiers killed and over 3,000,000 Vietnamese!
Ronald Reagan the B-actor who became president and remained president of the US in the 1980's showed his worth by invading the island midget state of Grenada and making jokes about communism, when relations between the US and the USSR finally opened in the late 1980's the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991.
The new Russia was going to be a capitalistic one!
The Cold War was over and for the next ten years the biggest concern to the free world was Monica Lewinsky!
Today communism around the world wasn't thriving against capitalism like in the 1960's, except in the Peoples Republic of China where all our iPod's and Big Macs come from.
But these days we're face down in a worldwide recession, Wall Street brought the American economy to its knees less then 20 years after the Soviet Union collapsed from economic pressure the west is crippled while China is basically the same as ever.
So at the end of the day pretty much none of the biggest three ideologies that fought it out in the 20th century, communism, capitalism and fascism none are proved to be prefect and all had serious strains pulled on them, but at least in the capitalistic system we're not required to share our possessions.
Someone said this to me awhile ago and its been on my mind since; it was something along the line of quote:
"I hate Germany cause of Hitler and all of them."
The ignorance of this bothered me for along time, sure there were about ten thousands Nazi's but most of the German people just wanted to live their lives, and Hitler came to power from a general election however, the result was only 33.1% for the NSDAP in that election. Only 71.1% of the eligible voters voted in that election in November 1932. That reduced the share to 23.5%.
I'm not praising Hitler or anything but he did take a shattered state in 1933 that was blamed for a war it didn't cause (The Great War) which was the biggest war in history at that time, but Hitler eliminated all opposition, made himself a powerful dictator and making the growing super power that was Germany a totalitarian state trying to Nazify everybody.
As a totalitarian state there were ways to stop people from starting a revolution or uprising against the Nazi's, a simple population surveillance, this was called the Blockwart (officially Blockleiter); one spy/contact person for about 40-60 households (about 170 individuals in average). The system was very extremely effective.
The scary truth about fascism also is it's the most powerful form of government ever seen in history, the effects the Nazi's had fighting on the Eastern Front was proven by the fact that the Soviet forces had to withdraw nearly as far as Moscow scorching their own land, destroying their farms and factories to try and slow down the massive Nazi advance, Stalin's war of annihilation against Hitler showed both sides fighting a total war anyone who could hold a gun in Russia's case sent to fight.
The people of Germany suffered mightily during the Second World War on the hands of Stalin and the Allies, for instance what about the firebombing of Dresden by the RAF in early 1945, most of the city burned and over 40,000 people burned alive with it, most of them just civilians, where is the morality in that?
As if that wasn't enough the German people were to suffer for along time more, especially those in the east sector of Germany in the early post war years, hundreds of women who possibly had their husbands or sons killed fighting in the Eastern Front were raped by the occupying Red Army in the mid to late 1940's!
Also after Berlin was divided between West Germany and East Germany the inevitable World War III between the Allies and the Soviet Union would have resulted in the Germans being forced to kill each other before most probably have millions killed as the result of, American, British, French and Soviet nukes!
It would have been the mother of all suffering for one nationality in the 20th century but luckily it was never that bad.
What sickens me is with all this obvious evidence people can still say they hate Germany because of Hitler!
I had wrote a thesis before about how basic conventional warfare has been phased out, this couldn't be further than the truth during Ronald Reagan's second term as president of the United States in the mid to late 1980's.
He had planned to be stronger than the bear in the woods (the USSR) and really meant it for what he had started.
He had planned for a 600 ship Navy, this included:
Recommissioning older Iowa class battleships from World War II
Building more of the new aegis cruisers
Keeping older ships in service longer
Building several more Nimitz class carriers
To understand the scope of things one Nimitz carrier requires 6,000 crew members to function properly and carries over 90 fixed wing aircraft, during the 1980's these were a mix between F-14 Tomcats to defend the carrier, (one of which could shoot down 6 Soviet aircraft from up to 100 miles away), more new F/A-18 Hornets which could engage air and ground targets along with A6 Intruders and EA-6 Prowlers which could be escorted on bombing runs.
About four more of these were commissioned before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, by that time the US Navy was the largest in the world with 15 carrier battle groups, 4 battleship surface action groups, a handful of Aegis cruisers and over 100 attack submarines.
But did quality also fit in with this, well the truth was even though with the size of it being bigger then the Soviets the fleet also had more quality in it, for instance at the time the old Iowa class battleships, (commissioned in the 1940's during the Pacific War against the Japanese, these were refitted with RGM-84 Harpoon, BGM-109 Tomahawk, and Phalanx CIWS system capabilities, plus their armor plating would be more resilient against anti-ship missiles, this was perfect for attacking positions on shore and in shore in a coastal target, its 16 inch guns able to haul something as heavy as a small car nearly 20 miles! While its Tomahawk missiles could hit targets around 2,500km away!
This configuration on the USS Missouri (BB-63) during Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991 proved it to be perfect for the war.
But when the wall came down in '89 the Soviets were gone and Russia wasn't seen as much as a threat, Congress cut funds decommissioning the older ships that made up the 600 ships Navy.
Today though the US Navy still has a hefty 11 Nimitz class aircraft carriers and a few dozen missile destroyers, its small than it ever was but is still hi-tech, but in the case of a conventional war in the future will we see the return of older ships to help fill the void?
At the end of the day unlike the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II the US Navy managed to cleverly combine quality and quantity.
Russia, well more the former Soviet Union was never part of the renaissance, reformation or the enlightenment, major parts of history for the west, this caused Russia to become more culturally distant from the west since the 17th century.
Its a country that stretches across eleven time zones, has historically adapted to this vulnerability by acquiring buffer territories to provide even greater strategic depth for their defense. This vulnerability has led to numerous invasions by great powers in the past. Napoleon and Hitler all did their worse to the Russians the latter having slaughtered 20,000,000 Soviets, maybe they had a reason to distrust the petty fascist powers that thrived in western Europe at the time.
And what happened after the Soviets defeated Germany? (America and Britain sped up its defeat) an entire defensive military alliance was created to face down the singular power of Moscow.
Thus NATO was formed in its Cold War terms, but it still exists today and is spreading its influence deep into eastern Europe, (former Soviet satellite states), why is this being allowed to happen.
I mean Russia is now a autocracy that is supposed to be allied with the rest of the world (a multi polar world), yet America remains the sole hyper power militarily in a unipolar world and NATO still exists, it is extending around Russia now in the Caucasus backing up Georgia last August when the Georgians attacked South Ossetia!
The gap of relations between Russia and the EU is closing and to Russia this is evidence of hostile unified purpose.
Russia currently has a stockpile of 14,000 nuclear warheads (the US roughly 8,000), how many of these are operational I don't know but its still quite a lot considering the cold war was supposed to be over since 1991!
What the west needs to do to preserve good relations and make Russia an infinite ally is for NATO to shut down, Russia will never invade Europe unless Europe attacks it first as history has shown, and the west has no place in Central Asia or the Caucasus, cause there is nothing more unoriginal then history repeating itself over and over again!
