Quote:
Originally Posted by fast4522
You guys are missing the play President Donald J. Trump is making, the previous collapse Russia had was because they went broke trying to keep up with the Unined States military. So look at everything as a whole policy, Russia does not need this shit. It will become very expensive for them at a time when things are not so rosey, and its people are already suffering. It is just maximum pressure so when it becomes time to make a deal for something we hold all the leverage. Mikhail Gorbachev is much like Hcap's posts, you weigh who you think are reputable. Then use that against all the posts inside this thread, I think that it will be telling.
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I don't see that as the play. A Reagan style beat them with dollars move... Putin won't play that.
Russia knows it can't keep up with us or they would be working on missile defense more. It's just too damn expensive! But they can just dust off IRBMs and repurpose some cruise missiles and viola! While they may not be able to hit the US they can render a ballistic missile defense in Europe much less effective.
For them it's a tradeoff. If chadk is right and our missile defense is so good the Continental United States is safe being able to overwhelm and/or defeat the same system in Europe alone has become the tradeoff and location of assured destruction for them.
I think the one big issue in all of this though is we aren't really looking at a different reason why Russia wants IRBMs and that's China. If we remove Europe from the equation and just have a US/Russia showdown IRBMs are useless... but not a Russia/China showdown.