2040

You’re always taping bananas, honestly it’s getting little old.

2041

It’s true, not all of us can be as smart and informed and level-headed as Scott. :eyeroll:

2042

I agree, it is not crazy for the Russian to fear an invasion. Hell, Trump is the first President in 100 years who hasn’t talked about Russia, as being some form of an evil empire. Commies were the boggie man in America since the 1920s.

When I was in Russia in the early 90s, (very early internet) the Russian elite knew about the economic and technological superiority of the west.

To them it is crazy the West fears them. They can’t make a decent car, building, nuclear power plant, much less an iPhone. Are they really going to take over Poland much less Germany?

2043

Let me repeat this important point.

A lot of you are talking about as if Russia is afraid of the invasion now as it is now. You say it has nukes. That’s not the scenario Russian government fears. They fear that during the almost inevitable trouble times the part of the elites would try to get on top using foreign help. Or NATO will pull reverse Crimea on Russia and breaks it with some special operation. Or that during civil war they will have much easier time to influence outcome or even get involved directly. The last one is fantastical scenario. But it’s not that hard to imagine that, say, Caucasus or even Northern Russia starts to revolt and gets the support from NATO. You can’t nuke the world for supplying your unhappy citizens.

In all of those cases having nukes doesn’t really help. It may even harm cause UN may want to vote unanimously to invade Russia to make sure those nukes are secure and don’t get into the hands of some local warlord.

2044

The smart thing to do to not have something like that happen is make your citizens happy with more freedom, less corruption, and better leadership. But instead of making life for their people better, they want to double down on showing what tyrannical fascists they can be.

2045

You ask Russian leaders to look into the eyes of their children and tell them they can’t have a new yacht or fancy sports car because of some nonsense about the good of the people?.. Do you even have a heart?

2046

Heh, you could say this about American oligarchs, too, and it would be just as sad/funny. Because it’s oh so bitterly true.

Pretty much. Americans have never really got the hang of diplomacy in general, though. Everything with us is a special case of bilateral relations. We get obsessed with dealing with Putin or the USSR or Iran or whatever in isolation, and rarely step back and figure out our broader goals and thus a broader approach. We’ve tried once or twice in our history, but our relative power and security have led us to discount the value of, you know, making as few waves as necessary and not just arbitrarily pissing everyone off.

2047

That makes sense to me. I mean, let’s not pretend the US doesn’t have a long history of overthrowing leftist governments in it’s “sphere”. We didn’t seem to want communism anywhere in this hemisphere any more than Russia wants NATO on their borders.

I try to imagine a (far-fetched) scenario where Mexico was destabilized and looking like it might become a Chinese puppet. I don’t think we’d be thrilled and would likely be looking to back governments friendly to us, even if that meant overthrowing the China-backed one if the opportunity presented itself.

I can’t speak for all Americans, but for myself I oftentimes don’t immediately get that sort of worry. Having an ocean on each side and being the big kid in your neighborhood, it’s just not really something we’ve had to worry about. I mean, the closest thing we had to a foreign adversary on our border was tiny little Cuba and look how we reacted to that.

2048

I think it is quite rational to fear any country that has the capacity to turn the planet into an irradiated wasteland.

2049

But can you imagine the US actually invading Mexico and taking over part of it?

That does not seem to me like even the most remote possibility.

2050

You mean setting aside that we’ve literally already done that?!

But seriously in modern times? Yes, I can, given the right context and circumstances.

  • Destabilized country facing civil unrest, civil war.
  • China propping up one side, sending them arms, maybe even building military bases.
  • A faction friendly to the US and soliciting our support.

I could absolutely see that happen. We fucking invaded and occupied a country halfway around the world for no discernable reason, why wouldn’t we invade to secure our border?

EDIT: To be clear, I’m not saying the scenario above is likely or feasible. I’m just trying to create an analog to what’s going on in eastern Europe from our perspective.

2051

Let’s look up some details from Wikipedia.

I don’t see why the potential of US military intervention in Mexico is unreasonable given our history and given the right circumstances.

2052

The thing is I think the US ultimately does want to destabilize Russia (in the sense of weakening and hopefully seeing Putin overthrown) and vice versa … and that being destabilized by Russia is a big concern of many Americans here on the forum.

Arguably (perhaps not so arguably) Russia has been substantially more successful in this sphere than the US. Trump deeply wounded the US on the foreign stage whereas Putin has pretty much held steady.

2053

This is missing a lot of context.

If Putin fails, Russia faces likely civil war. The idea that a lot of Caucasus and Asian republics is going to declare independence and maybe even try to get more land for themselves is not even far-fetched. While we’re talking about the Ukraine right now the main topic in Russia is how Chechen leader promises to cut off heads of federal judges, and his whole cabinet posts videos to Instagram repeating that, and Chechen secret police kidnaps relatives of those people (who are not in Chechnya) and Kremlin officials only have to say that they have to respect Chechen traditions and emotional reactions. Putin organizes a secret meeting with Chechen leader but he boasts about it in Instagram. Everyone in Russia realizes that the country is a time bomb.

2054

I mean Chechnya was independent for a bit there.

We’ll see which country (US or Russia) breaks down in civil war first I suppose.

2055

Isn’t Chechnya just used as Russia as a made up bogeyman? I thought Russia basically did some false flag fake terrorist stuff to blame the Chechens for, to justify Putin’s expanding power.

Ya, here we go… the 1999 appartment bombings, where the FSB blew up a bunch of appartments, and then blamed Chechen rebels.

2056

Yes, I mentioned that earlier which is why I was so worried Russia was going to do the same thing in Ukraine. I figured they’d shell their own troops or Russian civilians in Donetsk, and then claim it was Ukrainian soldiers. Don’t forget Russia/it’s allies shot down MH17 and then used old satellite photos trying to claim it couldn’t be them. It’s like nothing is off the table when Russia wants something.

2057

Fair amount of speculation over the years about US intervention in Mexico. We’ve been there before, of course, not only in the 1840s but in the early 20th century. One of Patton’s first military expeditions was going after Pancho Villa IIRC. The reason the US has not actually invaded and taken over parts of Mexico is…we don’t need to. There is no reason to do so, and we both benefit much more from the status quo.

But, if the status quo changes, there is little to prevent the idea of intervention from taking hold. A Mexico where real instability allows the sort of bandit groups we saw in the early 20th century to raid over the border, where the northern states become complete narconations, where foreign governments establish outposts and exert control over many aspects of the nation–those sorts of things might well provoke an invasion of sorts. It’s not like there is much to stop us in a purely military sense. It’s that everyone knows the aftermath would be nightmarish.

2058

we literally already annexed the parts we wanted 150 years ago?

I mean that is what most of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California are.

2059

It’s boogeyman but it’s very real. You can read about gay activists in there if you want something recent and covered in Western press. But it’s not just Chechens, a lot of autonomous republics are basically getting tribute from federal government and are immune to Russian law. It’s a common occurance in Russia when some politician or public person is forced to make a public apology under fear of violence. Sometimes in case of a journalist or comedian the whole TV channel personnel does it. Russian oligarchs do something similar (one famous event was when oligarch had ridden over a 5 year old child and the court has decided that the child had alcohol in their blood) but it’s usually done through official channels and with as little noise as possible.