Soundwave said:
AsGryffynn said:
Even with France and the UK in the picture the Russian military's the largest in Europe. No one questions that. Among the Great Powers, they've always held the position of top dog and few people have questioned it (there's a reason EU politicians are scared that France and the UK leave the EU and more so that France becomes friendly to Russia, since without France alone they are already defenseless).
China itself isn't ready to try and take that position yet. They are a Germany of sorts, using their economic weight rather than military and political muscle (and for the record, Russia's economy isn't bigger than theirs, but it's unrealistically sturdy. You'd have an easier time banging the US economy into recession than doing the same thing to Russia's economy, which by the way, will be resuming growth this year even in spite of sanctions, even though it's weak).
TL;DR as someone who knows this conflict since forever, I am able to safely say nothing kept them from powering up. At best, the UK and the US slowed them down. They didn't really stopped them (it's like the myth the US brought down the USSR even though it collapsed when Russia itself wanted out).
No idea why people are throwing around theories on them becoming the USSR II... If they wanted to, they'd have done so by now and potentially destroyed civilization afterwards.
In other words... No, they aren't interested in your eastern regions...
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They are very much interested in it.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/743234/soviet-union-ussr-mikhail-gorbachev-vladimir-putin-russia-nato
The collapse of the Soviet Union has taken 20-25 years for Russia to really get "back", now they have dusted themselves off. So no, they couldn't really have done it before, economically and militarily they were too weak in the past. It doesn't mean "collapse" of civilization, in Russia's eyes it's simply toppling the post Cold War order which they deem as being very unfair and replacing it with a more "fair" one (a more fair one being one in which Russia has primary influence over all of Europe, and is a major player in other regions too).
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Out of all sources, you use express? Fine...
With before, I was referring to "before the sanctions and everything else". Don't you find it odd that almost every time they did something, it was after someone did something? They didn't strike unprovoked.
Also, it took 15 years. They were back to USSR tier strength in 2005. Well, except their Navy, which still seems rather small...
As for the end of civilization scenario, I was referring to nuclear war. NATO confessed they weren't ready for a Russian invasion. While I am confident France might cut them off, they'd not be stopped before then. Afterwards, it's rollback and nukes or nukes right away. The priority of Russia was doing what the US has attempted in America...
In other words, curtail American influence and Russophobia and keep those out for good. They don't need to invade to do this. Soft power works perfectly.
Illusion said:
Soundwave said:
Russia wants a Finlandization of Europe (meaning a mainland Europe that is under control of a Russian sphere).
Getting Britian to cut itself off from Europe is a long sought after goal of theirs and is a big step towards that goal:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
You guys are being suckered IMO, there is never a "vacuum of power", someone will always seize a power oppurtunity and right now Russia is doing a great job of advancing their goals.
A weaker, divided Europe benefits someone.
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Of course, it is important to note that Russia has the GDP of Italy. I am sure that Russia has aspirations to expand their sphere of influence , but conquering mainland Europe is so far away from them right now that I find it very hard to believe that they have had any significant part in the uprising against government that we are currently seeing throughout the west. It's much more likely that people are just getting sick and tired of their own government calling them racist when they speak out against open borders while its too dangerous for citizens to even go outside at night in their own neighbourhood:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-08/sweden-warns-women-not-go-out-alone-after-dark-serious
A weaker, divided Europe will first and foremost benefit the citizens of the many European countries who have been shutout of the democratic process thanks to the unelected EU. For example, how many countries in Europe actually had a say regarding the number of migrants each country would take in? It was pretty much just Germany who called the shots and then the rest of the EU just had to suck it up and follow orders regardless of how the people of the respective countries felt. A bigger stronger government is rarely a good thing from the perspective of personal freedom, since the stronger a government is, the more able it is subvert democracy and the will of the people it is supposed to be serving.
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GDP doesn't win wars. Ask the GCC. They lost a war with a tiny, besieged country. Also, it's not that tiny. You should be comparing it to Germany... Nominal GDP's worthless when you produce almost everything inside where other currencies have no value.
Over the past few years I've noticed people are starting to be fed up of this "X country will kill us" analogy and seem to believe "we're losing our country" and to be honest, it's sort of true. If you want a more well defined world where every culture will be respected and hopefully run through a barbarism mill to quell the backwards elements, we will not achieve this by opening everything up acting like the people will not abuse charity.
Russia might be powerful, but no country influences people beyond their borders. The US had to ask militaries to do it. This clearly represents solely the people wishing politicians to fuck themselves.
