Russia plans new nuclear weapons

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL1828669020071018

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia was working on new types of nuclear weapons as part of a "grandiose" plan to boost the country's defenses.

Putin, widely popular as his second four-year term draws to an end amid strong economic growth and rising incomes, has been trying to reassert Moscow's role on the international stage by reviving its armed forces, shattered by the tumultuous 1990s.

"We will develop missile technology including completely new strategic (nuclear) complexes, completely new." Putin said in an annual televised question-and-answer session with Russian citizens. "Work is continuing and continuing successfully."

"We have plans that are not only big, but grandiose, they are fully realistic. Our armed forces will be more compact but more effective and better ensure Russia defense," Putin said.

[LakeSamish706]

1. Thank you so much George W Bush (wacko, F***up). n/t

[Eric J in MN]

2. The Bush idiots either couldn't see this coming,

...or want Russia and the US both building new nuclear weapons.

Either way, it's a policy which makes the world more dangerous.

If Gore had been allowed to take office, the nuclear arsenals of both countries would be aging and less capable of blowing up the world.

[LakeSamish706]

3. And there would not be this kind of tension in the world with a Gore President..

This Administration has infuriated the world and with that ratcheted up the probability of a Nuclear exchange.

[Rhythm and Blue]

5. Bush is not responsible for Putin.

Putin is a brutal, power-hungry ex-KGB tyrant. Bush placates him, and he expands his power. Bush antagonizes him, and he expands his power. Europe engages him, frets over him, spurns him and soothes him, and he expands his power. He's a czar through and through.

Now, Iran? Bush is completely responsible for antagonizing, radicalizing, and alienating Iran. But Russia's all Putin's doing.

[BuyingThyme]

6. I say there's no way he would be talking new nukes absent Bush.

[Rhythm and Blue]

7. Now that I'll agree with.

I think Putin's nuclear ambitions are among his least-worrisome qualities, but I will absolutely grant that Bush's dreams of reviving Star Wars have led directly to Putin's nuclear ambition.

However, that's different from the existence of "nuclear tensions." With Gore in the WH, Putin would still be rattling his sabers just as much. He'd still be making it very clear that Russia has a nuclear arsenal to compete with America's (and making the chilling point underlying that); he just wouldn't have to announce a buildup in order to do that.

[Igel]

8. I don't know about that.

In the '90s there were lots of precursors to this kind of thing and I don't think anybody wanted to see them.

All the talk about the fall of the USSR being so horrible, about it being a Western plot to take over the natural resources, about it being sabotage by pro-Western forces. The pop novels about the US invading Russia and valiant resistance that brings down the US and/or NATO. Conspiracy theories that WWII was an inside job, that Stalin was suckered by Churchill and FDR, and they stayed out of the war as long as possible to make sure Russians were killed ... because, well, the West hates Russians/Slavs/Soviets, and we only got involved once we realized that Paris would be speaking po-ruski if we didn't (it sounds very much like Islamist jibberish about Clinton--we stayed out of Bosnia to let Muslims get killed, and only got involved when it looked like a good Muslim state would be established by the jihadniki).

It was all pop culture, the kinds of things said and written by people that people like me would never hang out with or pay much attention to (if not for the fact that part of me prefers to read trash for the language, as opposed to "fine literature" for the context). The kind of thing that shows up as incidental background in Sorokin's novels. With the advent of interesting economics, the opening of archives, and interesting literature, trash was ignored. Look at S. Kotkin's stuff, truly innovative and insanely well-grounded economic and social history, but all backwards looking; who knows what he'd have found if he considered 1990s Russia in the 1990s.

The volume of such "underground" stuff, discontent with Eltsyn being a Western plant, just grew throughout the '90s. And it's continued to grow, so there are two Russias--one that acknowledges that Stalin was bad, the USSR inefficient, and the USSR not an entirely healthy place to be ... and another for whom Stalin's a good guy, the USSR is maligned, those in the GULags deserved to be in the GULag, and the KGB stands for all that's good. In such a climate, no less than in 1950s US, dissing the enemy is a Political Imperative, and the drive to restore honor and glory in a zero-sum framework is perceived a moral necessity, because if honor and glory aren't quickly restored, it implies that they have no honor and glory.

And in this, we again hear things that sound very similar to what's coming out of SW Asia and Latin America. Gotta love primates.

[BuyingThyme]

4. Sounds like Rumsfeld.

Thanks Chimpy, you murderous blood monster.

[spanone]

9. this is what happens when bullies take over politics