onlooker wrote:I am not sure what the real deal with this cited article is. It this a personal opinion of Mcfaul or is he relating what his impressions of the US leadership mindset is. Maybe dissident can enlighten us. Six, while it is true what your saying ultimately the decision rests with Civilians especially the President in terms of something as big as a nuclear strike. That is something an ambassador to Russia might have some inkling of. Finally, Short yes it could be some sort of mind games US is playing, though this may also be just an off the cuff private opinion/remark by this fmr. ambassador.
Well yes that's true, I actually don't know much about McFaul and what his background was. As ambassador, presumably he would be privy to quite a lot of things.
But I don't understand dissident's post, I don't speak Russian so I can't look at the tiwtter and follow the conversation to figure it out.
Context and a full story is important. Perhaps Diss could do a full objective post on it and present the entire twitter conversation and translate the russian parts for us.
You can't just say "the former US ambassador said this outrageous thing, here it is in Russian" and it's just one sentence taken out of a conversation.
That sounds like an interesting story, so let's hear the whole story. I would need to see the context on that, it doesn't sound like anything a former ambassador would say.
About your other points --
Onlooker, if you are American then you know just as much as I do that the USA ain't ever gonna nuke Russia or take out Russia's nukes.
Democracies do not work that way.
Things just aren't simple. Let's say someone watches RT all day so after a while they just start agreeing with Putin. So okay, call your congressman up and tell him you think Assad should stay and we need to work with Russia more. And your congressman would take your views into account, but then he's also aware that the whole alliance we're in says that assad has to go.
So I don't know what you all want. Do you want the US to ally with Russia, with Russia in charge? That would be like a tail wagging a dog, the USA is as big as all of the EU where Russia has the GDP of Italy. And the US already has a global alliance, all over the world.
I just don't know what you all want, other than "Putin is right" and I guess you want Obama to follow Putin?
Him and John Kerry have actually already done that, quite a bit.
The thing about Syria is just what Obama says, that there's a 65 member international coalition that all says one thing and then there is Russia and Iran that says another thing. Those 65 nations in that international coalition aren't going to just flip and follow Russia. They have a different opinion, than Russia and Iran do.
(my hunch is that Putin could get a compromise that's good enough for his interests and then just join the existing international coalition.
What he's probably doing is just playing his poker hand too much, and too long, and he needed to cut a deal by now and the further he goes it's not even any good for Russia's interests)
If either Russia or the USA strikes first in a surprise attack, they can take out 90% of the other side's warheads with an expenditure of 20-25% of their own warheads. You hit the land-based ICBMs in hardened silos, at least two warheads per silo, also you hit the land-based bombers and their nuclear arsenals, also you strike the submarine bases - each side has about a third of the missile subs deployed, the other two thirds in port or in drydock.
