Did Reagan's massive military buildup make the world a safer place?
Did the prospect of a Star Wars defense stabilize or destablize the international scene? To what degree was U.S. foreign policy responsible for the changes in Russia and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Were there any positive features of the Cold War?
Is there any Russian military technology that is superior to its US equivalent?
My entry among all of these fine answers is KOSMOS 954, an atomic powered reconnaissance satellite that crashed in the Canadian arctic.The U.S. and Canadians worked together to recover the highly contaminated debris strewn across a wide area of Canada, but only recovered about 1% of the 50 Kg of U235 fuel.What was so special about it? It was a shocker for U.S. scientists. The technology of the nuclear reactor was far beyond anything the U.S. could produce. The materials used to build the reactor showed that Soviet metallurgists were sophisticated well beyond their U.S. counterparts; one description I heard is that they were like wizards.An example of the sophistication are the Beryllium rods found among the debris in Canada. You can see them in the picture above. These rods consisted of crystalline Beryllium that had been welded together such that the crystals aligned. This meant that the alignment had to be found exactly by turning the rods in some kind of X Ray device in order to see the Crystal lattice at the molecular level lineup. The position of the Beryllium Rods in the reactor can be seen below.This technology was targeted by U.S. nuclear scientists as one of the key assets to locate and bring back to the U.S. after the fall of the Soviet Union. I have no information on how that went or whether the U.S. can presently duplicate this technology.
Why did the Nazi-Soviet pact cause WW2?
They publicly agreed not to fight each other, but both knew that it was more of a case of postponing war between the two countries. The agreement gave Hitler the chance to invade Poland. Neville Chamberlain said he would declare war on Germany if Hitler invaded Poland. Previously, Hitler had been allowed to invade pieces of land without anyone getting involved. Because of this, he thought that Chamberlain wouldn't actually keep to his word and declare war if he invaded Poland. However, to Hitler's surprise, Chamberlain did declare war and WW2 started.
Why is Russia considered a developing country, when once upon a time USSR was a super power along with USA?
@wicked go... If the thirteen British colonies were to secede from the US will it effect the US? Yes to an extent it may, but not to that extent that it would affect its entire economy,where, a once superpower will have to start the developing stage once again.Has the UK become a developing country after losing almost all of its colonies? Yes it is not the same superpower, but it has not affected UK's overall development, so why is it so in the case of Russia?
How powerful is Great Britain's Military?
The UK has a very powerful military. Of course, it's not anywhere near the scope of the US. But along with the US, Russia and France, it's one of the four countries that has the capacity to project force anywhere in the world. You can have arguments on whether it's the #2 or #3 military in the world. But no serious student of military forces would put them in any other spot. The UK does have nuclear weapons, mostly SLBMs.
Does NATO stand a chance in a war against Russia?
That depends what kind of war. Russia has quite different military doctrines than the USA and NATO in general.If Russia invaded Europe, according to old Cold War plans, it’d be a defeat for them. They simply lack the necessary force. They are not prepared for this kind of force projection, their army is not designed to face NATO forces as an attacking force. If a Russian invasion ever occured, it’d be in the Baltic states or somewhere else in the buffer zone. In any case, it’ll be very limited and the Russians will try to achieve a status quo before major NATO forces drive them out or their little adventure escalates into a worldwide shitstorm.But if NATO invaded Russia, that’ s a whole different story. In this case, NATO would very well lose. The Russians are well prepared to defend their Motherland, and they have strong traditions doing so. Not to mention that NATO also lacks the necessary ground potential. Most likely they’d grind to a standstill somewhere around the Dnepr, and then it’s either nukes or GTFO.To summarize, a NATO-Russian war would not lead anywhere, in any case. There is no point trying to win small territories from each other while risking to lose everything. (And I am not talking only about a potential nuclear scenario: there are serious economic ties tangling the two factions to each other, and straining them would be almost as bad as bombing each others’ cities.) As neither side could invade the other’s territory and occupy enough land to cripple the opponent into submission, it’d be just a very nasty tug of war.Finally let me point out that no wars are repeated exactly as the previous one, yet military planners tend to fall into the mistake of preparing for it. In WW2, the demise of France was to prepare for trench warfare and mass attacks again, but they got mobile armies and air support. Britain still believed in the might of the battleship, just to have its ass kicked by Japan and have most of its warships locked in Scapa Flow by German submarines. Most people nowadays imagine a war between Russia and NATO as some strange mix of WW2 and Cold War plans. No it’ll never happen. Not that way.
Will Putin complete his ultimate long-term goals for Russia given how slow the progress has been and his age?
In certain things yes and certain things no. Two obvious things he is on the way to make better (and potentially even better than the Soviet Union level) are the FSB (ex KGB) intelligence gathering capabilities and the military. The second requires Russia to get to a decent level of manufacturing capabilities of hi-tech stuff (particular hi tech that involves the defense), this is difficult but not impossible. Russia is still not able to produce some of the critical hi-tech components for its indigenous designs. This stems from the fact that Russia has traditionally been rather messy (compared to the west) when it comes to manufacturing, despite having all the know-how. Two things Putin is unlikely to solve during his presidency are the situation in places away from the big cities in Russia and the aging population. The population distribution is very Moscow-centered and the nice incentives for people to live in the far east (such as the better salaries and other social services) that existed during the Soviet time are no longer there. So people are pretty poor and unmotivated in the Russian countryside, this is a persisting problem. Population has always been an issue in Russia since the end of the WWII and Putin does not seem to have found any solution for it. Russian men die early and the country is losing in the demographic game. On the whole his performance is not perfect but pretty good.