FROM RUSSIA WITHOUT LOVE

Source: Financial Sense

'The latest Polish-American defense pact would place U.S. missile interceptors just 115 miles from Russia’s borders.  Commenting on the deployment, Condoleezza Rice stressed that the anti-missile system was not a threat to Russia but was aimed at countering missile threats from Iran. 

The U.S. Secretary of State was quoted at a press conference in Berlin as saying:

"I think everyone understands that with a growing Iranian missile threat, which is quite pronounced, that there need to be ways to deal with that problem."

And as George Strait put it: “I got some ocean front property in Arizona. If you’ll buy that I’ll throw the Golden Gate in free.”  Not only do the Iranians lack the capacity to deliver a missile into Poland, but they also lack a motive.  Why would the Iranians target Poland?  Condoleezza Rice is either stupid or, worse yet, thinks the Russians are stupid and would actually believe that a missile interceptor system deployed along their western border is meant to counter an Iranian threat.  This move in Poland is the latest in a series of foreign policy blunders committed by an ideological Bush administration.  Before Poland, the U.S. signed an agreement with the Czech Republic to place a missile defense tracking radar on Czech territory.

The NATO alliance states are not in a position to confront Russia militarily.  Others have tried throughout history.  Napoleon and his Grand Army of 450,000 went into Russia in 1812.  Following the disastrous French campaign, fewer than 40,000 of Napoleon’s men were able to escape.  Later, during World War II, Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa would not fare much better and would result in the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany.  

Russia has a million-man army and the ability to enlist 10 million more. The Russians also have the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world, consisting of land-based immobile (silos), land-based mobile, submarine-based, and air-based warheads.  Russia’s most recent intercontinental ballistic missile, the Topol‑M, is capable of making evasive maneuvers and is designed to withstand any hit from laser technology, thus making it capable of penetrating any U.S.-planned anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defense system.  In a hypothetical conventional war, without the use of nuclear weapons, the Russians, with their 20,000 battle tanks, would sweep Eastern Europe in a matter of weeks.

And if the war is a non-shooting new Cold War, the Russians will have plenty of options, including cutting off the 2500-mile Druzhba pipeline, the world’s longest oil pipeline, delivering oil from southeast Russia to much of Europe, as well as shutting out the United States from outer space.  If you are a NASA astronaut with no shuttle of your own, your only ticket to the international space station is aboard Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.  Furthermore, Russia will use its veto power in the UN Security Council to block all U.S.-sponsored resolutions, including those aimed at dissuading Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapons program...'

More: Financial Sense