I'm really not sure which is worst about USA's understanding of the world, its staggering arrogance or its mind-numbing ignorance. If you seriously think that Russia can not call upon any allies then I despair. Belarus, China, and India all consider Russia a primary ally and in a fight there is no doubt that countries facing sanctions from USA at present, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and others would be more than willing to pitch in. Meanwhile where exactly on the border do you think you could amass this invasion force? Kazakhstan? China? Estonia? — Barry Etheridge

Again, my enemy's enemy is my best friend and if Russia thinks that China, Belarus, and India will come to their rescue if they aggressively attempt to expand their borders or start a serious fight with the US they are sadly mistaken. Cutthroat poker is the game, and Russia would not have a snowball's chance in hell of winning that fight even if they all combined their efforts. Its political suicide which is something even insane megalomaniacs like Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin understood.

Britain ruled the waves, and after WWII the US ruled the waves, the air, and space itself. The next race is to conquer self-assembling robots with the navy putting 30-40 thousand robots in the oceans alone. Swarm technology is going to make predator missiles look quaint with millimeter size robots that hunt your down wherever you go and larger ones that blow up in your face. With quantum technology they are even intent on conquering time itself and China has already forbidden the use of time travel as a plot device in their mass media. You can run, you can hide, you can threaten all you want, but your ass will belong to someone else. That's what has Putin all pissed off.

The next race is to conquer self-assembling robots with the navy putting 30-40 thousand robots in the oceans alone. Swarm technology is going to make predator missiles look quaint with millimeter size robots that hunt your down wherever you go and larger ones that blow up in your face. With quantum technology they are even intent on conquering time itself and China has already forbidden the use of time travel as a plot device in their mass media. You can run, you can hide, you can threaten all you want, but your ass will belong to someone else. That's what has Putin all pissed off. — wuliheron

Do you actually believe this Sci-Fi stuff of self-assembling robots? >:O We can't even cure diseases - like cancer for example - and we'll create self-assembling robots which swarm the ocean, and self-assembling robots of milimeter size which hunt you down? >:O Like for real?

Do you actually believe this Sci-Fi stuff of self-assembling robots? >:O We can't even cure diseases - like cancer for example - and we'll create self-assembling robots which swarm the ocean, and self-assembling robots of milimeter size which hunt you down? >:O Like for real? — Agustino

There are already contingency plains to put self-assembling robots on the moon to mine helium 3 for nuclear fusion. You send one assembled robot and have it assemble the rest from parts when it gets there. Then you reprogram them to do whatever you want. A 150 million dollar consortium has already formed to explore the technology required to capture an asteroid, bring it to geosynchronous orbit, and mine it for enough platinum alone to replace every aluminum and copper telephone cable and circuit board in the world. Empires are ruled by the distribution of materials and already there are people also investigating mining the ocean floor with robots. The Pentagon has spent over twenty years perfecting the biomechanics, still has research to do on its actual implantation, but the semi-conducting industry is already moving towards putting artificial intelligence in every desktop within five years, and IBM should be finished at that time with their plans to put somewhere between the intelligence of a cat and a human being inside a coffee can sized container that uses a 100 watts.

The planned drones the Pentagon is working on filling the oceans with some 30-40 thousand of can operate on their own for up to a year drawing power from the water itself without having to be recharged. Its what is now referred to as "disruptive technology" that could ruin the world economy overnight, with the looming issue being who gets to disrupt the world economy, how, and when. The money, technology, and weapons are literally taking on a life of their own and the Pentagon has no clue as to how to begin to address such issues. Success has bred paranoia and they have every reason to be very afraid because nuclear weapons were just the beginning of how easy it is becoming for anyone to destroy the world.

The last estimates I saw for genetic engineering suggested anyone with a few million dollars can design their own biological warfare.

Any proof or evidence for any of this? Where do you get this stuff from?

Any proof or evidence for any of this? Where do you get this stuff from? — Agustino

I offer free lessons in how to use a dictionary and search engine. These are just the things they allow the public to know about. Micrsoft just announced they are about to build a topological quantum computer and the race is heating up to produce the next scientific revolution. The world is about to change fundamentally and either you can follow all the action going on or you will be left behind with your head spinning. However, the next five years should be the beginning of the end where a new disruptive technology is introduced every few years.

Flat lenses, graphene supercapacitors and dirt cheap high performance motors in everything will be among the first things people will notice on the market. A single supercapacitor can charge your phone in seconds with enough juice to last a week and should eventually be enough for a month and half. It means what costs $1,500.oo bucks now for a motorized skateboard or bike or whatever should come down to a couple of hundred bucks and eventually be solar powered and as environmentally benign as throwing leaves on the ground, while with flat lenses your cellphone would act as though it had a foot long telephoto lens. Cameras are about to follow everyone everywhere with enough fidelity to diagnose you with skin cancer.

The NSA already has the first gigapixel camera in orbit that can take a single photograph of Manhattan and read any gum wrapper on the sidewalk. They are also making significant strides with terahertz radiation towards building a cellphone sized device that can see right though your cloths and a shoebox sized one that can look through walls merely by shinning the equivalent of an infrared flashlight. You can already buy a cellphone with its own built in microscope.

The objective is political influence.

The definition of a Superpower is a country "capable of influencing international events and the acts and policies of less powerful nations". Great powers are similar, but don't have a global reach.

I've noticed that speaking of international politics and the present power plays, far too often the debate evolves into the "WW3 topic". That evidentually every conflict would mean that the crisis develops into WW3. This idea is in public very dominant in the discourse, just like in the last US elections, were there was fearmongering that a Clinton presidency would mean that WW3 is closer with Russia. And then there is the naive and in the end ignorant view of simply looking at total amounts of men, tanks and aircraft and them compared means that Russia has no chance. Things aren't that simple. One has to look at what are the actual forces that would be likely deployed, what is the actual power projection and especially what is the will to use force, how credible is the deterrent? For example Ukraine's military was very strong on paper, but when Russia attacked it it could muster only a few units to move against Russia. And above all, there have been a multitude of crises between the US and Russia, and previously US and the Soviet Union, and the crises have gone their way without WW3 erupting. Even the many wrong alarms of an out of the blue nuclear attack on both sides have had cooler heads prevailing.

Hence crises can happen, and sooner or later will happen. And what the political atmosphere and situation is then is far more important than some technogadgetry. Technogadgetry is totally a side issue, basically a distraction in this competition, as it takes a decade or two for any weapon system to be brought into service and longer for the organizations of armed forces in the way that they are truly used on a strategic level. Falling behind/catching up in technological development is important, but not that important. 50's and 60's era equipment is quite capable to fight the most advanced superpower, just as the tactics and strategy are chosen correctly.

Yeah... might be cool, but no, not a game changer. Not in the near future at least...


Even more powerfull is political influence, as this can bring "victories" even without any shots fired. And here the ideological aspects comes to play. The Russian type of right wing anti-globalist authoritarianism, with a nearly obsessive hatred of homosexuality is actually popular. And Russia plays this card very well against the supra-national organizations like NATO and EU.

Perhaps it's fitting that it's Pravda, the follower of the Soviet era iconic Pravda, which publishes articles like this one, Russia has become the only defender of Christian values.

Perhaps it's fitting that it's Pravda, the follower of the Soviet era iconic Pravda, which publishes articles like this one, Russia has become the only defender of Christian value — ssu

Well that just quite possibly happens to be true, to the West's great shame. The West isn't Christian anymore, and has little knowledge or respect for Christianity - hence the anti-Christian pro-greed, lust and sexual immorality propaganda that screams out from literarily every Hollywood movie. You almost can't watch a movie without seeing sex. If that's not obsessive I don't know what is.

Well that just quite possibly happens to be true, to the West's great shame. — Agustino

But that does not happen to be true at all. Because Russia actually isn't as Christian or religious as, well the US. Not by any measure. The Russian elite is promoting this image of basically the Russian state being close to Orthodoxy, but people aren't. That means a lot, there is a difference between an image and reality.

Russians and their faith:


Or with another study, the importance of religion:


Poles are religious. American's are religious. Russian's aren't. Not by any measure compared to Poles or Americans. People don't suddenly wake up in masses to flock Church sermons after they were for nearly a Century deliberately made atheists. Old people in Russia are religious. Just like uh, in my country, with a state religion. The ruling elite chose to pick the Orthodox Church as one ideological pillars of the new (old) Russian state after Communism fell. It started during Yeltsin's time and has continued during Putin. They weren't anymore communists and they felt a void.

It's just rhetoric, propaganda or an agenda to promote. Similar like the belief that what, pinko-liberal gay SJW's are destroying the Western culture by individual hedonism and decadence?

Yes absolute values matter but trends also do. The image you create sets the trend. The Russian state creates an image where religion is respected. Hence if you look at the stats, the importance of religion and the number of believers is growing. Compare this to Hollywood led US, where religion is mocked, sex is put on a pedestal, and so forth. What do young people think about religion in the US? They think it's oppressive and they have nothing but distaste and disgust for it. They prefer to revel in immorality. That's why religion is losing in the West - losing followers, losing ground, while it is winning in Russia.

The image you create sets the trend. The Russian state creates an image where religion is respected. — Agustino

It is accurate to say that this truly about creating an image. Not about truly taking Christianity as a true ideological guideline in Russian politics. I think it is more using Christianity, or here more specifically the Orthodox Church, for political reasons than using politics for a Christian agenda.

What do young people think about religion in the US? They think it's oppressive and they have nothing but distaste and disgust for it. They prefer to revel in immorality. — Agustino

Young are just as heterogenous as middle aged people. And I don't think they are more immoral than their parents were when they were young. Stereotypes just go so far to portray large groups of people.

I think that Americans are religious exactly because there hasn't been a direct link between the state and one Church. When the state and church are one, when there is a state religion, there isn't grass roots connection to the people and the competition, the incentive for the Church to actively look for members, to actively give them what they want, even to listen to them.

Here in my country in 1900 as high as 98,1% belonged to the Protestant state Church, in 1980 the percentage still was 90,3% and today Chruch membership is still 73% of the population, even if resigning from the Church (and having less taxes) is just one click-away with dedicated internet sites promoting people to leave the Church. With membership rates, it looks still that people would be religious. Yet a study in 2011 showed that only 27% of people believe in God as the Church teaches and 23% believed in God in some way. The rest were agnostics and outright atheists. I think the reason isn't Hollywood, but far more the Church itself and it's own actions or non-action.