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The Sky is falling..
[TheJamestownFoundation] Russia Seeks Total Military Domination Over West.During his annual address to the parliament, on March 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled an array of nuclear superweapons, claiming Russia has secretly overcome the mighty United States and assumed a dominant military position. Putin demanded the West now “negotiate,” which sounded more like a demand of strategic surrender (see EDM, March 1). The Western response to Putin’s presentation was disappointing at best. The Kremlin leader’s mix of threats and complaints about US (Western) intransigence in rejecting Russian (Putin’s) “constructive proposals” was conspicuously illustrated with animations of missiles flying across the world to America and brief footage of Russia’s missile testing grounds and military research facilities. Yet, none of these particularly impressed Western audiences. Are Putin’s fancy superweapons real or more of a hypersonic “pie in the sky?” Was this a serious message to Washington or an electioneering show before the March 18, presidential elections (see EDM, March 5)? Speaking on March 1, Putin insisted the West must take him seriously: “You did not listen before—listen now!” But this passionate call seems to have been largely in vain. The somewhat mute Western (US) response to Putin’s speech is seen in Moscow as highly disappointing and inadequate. At a special background briefing for Russian journalists, a top defense ministry official scolded the West and the US for being apparently too dumb to understand that Russia has already won the arms race and there is little choice left but to follow Putin’s public offer to “sit down and negotiate” an orderly surrender. The hundreds of different US land- and sea-based missile-defense (MD) interceptors (GBI, SM-3, THAAD), “Have been rendered totally useless and have no military significance. At best, good for shooting at sparrows, because they cannot defend against the new Russian weapons,” the Russian military insists. US naval ships and newly deployed forces in the Baltics and Poland are defenseless and open to attack. “Against new Russian weapons, US MD is like a slingshot against a MiG fighter,” according to the Russian defense ministry. “No one in the world but Russia has a deployed hypersonic weapon. There is no defense or hiding from the Kinzhal airborne missile that travels at a speed of Mach 10,” the defense ministry added, assuring that all the fancy weapons Putin revealed are real and are being deployed or readied for deployment. The Russian defense ministry, backing up and following Putin, insists the US must stop squandering its fortune on MD and other weapons that have been rendered irrelevant and “recognize the new reality” (Militarynews.ru, March 3). Posted by: 3dc 2018-03-10 |
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