Is a new arms race afoot?

Can they afford to build them this time?

Now they've gotten a taste of freedom, they won't return to hardline Communism. They have a long way to go to become a world power as anything else.

you don't need communism to have an arms race

The real trick is going to be to keep them on our side, at least most of the time.
Russia's taste of freedom from hard-line Communism and totalitarianism will serve them and us well in the future. Seems most countries that get a good taste of it hate to lose it, either from external or internal forces.

I don't think Russia will do anything to us just yet. It will drain them of their resources if they take us out and we may be able to fight back, which means they'll be weakened in the fight to fill the void of international power that would appear, fighting against China and probably what's left of NATO and our former allies or the EU. Same goes for any other nuclear power.


Could be a pain in the ass, though.

They don't have the nationalist drive, aggressive tyranny or money to replicate the efforts they made under Communism.

no but in the past they've sold military technology to countries like Iran, you can finance some nice projects like that

They've got to have a few people smart enough to realize they're about number three or four on the list of infidels to be destroyed by Iran, i don't think they'll go too far.

Russia never let that stop them. It is called arrogance based on the thought they are smarter than others or tougher. They believe they can handle the Persians when the time comes. The Russians don't have the same sensibilities we have. Their state run and "private" media isn't like ours.

Remember, they don't have your frame of reference. Their frame is based on using arab countries as surrogates in their 50 year+ war with us. Why do you think we had a presence in the middle east in the firsat place, to counter Russia (the FSU).

True. And they still want to complicate our lives.

Hiiiii

Russia........the land of eternal trouble.

A nuclear arms race is no good for anybody on any continent. Say we fire our whole arsenal of nukes over to Russia. Goodbye habitable planet earth.

There's no 'race'. The Russians might be manufacturing more nukes for varioius reasons, but the Cold War, with its foundation of Mutually Assured Destruction, is over. Whatever they're doing, it's outside the context of the Cold War.

Hiiiii

Has any agency or individual anywhere in the world been able to account for all the nukes in the former USSR?

I fear Russians nuke sales more than anything.

Nah they figure they will start looking again once someone actually fires one off.

So far aside from monitored ground testings The US is the only one to use it to blow people up.

Yeah...and the Japanese deserved it, too. Do you know how atrocious they were in their maniacal effort to establish an empire in Asia during the 1930s and early 1940s? They were monsters.:thumbdown: