Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

Russia is not a threat to world peace it is the loony stuff coming out of DC and the rest of us in the West just tally along with as poodles.

the Admiral Kuznetsov, in this very moment being under close surveillance by the Portuguese Marine and Air Force

While Europe keeps accepting the USA as part of the democratic western world, therefore an ally, Nato is fundamental.

Quote from: rjhowie on 2016-10-23, 13:31:28

Russia is not a threat to world peace it is the loony stuff coming out of DC and the rest of us in the West just tally along with as poodles.

Tell Crimea and the rest of Ukraine that…

And what would Russia do to maintain its only Mediterranean port, in Syria?

As for the Ukraine it is in a worse shape it ever was.

Starting from the late 1920s with a centrally planned economy, Ukraine was involved in Soviet industrialisation and the republic's industrial output quadrupled during the 1930s. The peasantry suffered from the programme of collectivisation of agriculture which began during and was part of the first five-year plan and was enforced by regular troops and secret police. Those who resisted were arrested and deported and agricultural productivity greatly declined. As members of the collective farms were not allowed to receive any grain until sometimes unrealistic quotas were met, millions starved to death in a famine known as Holodomor or "Great Famine".

Scholars are divided as to whether this famine fits the definition of genocide, but the Ukrainian parliament and other countries have declared it as such.

The Communist leadership perceived famine as a means of class struggle and used starvation as a punishment tool to force peasants into collective farms.
Two future leaders of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev (pre-war CPSU chief in Ukraine) and Leonid Brezhnev (an engineer from Kamianske) depicted together.

Largely the same groups were responsible for the mass killing operations during the civil war, collectivisation, and the Great Terror. These groups were associated with Yefim Yevdokimov (1891–1939) and operated in the Secret Operational Division within General State Political Administration (OGPU) in 1929–31. Evdokimov transferred into Communist Party administration in 1934, when he became Party secretary for North Caucasus Krai. He appears to have continued advising Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov on security matters, and the latter relied on Evdokimov's former colleagues to carry out the mass killing operations that are known as the Great Terror in 1937–38.

On 13 January 2010, Kiev Appellate Court posthumously found Stalin, Kaganovich and other Soviet Communist Party functionaries guilty of genocide against Ukrainians during the Holodomor famine.

Neither are we considered nor are we treated as allies (f*ck the EU).
We are vassals. From your point of view it's an existential vassalage...

Quote from: krake on 2016-10-24, 02:28:55

As for the Ukraine it is in a worse shape it ever was.

You're young; Howie's old. Neither of you know much of history…

Quote from: krake on 2016-10-24, 10:12:57

Neither are we considered nor are we treated as allies (f*ck the EU).
We are vassals. From your point of view it's an existential vassalage...

By my point of view it's just simple pragmatism. Do you have any alternative? no, you don't.
Decades and decades of pacifism turned Europe into a defenseless sheep. Between the bad and the worst, Nato is the only guarantee against Putin.

No republic ever maintained an empire.

Instead of an European army decoupled from NATO/USA you prefer European vassalage. USA = bad, Germany = worse - while the rest of Europe doesn't seem to matter in your equation.

Bunch of imbeciles. Keep that way and we'll be forced to adress each others by Comrades.

Russia is not a damn threat Belfrager