2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[Roy Karrde]

it does not cede any ground. you are operating on the assumption that obama is weak on foreign policy and that he wants the missile shield to be 'done away with', even though it is being maintained by the current action, and has been expanded over the course of his administration.

neither party wants the missile shield issue to go away. neither party wants the current deployment of the missile shield to go away. look at the actual results.

I am sure Russia wouldn't mind having it go away, as it is one less foreign policy headache to deal with. Obama may or may not be weak on foreign policy, but saying he will be more flexible after the election gives off the view that he would be more willing to give into Russia's demands once he does not have to worry about his own political hide.

i'm not saying it is immediately likely, but rather that it is possible so long as their foreign affairs remain contained (and this is the best case scenario for the current long-term strategy).

It is a rather frail possibility after the attempted revolution and the failure that brought about. Not to mention the Iranian populous remaining quiet during the Arab Spring.

"you can have skirmishes back and forth"? the actual timeline is like: years of sporadic conflict involving increasingly dangerous violence and threats led into months of increasingly deadly skirmishes which led into military buildup and invasion.

you can disagree that this is a gradual development of conflict (though this seems definitionally mistaken), but it really has no bearing on the threat of invasion for western europe or the united states, which is the actual issue at hand. in such cases, the russians make noise but do nothing.

You seem to also forget that Georgia was not even engaging in fighting in Russian territory during this, they were fighting with a breakaway Provence and Russia decided it was time to bring Georgia to it's knees.

and this "nothing" is the situation, in actual fact, that exists right now between russia and the missile shield deployment! they haven't done anything about it, and they don't have any real reason to do so - noise is helpful domestically, but they are actually looking for enhanced global economic integration, so the threat of russia is out of the question.

And the missile shield was never meant to target Russia, it was there to target Iran, but here is the thing Russia and Iran are good buddies especially when it comes to oil. You cannot tell me there is not some back channel pressure from Iran to Russia to make this shield go away.