WWIII placeholder thread.

American SLBMs mainly. The Soviets deterred nothing as the U.S. had no interest in attacking the Soviet Union.

that said, exactly who here is calling for an "immediate military response"? By that I assume you mean actually shooting at Russians.

But we always say readysetgo. Those rotten commies didn't say readysetgo!

Even though Gorbachev didn't take power until nearly two years later?

Able Archer '83.

Is that so hard to believe?

It may have already been said, but Russia probably has more of a legitimate reason to invade and occupy the Ukraine than America had to invade Iraq or Afghanistan.

Not that it's an especially legitimate reason, mind you... but still. The outrage from some is especially hypocritical.

Violence against English speaking people that there's no evidence of?

Anyone else looking forward to the next James Bond movie? Cold Warrior Royale?

The US had about 3K legitimate reasons to invade Afghanistan, Iraq is another story, one where we didn't have any reason to invade at all. Putin's invasion of Ukraine probably has about the same level of justification as did our invasion of Iraq.

And let's not forget that right now the only way astronauts can get to (or from) the ISS is via Russian hardware.

Since successive U.S. governments have completely dropped the ball on human space travel, let's hope Elon Musk can step up to the plate ASAP.

Interesting... seems like there are more countries on the radar somehow. NATO has reinforced its Baltic Air Policing mission, the US seems to be padding Poland's air force. Probably just chest thumping, though. But if I didn't know better I'd say they are all reading the same Tom Clancy novel right now.

Also, somebody captured the Special UN Representative

Is that a balloon? Is it going up? Ruh-roh, Raggy . . .

Didn't the last Clancy novel involve the U.S. fighting to protect Ukraine from Soviet agression?

Course then again, one Clancy novel in the 1990s involved a suicidal airliner destroying the nations capitol building (along with the president and almost all of Congress).

How can we be padding anyone's air force? We need OUR air force padded!

You're thinking of "The Bear and the Dragon" which has Russia and China fighting over the resource-rich eastern region of Siberia with the US helping the Russians repel the yellow horde.

No not that one. The once since he died "Command" something or the other.

Are you absolutely certain he wrote it, or is the publisher just maintaining the brand?

Oh, and on-topic:

Well... no. The US had about 3K legitimate reasons to take out bin Laden and forcibly dismantle Al-Qaeda. But invading Afghanistan outright and deposing the Taliban because they refused to immediately hand over a group residing in their territory, no questions asked? Nope.

Why not? The Taliban certainly had no claim as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan

Does it matter? And how can you of all people ask that after Pocket stuck your name on "Probe" after Gene DeWeese wrote all but one page of it? (wikipedia entry).

"Why not?" isn't sufficient justification for invading a country and deposing it's government.

Russia can say the same thing about the new Ukrainian president.

Maybe it doesn't matter to you, but some of us find it amusing when certain writers "keep writing" long after they're dead.

A close friend of Majel Barrett's who shall remain nameless once described her "going through the file cabinets and the wastebaskets" after GR died to find every scrap of paper he'd scribbled on in order to produce a bunch of stuff "created by Gene Roddenberry."

We did ask them nicely to turn him over to us before we went in. Their first response was, "We don't know nuttin' about him." Their second response after they realized we weren't kidding was, "We're gonna let him do whatever he wants!" We had to have a rapid response to what he did, if only to prevent it from emboldening other nutters out there. That rules out the kind of raid which finally got him because we simply didn't know his exact whereabouts in '01, so we could either invade the country and try to sniff him out, or we could start lobbing nukes at various parts of Afghanistan.

It sucks, but both Yassir Arafat and Qaddafi knew how the "game" was played, and so long as you simply "poked" Uncle Sam with a stick, you could do pretty much whatever you wanted, but when you slipped up behind him and walloped him with a club while he was sleeping, that was going too far, and he had no choice but to start lopping heads. How hard do you think it would be for Palestinian terrorists to "hijack" a Saudi or Egyptian jetliner and kamikaze it into Israel? Not terribly hard at all, in all probability. Sure, the Israeli Air Force would shoot the jets down as soon as they could, but the debris raining down would do a lot of damage in a densely packed area, and even if 9/11 hadn't happened, the Israelis would have broad support for aggressive military action against the nation where the planes took off from and the PLO/PLA.

You'll notice Putin invaded the Crimea and not Ukraine proper. There's a reason for that. If he'd have rolled into Kiev, then Europe and NATO would have to do something. By simply taking the Crimea, everybody gets to wave their dicks at one another while shouting loudly, and everybody can back down without losing too much face. Putin's term limited, so unless he changes the Russian constitution, he won't be around for very much longer, and his replacement isn't necessarily going to be able to continue the foreign operations (indeed, Putin may not be able to keep going if the rumors about how weak the Russian economy is are true). He pushes out, or changes the Russian constitution so that he doesn't have to step down, and you will see a distinct change in how the US and Europe deal with this. Which is a bad thing, since that can only mean an escalation, and we start going up that ladder, the odds of nukes getting used grow greater.

Supposedly, her and Gene were divorcing (or on the verge of doing so) when he had his fatal heart attack.

I thought the "term limit" thing with Putin only meant that he has to switch off between President and Prime Minister. The title doesn't much matter, he's the strongman in charge regardless.