Face it: Both America and Russia are in decline; both feature hollowed-out economies, and both remain competitive only in the weapons sector.

Russia is superior in the low end of the market (small arms, tanks, AFVs, etc) while America dominates the top end (missiles, planes, subs, etc).

Who will win; or rather, who will collapse first? Place your bets…

Oh OK. That’ll be an American T72 tank, then?

As for the USA, the country exists on printing dollars and building its debt pyramid, the largest pyramid on this planet. When it implodes (inevitably), this will be a disaster much worse than what is happening now, and that will be the logical shameful end of the US, a used to be global bully and parasite.

Russia’s recent surge was made possible by US’ preoccupation in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan. The US did not have the manpower or the clout to check Russia’s attempts to reestablish some of its former sphere of influence.

With the US’ withdrawal from Iraq, provided it can somehow wash its hands clean of the mess that country is bound to turn into, it will be more free to limit Russia’s exertions in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. And, as the US will be forced to abandon any active agenda in the Middle East, it will need a new foe. Who better than the Russians?

The new cold war begins.

Oleg, I think the Americanism you are looking for is: Stick a fork in it, it’s done. Or perhaps Stick a fork in that pig, it’s done. Or even: Stick a fork in (America|the American empire|Americanism|the American dream|American prosperity|American ______), it’s done.

BTW, if you really did travel through America you should write a book. Dimitri Orlov, closing the collapse gap, has done surprisingly well.

I could throw a dart at any paragraph to rip to shreds. This sentence found it’s mark:

“If we’re lucky, we’ll survive the humiliating decline and settle into the new reality without causing too much damage to ourselves or the rest of the world.”

After this head-stuck-up-one’s-ass bullsh*t there’s some complete idiocy about desperate neo-cons bull-rushing for the nukes.

Mark, in your rush to bury America under a pile of imaginary “humiliation” you’ve become completely sucked into the Russophile (on steroids) version of the conflict.

America’s alarm wasn’t at any catastrophic loss power but over Russia’s apparent lust to cling onto the remnants of her former empire that haven’t yet succeeded in fleeing into the safe arms of NATO.

The ego masturbation of Russian military officers preening over punking puny Georgia’s “American trained” army as if they just took out the entirety of USEUCOM is hilarious.

Let’s see Putin try to punk NATO. ;^)

Jesus, did they resurrect Brezhnev and give him a screen name on here or what?

Sure, some buyers of US tech got their asses handed to them by the big, bad Ivans of Russia. But to say that it was a failure on the part of the US is to say that the Israeli strike of the Syrian nuclear processing sites was a victory for a US proxy and a blow to Russia because they managed to show up the air defense systems the Russians had just sold Syria.

All this piece is, is a sad bit of pro-Russian propaganda attempting to capitalize on the “New Cold War” that every armchair general and their brother has been foaming at the mouth about for the past few years.

The United States’ decline as an empirical power started with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Russia had nothing to do with it other than screwing up the Soviet system of government so badly that it was bound to crumble. Once the scary bear at the door to Europe was castrated and made to beg for forgiveness for it’s past indiscretions, the rest of the world figured they didn’t need our military might to keep Russia at bay anymore. The past few conflicts have been nothing more than shoddy attempts to keep a failing military-industrial complex from dying out completely. What’s more, modern Russia is doing the exact same thing. In an attempt to make itself relevant in a world where commerce and consumer societies dictate the flow of power, Russia hasn’t been able to keep up. The ONLY thing they’ve got going for them right now is oil, and just like in the 70′s when they made a fortune off of selling oil during the embargo, they’re living high on the hog with no mind to the future when oil will no longer be the cash cow it is. Even now, with crude prices spiraling downward, Russia is starting to feel the economic crunch. The only thing that ANYONE in the government there knows how to do to put forward a tough visage in times of crisis is to flex their military muscle. While our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or nothing more than bids to keep the military-industrial complex afloat, the increase in Russian weapons sales and all of the spurious shows of might that we’ve seen from Ivan is nothing but the same.

Pavel Milyukov saw how alike our countries were in the pre-communist days. If you look past the political wrangling, they’re the same animal underneath going through the same things over and over again.

Also, before the incident 65% of the Polaks were against having American missiles in their country and now 65% are for it and the politicians are happy to comply.

Cold war is good for business, good for the economy, for the discipline, for rationalizing anything and everything the government does.

So, here’s the score: Georgia lost, Russia won, and the US won too. Could it be that Putin and Bush planned it together?

I never thought I’d say this, but can’t you guys bring back Vlad Kalashnikov for a bit to show this cretin how to do this sort of thing properly?