The Soviets were a lot more predictable than strong-man Putin. Power was diffused through the central committee and they had rational, if evil, goals. If/when Putin consolidates absolute power akin to Stalin, we are hostage to whatever capricious reasoning he holds. We have no idea whether his ego might lead him, if challenged enough, to say, "F**k them, launch everything" regardless of the consequences. Is he a sociopath? Psychopath? We just don't know. But the KGB attracted many of them.
To the point that Rus bombers would be blown out of the sky if crossing over the mainland, so what? The nuke missiles the Bears were testing have a reported range of 3000-5000 km.
Blowing off the threat as long time behavior by both sides IMO is dangerous complacency. We had plenty of evidence that old Sov side was a blowhard bully who could be faced down. This new regime has a too limited and different track record to predict reactions in future confrontations.
The beasts of modernism have mutated into the beasts of postmodernism—relativism into nihilism, amorality into immorality, irrationality into insanity, sexual deviancy into polymorphous perversity. And since then, generations of intelligent students under the guidance of their enlightened professors have looked into the abyss, have contemplated those beasts, and have said, “How interesting, how exciting.”
—Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Looking into the Abyss (1994)
Originally Posted by No.6
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