Quote:
Originally Posted by August
What do you think? How much foreign territory have we annexed since the 19th century?
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To be fair, how much has Russia? Russian territory is significantly smaller today than it had been since the 19th century; Crimea was Russian territory until 1954. I'll even concede that one, but what other annexations do you have in mind? Russia voluntarily ceded significant territories formerly under its control to states such as Ukraine and Kazakhstan over the course of the 20th century. It withdrew back to its borders and honoured agreements with NATO vis-a-vis military presence in Europe. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, it made significant concessions to autonomy and self-governance for a number of its federal subjects (i.e. the various ethnic republics). So I'm not sure your point there stands, and it is certainly not supported by historical fact, regardless of what I think of the current regime.
Meanwhile the US had made extensive annexations of territory from the late 1800s through the year 1900, annexing Hawaii, followed by Puerto Rico and other Spanish territories like Guam, and de-facto annexing (and continuing to be involved in the affairs of) Cuba and the Phillippines. In some of these territories, popular referendums in the 20th century showed majority significant support to secede from the US and were vetoed by congress. And when Cuba's regime change occurred, we had the Bay of Pigs. And that's far from the only example of interference.
Anyway, I was just making a case in point there and this is rhetorical. No, I don't think the US is "the most dangerous country in the world", it's just that the logic really doesn't hold up as regards Russia, especially when its military is reducing in size and seems to be on track to phasing out conscription and writing off vast numbers of old equipment. Russia learned plenty from the conflicts in the 90s militarily, and that - not a sudden change in geopolitical goals - is what spurns the military spending and gradual doctrine change. They're largely over the whole "human wave" thing at this point and are in the process of writing off a lot of outdated equipment and scaling down manpower.