Poptech, how ever you want to look at it, Russsia may have one of the largest military in the world, but they still use old equipment. The T-72 is there primary battle tank. The best they have. The M1 tank is the main battle tank of the US. The T-72 was around during the Vietnam war. There planes are where they have concentrated their inovation, and compared to the F-22, fall way short. In other words, it may be big, but it is not that strong. It would fall into the same catagory as China.

Save a SeAL, club a liberal!!

We're the largest. So what? The size of the military only matters if all conditions are equal. Conditions, as we know, are almost never equal. There are too many variables. That's why an insurgent guerilla force can hold us at a stalemate, even if we're a hundred times larger. Size means little. Circumstances mean much more.

You can't take military response off the table. If you refuse to use your military, Russia will use theirs, no matter what else you do. The other responses will then be useless. The only thing that resists a military action is the threat of military action in return. You cannot remove that threat, otherwise the Russians will exploit that refusal.

• However, Georgia is a special case. Right now the Russian military is essentially fighting in its own backyard. They'd have no supply problems, or logistical holdups. Their opposition was fairly weak to begin with. And they must have gambled that they could portray Georgia as the bad guy.
• That's probably why they were willing to invade: it was only across the street, and they could cause enough hesitation in the rest of the world to buy them time.
• That said, for the same reasons, they're not going to fight anywhere else. They won't invade the Ukraine or Poland, because those conditions are much different. They can't portray Poland or the Ukraine as bad guys. Neither is weak, especially Poland, who's already covered by NATO.

This is as far as the Russians can go. They ain't going anywhere else. The only real question is whether we should use the military to eject them from Georgia, and there really isn't much of a desire for that. So it has nothing to do with the size of the Russian military or their nukes, because they're not going to use them anyway. The circumstances are what dictates the response, not the bragging boasts about military size.

"There isn't an area of technology we're not ahead in. Russia will spend about $31 billion this year on defense, and has planned a $189 billion, 5-year expansion. Even so, that's about what the U.S. spends in five months."   Investor'sBuinessDaily

Read the whole thing. Looks like a little containment until the Russian economy goes further down the toilet and then the population will change their leadership.

I really don’t think they have upgraded their military as much as they would like people to think, since the collapse of the USSR. It takes money they don’t have yet.

Drill here. Drill now., could help with this problem also.

If you can't remember . . . the claymore is probably pointed at you.

Embolden one bully with inaction, and the next one is going to rub your face in it shortly thereafter.

But I do not see us doing much by way of reestablishing Geoirgia if the Bear decides to do what he does anywhere he wants to.

Little bunny rabbits are shaking.

I ♣ my seal

Once again, a great column.

 The Online Times article re: the antiquity of the Russian equipment--to me-- is akin to saying, "Oh, yeah", to the bully after he whupped your ass. Totally useless and not face saving at all.

Moral - Even an old bear is dangerous!!!!!!!

"At any rate, wasn't conveeeeenient that those white-powder envelopes arrived at McCain headquarters, just in time to distract from McCain's latest gaffe. How Rovian!"

Excellent! That's the best yet!

Obama: My job is above my pay grade

Bingo, blame Bush  ... You can see the same story line coming with the economy and energy prices. It's a hoax, but that's what is waiting in the wings.

How can people be so stupid to vote for Democrats... Is freedom and responsibiulty just too much for the modern guberment screwl graduate ...

The Democrat's convention is going to bash Bush 24/7  just wait ... They always overdo it, just like the stupid Wellstone memorial.

#1 - Don't think for a moment that we did not know well in advance that this was coming. Our intel technology allows us to read the logo on a golf ball from outer space. Plus we track every massive, large, medium and small arms move by EVERYBODY.

#2 - Don't think that we don't have spies on the ground who were not aware of what was going to happen, far ahead of time.

#3 - Don't think for a moment that we aren't massively capable of handling 10 times what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan PLUS 10 more crises like the Russian invasion of Georgia. Although the lefties and the MSM like to spread the word about a weak, overextended and handcuffed America. They only wish and they are full of CRAPOLA to be polite.

#4 - It is not necessarily popular to flaunt our strength in today's world-wide, anti-American sentiment; flames that are fanned by the dems/leftists/MSM's.

#5 - We could kick the dog-dung out of the entire rest of the world combined;;;;in a New York Minute. Don't be mislead by a so-called bogged down anti-insurgency in Iraq that we have tried to fight with both hands and one leg tied behind our back. God love us;;;; that was a mistake that we should have learned about in Viet Nam.

#6 - I am CERTAIN that we have been warning Russia for months: DON"T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! But they did it anyhow.

#7 - They will now  pay an enormous price behind the scenes as well as publicly which is the way of the day in USA/Russia relations. No other type of activity makes any sense.

#8 - The last thing that this world and the USA needs is a totally disabled Russia. The leadership that they have now, no matter how KGB rooted is better than total de-stability. Thats just the way it is.

#9 - Russia is much less a threat to our American way of life than Barack Hussein Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reed and the liberal MSM.

#10 - I forgot Radical Islam that comes in 5th after all of the above. 

... won't allow this to happen.

Unless of course, Obambi wins, then he wouldn't know what to do anyway, so he will just say to our allies, 'just kidding about protecting you' .. You want protection now, that's going to cost extra.

Throwing Georgia under the bus is a very bad idea. Reagan warned the Europeans about feeding the bear oil money, now look what they have gone and done.

I can pick the station up here in eastern NC at night. Trouble is I'm dead to the world at 2 AM.

If pro is the opposite of con what is the opposite of progress? Congress!

I, once again, point to not only the example of how the oil bust of the 1980s hurt Moscow far more than it did Houston, but as well to the example of wheat.

Once upon a time, Russia made mad money off of wheat.  Their biggest export market was Europe.  Odessa was perhaps the greatest wheat port in the world in the first half of the 19th Century. Remnants of this glorious past can still be discerned there today.  The Russians, figuring they could milk the wheat indefinitely, failed to invest their earnings anywhere.  Well, the noblemen indulged in conspicuous consumption but did nothing else.  The serfs were emancipated in 1861 (in a sense, but we'll leave that for now), but by then, it was too late.

For, in 1865, once the Civil War was done in the United States, it found it was generating bumper crops of wheat from what we now call the Midwest.  (So was Canada and Argentina.)  These thre countries flooded world markets with wheat, and this eventually proved catastrophic to the Russian economy.  In some ways, the wheat grown in the United States led to the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917. 

Perhaps some NBers see a parrallel here with another product that Russia is overly reliant on in modern times??? 

The Olympics are now under way in Beijing.  May the people of Beijing get thoroughly sick of hearing The Star Spangled Banner.  May the Beijing Olympic Committee run out of U.S. flags for the medal ceremonies!  USA!  USA!!  USA!!!