Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
Fuchs---the key is they are still not in compliance on the numbers and yes they are melting but it is the old 55/62 and to some degree the 72s which really were for export anyway.

It is the numbers and their argument was they were at war with the jihadi's and could not come into compliance---and what has been the argument for their non compliance with the numbers in Georgia under the EUMM---they did not even mention it nor has the West.

The West took the numbers and reduced what they had in their then current inventories under the thought that hey the Cold War is over and Russia seems to be getting to a more peaceful point so hey let's save defense money and go down on our overall defense budgets using OCSE as the excuse. Besides who needs tanks and APCs in AFG or anywhere else for that matter.

That was in the end a massive mistake and now they are only able to muster what planes, mine clearing ships and AWCS. Even the German tank brigades say in Amberg and other locations have been decommissioned in the current German downsizing that is still going on.
The Warsaw pact doesn't exist any more, so it's difficult to tell how Russia could violate the '90 treaty. It's not a member of the '99 treaty and the West never was. There's no real case for complaining about Russian non-compliance here.

And yes, the Cold War is over.


The problem here (and all over the world, all the time) is that humans get used to almost everything, real quick. They got used so much to the post-Cold War world that they can freak out about 'threats' that would have been barely recognisable during the Cold War when the noise level of threats was much higher.

So yes, the Cold War is over and yes, Russia is a marginal threat to us now. The fact that Ukraine is not "us" is at the core of the current crisis. They did NOT join "us", and thus Russia is still a very valid defence concern to them to say the least.

Their security problem isn't that Russia still has stockpiles of 25-50 year old military hardware. Their security problem is that they had a government which wasn't interested in preparing defences and their security forces are now ineffective even against the very small 'troops concentration' nearby.
A few hundred spec ops guys and a few ten thousand regulars are a seemingly insurmountable problem to the Ukraine because it has no loyal, competent, equipped security forces - their security forces are now less effective than Portugal's and that's no good in their neighbourhood.