If you haven’t been paying attention you may not have noticed that Russia likes to screw the United States every chance it gets. Every couple of years we sit down with them and both sides pretend like the Russians aren’t screwing us in order to make it seem like we are about to embark on some new foreign policy. Then we get screwed but pretend like we didn’t.
Usually during these negotiation times Russia has something it wants from us. Today it is for the US not to build a missile defense shield. When these negotiations happen Russia usually starts by giving us a bunch of things it doesn’t care about but appear to the American media to be symbols of some breakthrough progress. Usually this is the promise to scale back weapons systems, typically those of the WMD variety.
You see during the Cold War Russia & the US built massive stockpiles of weapons to obliterate eachother. They made so many that both sides could basically destroy civilization many times over. The problem? If we both start obliterating civilization no one wins.
Now both sides have all these weapons. Weapons neither side can afford to maintain. The US worries these weapons will leave Russia & fall into the hands of terrorists. Russia worries this will happen too. So since you only need enough weapons to obliterate humanity once or twice over, neither side really needs them all.
For some reason though people seem convinced that Russia doesn’t want to get rid of the weapons. So every couple of years an American president calls up Russia & pretends to win some major foreign policy achievement by getting Russia to agree to reduce the stockpiles. Clinton did it, Bush did it, now Obama is doing it.
We agree to decrease our stockpiles, they do the same, there is no accomplishment, just two sides agreeing to do what they want. Yet somehow, everyone seems impressed as if this is some break in relations.
Imagine if u had to negotiate with someone on a subject that neither agrees on. They won’t budge, you won’t budge. Twenty-four hours in though both sides are thirsty. Someone finally asks for water. The other agrees that they should both leave the room to get some then come back.
There is no break in the issue, just two people drinking water. Same deal here.
So in a few weeks Russia returns to screwing us but we both reduce our weapons, an action we both wanted anyway regardless of anything else. This is our Russian foreign policy.
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