Is Putin a bigger threat than the Soviet Union ever was?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Easily. Putin controls a major party candidate for President and even has a retired general in his back pocket. Odds are he probably also controls ~50 members of Congress. He also controls a vast information network/website that is spreading propaganda based on information illegally obtained by his regime throughout the globe and trying to influence the US election to his controlled candidate. Did communists ever control any generals or major party candidates?

Vladimir Putin is the greatest threat to global stability and peace since WWII.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

My gut told me no, but as I actually started to think about it, I changed my mind. There seemed to at least be some stability guaranteed by the clear polarity of international relations at the time of the Cold War. Nuclear war was a scary prospect, but probably not that dire because both sides accepted the rules of nuclear deterrence.

Today, the United States is undoubtedly stronger than Russia, but Putin seems like a wounded animal who no longer worries about feigning neutrality or moral righteousness. Nuclear war is off the table, but Putin is willing to engage the United States in other, more subversive ways that still pose a very serious threat. And it's scary because people don't really see it.

[Person Man]

My gut told me no, but as I actually started to think about it, I changed my mind. There seemed to at least be some stability guaranteed by the clear polarity of international relations at the time of the Cold War. Nuclear war was a scary prospect, but probably not that dire because both sides accepted the rules of nuclear deterrence.

Today, the United States is undoubtedly stronger than Russia, but Putin seems like a wounded animal who no longer worries about feigning neutrality or moral righteousness. Nuclear war is off the table, but Putin is willing to engage the United States in other, more subversive ways that still pose a very serious threat. And it's scary because people don't really see it.

He is like a real devil, isn't he?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

No.  The Cuban Missile Crisis nearly ended the world, if we agree nuclear war is off the table then Putin can't be as big a threat, much less a bigger one.

[GMantis]

Certainly not. The Russian armed forces are a pale shadow in comparison to the Soviet ones.

The converse, incidentally is true: Obama is a much greater threat to Russia than any US President since at least Eisenhower. And Clinton will be worse
.
PS: This is not to say that Trump would not be a worse threat than Obama, though in a different way than Clinton.

[Person Man]

No.  The Cuban Missile Crisis nearly ended the world, if we agree nuclear war is off the table then Putin can't be as big a threat, much less a bigger one.

Russia still has thousands of nuclear weapons. If Putin is too much of a sissy to escalate to that level, Hillary will mop the floor with him and in 10 years, Russia will be lucky (or the rest of unlucky) if it still has any nukes.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Ayyy LMAO!

[Mr. Reactionary]

With the exception of giving Surface to Air missiles to Ukrainian dumbasses who shot down a passenger liner, Putin doesn't shoot down our planes. The Soviets shot down several dozen of our aircraft during the "Cold" War. I mean they murdered a sitting member of the frickin US Congress in the 1980s. The Soviets gave weapons to N. Korea and N. Vietnam which were used against our soldiers. The world almost ended during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There really is no comparison. I mean, clearly I prefer the US to Russia, but Hillary is the one talking about shooting down aircraft, not Putin. And ISIS has a sh**t ton of weapons paid for by the US, that are being used to kill Russians in Syria. Americans too.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Putin is certainly a strong leader for Russia, but Russia is a shell of its former Soviet Ghost. Russia lost roughly half it's population after the USSR dissolution and its economy suffered a cataclysmic collapse for the rest of the 1990's. In the Cold War the USSR was clearly second behind the US economically, but was able to reach parity militarily. Back in the Cold War the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies had 40,000 tanks ready to smash through the Fulda Gap and head to the Atlantic. Now the entirety of their old allies are now part of NATO. Even the ex Soviet Baltic Republics are now in NATO, right on Russia's doorstep.

The Russian military budget is only 60 billion dollars a year, which is dwarfed by the US , not to mention the rest of NATO as well. Russia is still a regional power that is seething over the collapse of the USSR , but it is a shell of its former self. Not to mention the ideological dynamism that Communism had in the 3rd world. African and Asian countries saw Communism and the USSR as the way to fight against Western Colonialism. Now Russia has joined the new world Capitalist order and has nothing to offer the 3rd world.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

No. Putin is ruthless and cruel, but he's a pragmatist driven by expansion and empire, not a cult-like fanaticism.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Certainly not. The Russian armed forces are a pale shadow in comparison to the Soviet ones.

The converse, incidentally is true: Obama is a much greater threat to Russia than any US President since at least Eisenhower. And Clinton will be worse
.
PS: This is not to say that Trump would not be a worse threat than Obama, though in a different way than Clinton.

Uh, how has Obama harmed Russia in any way? Other than retaliating against them for their pro-Trump bullsh!t.

Can you seriously not understand why American liberals wouldn't f[inks]ing HATE HATE HATE Russia if Russia supports Trump? I'm now at the point where I'd root for the Russian mob if they were having a shootout with the FSB because F[INKS] DONALD TRUMP.

[Orser67]

Certainly not. The Russian armed forces are a pale shadow in comparison to the Soviet ones.

The converse, incidentally is true: Obama is a much greater threat to Russia than any US President since at least Eisenhower. And Clinton will be worse
.
PS: This is not to say that Trump would not be a worse threat than Obama, though in a different way than Clinton.

Uh, how has Obama harmed Russia in any way? Other than retaliating against them for their pro-Trump bullsh!t.

Can you seriously not understand why American liberals wouldn't f[inks]ing HATE HATE HATE Russia if Russia supports Trump? I'm now at the point where I'd root for the Russian mob if they were having a shootout with the FSB because F[INKS] DONALD TRUMP.

He actually didn't say that Obama had harmed Russia, but that he presented a greater threat. In the last 25 years, Russia lost many of the Soviet Union's former client states to NATO, including the Baltic states right on Russia's border. Meanwhile, the Euromaidan installed a pro-US government in Ukraine. This may seem like an unimportant piece of trivia, but Russia is understandably concerned about its Western border given that Germany invaded it twice in the 20th century. I'm no fan of Putin, but his paranoia isn't entirely unfounded.

[Ban my account ffs!]

This really just depends on how much you know about Soviet-American relations.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

Ayyy LMAO!