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Another part of this is US intelligence sources have an incentive to overstate Russia's strength. A strong scary Russia better justifies American military spend
by ALittleLight 5y ago
Another part of this is US intelligence sources have an incentive to overstate Russia's strength. A strong scary Russia better justifies American military spending.
- itronitron 5y agoUnfortunately that masks the scarier scenario of a failing state with thousands of nuclear weapons.
- rurp 5y agoWhile both scenarios are terrifying, I don't agree that the failing state is scarier. Nuclear weapons take a lot organizational skill and competence to maintain and deploy, which gets much harder for a failing state to muster. Plus we've been through this before with the Soviet Union where a disturbing number of nukes went unaccounted for, but none managed to get deployed by terrorists. By contrast, a functioning dictatorship means a single madman can pretty much decide to destroy humanity at any point.