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It's a function of how powerful one's adversary is. Russia is a superpower.
by elromulous 3y ago
It's a function of how powerful one's adversary is. Russia is a superpower.
- IAmGraydon 3y agoRussia is not a superpower or even remotely close to such a status. No country besides the US is currently considered a superpower.
- elromulous 3y agoAny country with the ability to completely erase entire countries (i.e. has an enormous stockpile of nuclear weapons) is a superpower.
- Invictus0 3y agoNorth Korea and Pakistan are superpowers?
- kube-system 3y agoThere are many other powers that a nation might have other than nuclear ability, and having nukes does not actually grant any of those other powers. North Korea, for example, may have nuclear weapons, but they have little diplomatic power, little economic power, little ability to project power, etc. The word "superpower" is typically used to describe a country that dominates many different types of these powers.
- ffgjgf1 3y agoAs far as we know North Korea doesn’t have the capability to hit any target in the world (like US, UK, France and Russia) or enough nukes to blow up half of the world. So hardly comparable
- mkii 3y agoThat might be a necessary condition, but definitely not a sufficient one to be considered a superpower. Simple thought experiment, "completely erasing" the US as you suggest would render the Earth unpleasant to live on, for a while, for all inhabitants.
- empath75 3y agoyes, that's why they remain a superpower. If you have the ability to make life on earth extremely unpleasant for all of humanity, that's super power status. Even just having nuclear weapons isn't enough for that- you need large numbers of fusion bombs -- which Russia has, and the US has, and no one else does.
- mkii 3y agoI'm sorry, what? Do Russians not live on Earth or something?
- ffgjgf1 3y agoThey seems to have some highly suicidal tendencies and really don’t mind massive casualties these days (e.g. 5x more Russian died in Ukraine in just 2 years than during the entire 10 year long Soviet war in Afghanistan). So one has to double whether they live in the same reality as most people in the west which makes them pretty scary and unpredictable
- justinclift 3y agoBear in mind that the population of Russia is ~140-150M people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia Whereas Ukraine's is ~35M people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine So the approach of just overwhelming Ukraine with relentless numbers could be effective, even if callous/unsophisticated. Kind of like that old saying "if it's dumb, but works... it's not dumb". As unfortunate as that is.
- pvaldes 3y ago> the approach of just overwhelming Ukraine with relentless numbers could be effective Is unclear at this moment. It only matters how much of this 34M/150M people are in an accurate age/sex to fight. Putin wouldn't survive a move to force massively women to enlist in the army, and Russia had yet a demographics problem. One million of youngsters exiled and are unavailable to became hamburgers. Also Russia is trying to kill anybody in that 35M of people but Ukraine mostly fight only the Russian soldiers. I bet that each Ukrainian soldier had killed yet more than five Russian soldiers at the current meatwave ratio.
- pvaldes 3y agowould be a weekend superpower, for a very short amount of time
- justinclift 3y agoThe point is more that Russia has nuclear weapons, so the end result (if things go badly wrong) could be extremely tragic.
- addaon 3y ago> Russia is a superpower. Russia shares some of the land of a previous superpower, and has inherited some of their geriatric weapons of power.
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- IAmGraydon 3y agoPrecisely. The USSR was a superpower. Russia is a joke.
- jmacd 3y agoYou can read this the other way. Russia is so inferior to the US that something like the downing of a drone does not necessitate a response. If it's clear that you can and will act when and where you want, then responding to the bellicose actions of a lesser advisary is ... beneath you.
- drdaeman 3y agoIt absolutely is not a superpower, but it has a madman and some nukes, and at this point no one is willing to risk.
- Tommstein 3y agoGood one. They're a gas station with nukes.