Not the Brits, that’s for sure. They know each other too well from decades of Cold War playfullness. But Russia has a habit of making cack-handed moves when it thinks it’s trying to be clever. Let’s see how well the Chinese would react to similar treatment in another 5 years or so.

These bombers are effectively defenseless against a modern fighter jet. Against an RAF fighter jet even.

It’d be like the proverbial turkey shoot, and international condemnation would turn on the clumping turkey hunters, rather than the turkeys.

A post-Cold War likening of Johnson bragging about he looked Kosygin in the eye, with Kosygin blinking first.

Until someone calls their bluff

The follwoing point is not made to rehash the virtues of which policy is better.

In former Yugoslavia, the US/NATO succeeded to the degree they did on account of might making right.

Waste can be found in plenty of places. Why risk wasting a more cooperative peace time spirit by actively engaging Georgia and Ukraine in NATO, along with the installing of defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic?

I don’t really think that it’s Counterpunch, Chronicles and Antiwar.com that are the more “paranoid”.

I agree that it’s a good training process for the RAF. It makes one even think that it becomes an expensive draw of sorts. Russians fly by the UK, with the RAF having the opportunity to test their response time.

Hey, I’m all for building state of the art fitness centers for every community to use. If utilized properly, this would decrease the rising health care costs. The money for all this can no doubt be recovered with a changed allocation of government spending.

Sorry for the rant. Just had an argument with someone on this.

True, but I don’t think Russia’s actions are particularly about defending themselves. They are more about enhancing their visibility, and saying to the world again – “look, we can project our power.”

Having said that, I think that this is fairly sensible for Russia – in this world, image counts for a lot. This is just one part of building up the image that Russia is back and will (oddly enough) play its part in building Russia’s economy.

And the UK probably benefits, too, from the flybys. It’s a great training opportunity for its newer pilots, for example.

(And, knowing the RAF, any flight time on actual interceptions is probably deducted from other, more routine, flying time, so the overall number of hours in flight remains the same).

It’s easy to then compare where such funding can go to as an alternative.
A point that has universal merit.

In DC, many of its poor inhabitants have wondered about the building of new sports facilities for professional teams. Money that I understand comes in part from the government. You’ve existing facilities that are 30-40 years old and considered obsolete. On the other hand, you’ve crumbling schools twice as old.

The poor have a right to defend themselves.

The nuclear umbrella doesn’t eliminate the importance of having a reasonably strong conventional force capability

I have. They are as poor as anywhere you’ll find in the US, but in the US you have to drive to the poorest parts of Appalachia to see it. In Russia, you can just stroll down behind the railway station of whatever town you happen to be in.