Re: Mutually Assured Destruction - MAD
Crimea is a tricky situation because its always been a strategically important area for Russia, its home to a lot of military facilities that haven't been part of Ukraine but rather Russian federal reservations. While Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union or at least in the Russian sphere of influence this didn't matter but as NATO gradually moves to the eastern borders of Russia this becomes a sensitive issue. At the very least Russia didn't 'invade' Crimea because it was already in Russian hands; expecting Russia to move off and leave the facilities for NATO was probably expecting just a bit too much.
With regard to new weapons there's probably a good bit of Star Wars in there but at the same time it wouldn't pay to become too complacent. Russia has air defense systems that equal or improve on anything the US can field and their latest military aircraft seem to be at least as usable (and a lot cheaper to make) as the F35. We can argue about the relative merits of these systems but one thing is quite noticeable -- we've been hollowing out our aerospace industry which has tended to leave us with a lot of nearly working signature projects that are incredibly expensive that have great potential, assuming they can be made to work (think what happened in the UK but on a larger scale). Russia may have the same limitations but somehow I doubt it (same with China, BTW).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
