1) yes, the race is still on. I don't want to go deep into the politics and talk about who triggered what, but the breakpoint was the USA withdrawal from Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty(1972-2001)[1] and development of Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System(2002)[2] and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense(2008)[3] and some other projects in that field. It can look like not a big deal, but it is actually a crucial step to escalation, because if you don't feel safe enough (without anti-missile system good enough to protect you) you will never strike first. But if you have such a system what stops you from using nuclear weapons? At least that was the main idea behind the first ABM Treaty (1972). Back in the days USSR had huge progress in that field, and now USA can easily create superior systems in a couple of years. While China and Russia don't have the same resources, the only thing they can do is to improve nuclear weapons(because it is cheaper). And after all SALT I (1969–1972), the ABM Treaty (1972), SALT II (1972–1979) are all part of the same deal. So yes, we can say that the world is changing and old system of mutual nuclear disarmament is not working anymore. And it can't actually work in the world where new nuclear power emerge every 10 years or so...
2) don't think so. Some leader bragging about some 'invincible' weapon before the elections is not a big deal.
The US had to do something like this because of North Korea. We trust deterrence with Russia much more than we do with North Korea.
I don't thing ABM defenses really change things. Russia can throw 2000 warheads at us. Can we stop them all? No way. But would we have a chance at stopping one North Korean nuke? Yes.
So I think this is only destablilizing if Russia and China decide that it is. If Russia is looking realistically at the situation, there is exactly zero chance that the US will willingly take the amount of damage that Russia could cause, even with ABM defenses reducing the damage.
ABM defenses change things in a context of mutual nuclear _disarmament_ not in ability to annihilate each other. If USA stops playing according to the agreements, why others should?
Yes, USA is saying that it has to come up with something like this to counter rogue states and I can believe that. But why should Russia/China or any other country keep their part of the mutual nuclear disarmament bargain in that case? (ABM defenses is part of the deal here) Everyone has a different view on how to enforce peace. There is actually a theory in international relations that the safest earth can get is when everyone have nuclear weapons capable of destroying everyone else.[2] And it is part of a neorealist theory so Russia and China are pretty "realistic" in their approach. To be honest the safest way for any country is to have such a weapon that can crush the earth if used. Is it safe for humanity? No. But it is definitely the safest way to ensure your regime.
"The US had to do something like this because of North Korea"
Well, USA never did anything about Israel, Pakistan, India. There are 10+ more countries "being one screwdriver's turn" from the bomb. Why bother now? And here is another POV: Initially ABM defense was advertised to stop Iran ballistic missile development and USA sold lots of Aegis parts to Europe/Turkey/Saudi Arabia. And Russians freaked out about radars in Poland covering most part of western Russia and backed Iran... And I think they had their reasons for concern because Poland wasn't even in range of Iranian missiles at that time. And it goes on and on, but anyway it pretty much started the new race on a global scale. Doesn't matter who was the first: India/Pakistan/NK/Iran, ABM escalated it to a completely new level. Btw i doubt many ppl know that it was Pakistan who started NK nuclear development in 2002.[2]
"But would we have a chance at stopping one North Korean nuke? Yes"
And that's the real danger. If someone in Japan or South Korea think the same, that they are truly protected with this shield, they will have strong desire to influence/provoke North Korea/ try a regime change... And that can cause a full scale war with nuclear state. The point here: is it really secure or just an illusion of security? And btw North Korea probably has more that just 1-10 or even 100 nukes at this point.
> Well, USA never did anything about Israel, Pakistan, India.
Under current circumstances, neither Israel nor India are going to even try to attack the US. Pakistan might be tempted, but I believe they don't have a ballistic missile capable of reaching the US. So there was less reason to do anything about them. (Iran, now, is more worrying.)
> If someone in Japan or South Korea think the same, that they are truly protected with this shield...
But I don't think anybody believes that. Could it stop a North Korean nuke? Hopefully, yes. Is anyone confident enough to want to try it? I doubt it; nobody believes that ABM defenses are anything like 100% reliable.
> And btw North Korea probably has more that just 1-10 or even 100 nukes at this point.
I think it's about 10-20 warheads. Do they have 10-20 ICBMs that are operational? I doubt it, but I don't know for certain.
Well, you may be right, it is just a matter of interpretation. But when it comes to defence in international relations it is basically a variation of Prisoner's dilemma[1]. It doesn't matter what reasons USA has to develop ABM. Russia, China, NK and everyone else will never choose to disarm when their oponent is arming.
Yeah, IMDB was my top 10 site for 10+ years back in the days of the boards and i had 2-3 visits since the removal. The fun part is that i had 0 posts and used it only to find recomendations / plot explanations. It's beyond me how you can remove the killer feature...
We lost so much behind the scenes history/trivia with the removal of IMDB comments. Some frequent users migrated their comments to www.themoviedb.org but it's nowhere near the amount of what was there from what I can tell. Top movie listed has 1 post, Shawshank Redemption has 11.
I haven't even bothered to visit since they removed the forums.
I understand why they did it, the racism and trolling was ridiculous there, but there were some good comments, especially on the forums for the less popular movies.
Actually, most of my international relations professors tend to disagree. And there is a huge amount of literature that points out that bipolar system was probably much safer for international stability, than unipolar or multipolar for a long run.(nice summary[1])
The general idea is that unipolarity is anarchical and that it will always try to produce a competitor = lots of wars to come, while in bipolar system you always have 2 strong competitors and it is in theirs interest to stop any local conflict before the second superpower uses it in its advantage. Today it is a complete different story where everyone is figing for who know what reason and USA doesn't really care to stop anyone and it probably cannot do anything in most cases, because back in the days of the cold war there was fight for power and now we actually have luck of power in most conflicts. During cold war we had a clear understanding who is finghig and major hot spots were actually pretty localized (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan), but nowadays look at Syria/Yemen/Iraq/Libya/Egypt (I try to follow international relations daily, but have a hard time to truly understand who is fighting whom at this point)War on Terror, wtf is this, some USA global war? who are they fighting really? Afghanistan? Iraq? Enforcing national interests? Who knows. It actually looks like everyone have this war on terror nowadays and USA was just one of the first to face this lack of power all over the world. Actually I'm really hoping that USA is playing the role of Orwellian big brother with constant war, because the alternative is scary: USA is already not able to control the situation and it is going to get worse, much worse. The unipolar world brought us 3-4 more nuclear powers because no one is playing by the rulls anymore. There is no policemen to enforce those rules. We have North Korea escalation not because they are playing with nukes, but because if the USA allows them to keep the weapon, everyone else will go and create one. And then we will be truly fucked up.
- "The United States has been at war for thirteen of the twenty-two years since the end of the Cold War. Put another way, the first two decades of unipolarity, which make up less than 10 percent of U.S. history, account for more than 25 percent of the nation's total time at war."
- "in 2014 these are the only 11 countries in the world that are actually free from conflict" [2]
And if you look at [3] you can see that starting from late 70-s - early 80-s (because that's the time SU started to loose power) we have a spike in number of local conflicts worldwide and there are lots of brutal massacres in 90-s+. Most of the conflicts are in ongoing status for 30-50+ years now and we can see the rapid increase in deaths [4].
I'm not saying that it is 100% correct, most of this is just a theory and everything can change in a matter of 1-5 years, but we still have to see the emergence of new rivals of the USA hegemony and the worst case scenario is the comeback to the multipolar world of 18-19 centuries, but with everyone having nukes and who knows what else.
yeah bithumb is insane. I'm scared to assume how much money involved and why nobody is trying to/cant arbitrage this. It's like complete noncence at this point. Whole different price universe. And i can't belive that it is some random korean dude that can't register on bitfinex or some other exchange and buy the coin he wants with 30-60% discount.
Thanks a lot for the link! I ended up downloading the database, and going through all of my email contacts to see who was affected to write to them individually.
About 7/10 frequently contacted people were in the database (...!). About half of those let me know that the passwords were not in use anymore. The other half was very, very grateful...!
It was a great time to remind them about password managers, 2fa, etc.
Never heard that someone named Vladimir shortened their name as Vlad. Live in Russia for 30 years. Most of the times you can call Vladimir as Vova. If you tell that your name is Vlad, everyone will think that you are Vladislav.
2) don't think so. Some leader bragging about some 'invincible' weapon before the elections is not a big deal.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Ballistic_Missile_Defens...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...