Some thoughts at Forbes. I haven’t read the article yet, but thought readers might be interested.
6 thoughts on “Is NASA A Pawn In The New Cold War?”
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Some thoughts at Forbes. I haven’t read the article yet, but thought readers might be interested.
Comments are closed.
The thing is, the more connections you have with a potential enemy who has shown that they’re willing to break the rules, the more openings you have for them to exploit. I grok that the Ukraine was probably going to renege on their agreement with Russia to keep Sevastopol open for the Russian navy, but that doesn’t excuse Russia’s recent behavior (not just invading and annexing the Crimea, but also the support for the recently deposed Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych).
Of course it will. The main reason NASA was created was to be a pawn in the first Cold War. Otherwise the military would have led the way into space as everyone expected in the 1950’s.
And let’s not forget that one of the reasons that Russia were invited to be part of the ISS was the symbolic value it had in showing the Cold War was over. And to give their aerospace engineers work that would hopefully keep them out of trouble because the Cold War was over.
So its only natural that now that Russia has regained its strength and in doing so renews the pattern of conflict it was had with the West for centuries over Eastern Europe NASA once again becomes a symbol of competition in the new Cold War. Remember, Russia has always seen itself as the “Third Roman Empire” after Constantinople fell so this should be no surprise to students of history.
Large populations of Russians live in major American cities. They love Putin. He’s Elvis to them.
Not that it would ever happen, but if he thought he could get away with it, he’d annex California. Which come to think of it, might be good for this country… hmmm…
In the comments to Rand’s satirical article at PJM a while ago, I said that we should let Russia annex New York City and also Philadelphia for that matter. Then the rest of New York State and Pennsylvania would flip to R.
Actually they are already suing to take Alaska back and make it part of the Russian Empire 🙂
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/03/16/293848/russia-groups-sues-us-over-alaska/
Russian activists sue US to take Alaska back
[[[A group of Russian Orthodox activists have filed a lawsuit against Washington aimed at taking back the state of Alaska from the US and returning it to Russia as the latter country’s sovereign territory.
The ultraconservative religious group Pchyolki (Bees) filed the complaint in a Moscow arbitration court, in response to US President Barack Obama’s support for homosexual rights and gay marriage, citing the need to protect fellow Christians from sins. ]]]
I read “Cold Civil War” the first time, and it doesn’t seem likely.
It could be a useful teaching tool on the front of teaching about Private v Government. But the Stupid Party is too busy proping up the status quo for that to work.
And it could also be a key chopping block piece if there was ever any cutting of any sort – it seems like it splits pretty well to me into pieces that can be absorbed by more tightly focused appropriate departments (NOAA, NRO, NTSB, NSF …), assets to auction or lease, and vanity nostalgia projects to just kill.
Auctioning off pieces means you can turn on anyone saying “You don’t like X” and say “Put your money where your mouth is.” (Or collaborate with others to do so.) So we clearly can’t do that.