Calling Russia the loser of this conflict already is way too premature. Most of the world is still silent, we don't know who will participate in punishing Russia and who will remain silent. If a sufficient number of nations (China and India would be particularly interesting) decides to stay silent, Russia might get by just fine. If they do that, if they come out of this without any significant damage, I'd say they won the war hands down, because getting this message out to the world, that they are powerful, that the West does not frighten them and that neighboring countries needs to respect them (by not allowing the US to do anything that might threaten Russian rise to power (missile defense systems)), is exactly what Russia needs.
Medvedev has just signed the cease-fire. Give it a couple of months and things will probably get back to normal - except for the fact that now the world knows how powerful Russia is.
The question now is not what Russia will do - I believe we all know that Russia simply wants to keep growing until they're a superpower again. The question is what the US will do. If they try to stop it, try to keep an upper hand by having a bunch of satellite states at the door step of Russia, I'm quite positive we'll be heading into a new cold war. If McCain gets elected, that's probably inevitable. If the US tries something new on the other hand, if they respect Russia and allow them to grow as powerful as they can be without trying to stop them, only God knows what will happen. Maybe the Russians in time can become a responsible superpower, maybe they can be as friendly to the US as the EU is. This is probably what will happen if Obama gets elected. In time though, maybe they'll give another go at world domination. That's the one good thing about the US, as long as we're friendly to them at least we know they won't invade us.
Medvedev has just signed the cease-fire. Give it a couple of months and things will probably get back to normal - except for the fact that now the world knows how powerful Russia is.
The question now is not what Russia will do - I believe we all know that Russia simply wants to keep growing until they're a superpower again. The question is what the US will do. If they try to stop it, try to keep an upper hand by having a bunch of satellite states at the door step of Russia, I'm quite positive we'll be heading into a new cold war. If McCain gets elected, that's probably inevitable. If the US tries something new on the other hand, if they respect Russia and allow them to grow as powerful as they can be without trying to stop them, only God knows what will happen. Maybe the Russians in time can become a responsible superpower, maybe they can be as friendly to the US as the EU is. This is probably what will happen if Obama gets elected. In time though, maybe they'll give another go at world domination. That's the one good thing about the US, as long as we're friendly to them at least we know they won't invade us.
His knowledge about European countries is extremely limited though, so I doubt he'd manage to smear anyone but himself.Quote from Gringinho:
If you knew what country I was from, you would of course use that to try and smear me - as you normally do in your posts.
