{"id":5119,"date":"2014-03-26T18:04:46","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T18:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=5119"},"modified":"2014-03-26T18:04:46","modified_gmt":"2014-03-26T18:04:46","slug":"yes-russia-is-a-global-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5119","title":{"rendered":"Yes, Russia is a global power"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>President Obama likely needs to rethink his assessment of Russia&#8217;s place in the world of great powers.<\/p>\n<p>He said this week that Russia is a &#8220;regional power&#8221; that doesn&#8217;t pose the greatest threat to the United States. The president said his greater concern is a nuclear bomb going off in Manhattan.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/storyline\/ukraine-crisis\/obama-russia-regional-power-not-top-geopolitical-foe-n61601<\/p>\n<p>Why does the president need to reconsider this assessment of Russia? Two words come to mind: nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n<p>Russia inherited the bulk of the Soviet Union&#8217;s stockpile of nukes when the U.S.S.R. folded its tent in 1991. That fact alone makes the Russians a world power, no matter the strength of the Soviets&#8217; main foe, the United States of America.<\/p>\n<p>President Obama has been asked in recent days whether 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was right to call Russia our No. 1 geopolitical foe. Obama said &#8220;no,&#8221; which comes as no surprise. Indeed, he is right to gauge the threat posed by international terror networks as the nation&#8217;s top threat. The Russian incursion into Ukraine, its influence on Ukrainian internal affairs and its threat of more military intervention should be of grave concern throughout Europe.<\/p>\n<p>The president, though, seems intent on sticking it in Russian President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s eye when he downplays the worldwide threat that Russia poses. Yes, the Russians are a significant regional power. They also do possess all those nukes that, as near as anyone can tell, are capable of destroying life as we know it on Planet Earth.<\/p>\n<p>That fact alone makes them a global threat.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the president says in public probably doesn&#8217;t mirror what he and his brain trust are saying about Russia in the Situation Room. <\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Obama likely needs to rethink his assessment of Russia&#8217;s place in the world of great powers. He said this week that Russia is a &#8220;regional power&#8221; that doesn&#8217;t pose the greatest threat to the United States. The president said his greater concern is a nuclear bomb going off in Manhattan. http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/storyline\/ukraine-crisis\/obama-russia-regional-power-not-top-geopolitical-foe-n61601 Why does the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5119\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Yes, Russia is a global power<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[540,4050,4282,4998,5125],"class_list":["post-5119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-russia","tag-situation-room","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}