Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking. Login or Take a Tour!
As it stands with Russia today, too. As a country, Russia is basically Moscow and the 100 mile oblast around it, St Petersburg (for foreign tourism), and the Black Sea coast (for vacationing Russians). Their economy is tiny. Their infrastructure is almost non-existent (on a per-capita basis). And yet we are continually told to consider them our single largest threat on the planet. I've never understood the US's utter fascination with making Russia the boogeyman... it's completely out of scope with their ability to project power more than walking distance from their border. Chernobyl happened because the Soviets were poor and didn’t want the world to know they were punching above their weight.