The Second Term of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States of America

[Rigby5]

a) Putin is not Gorbachev.
b) I'm disgusted with U.S. President GHWB, the bloke in the white house when the wall fell.
GHWB had been head of the CIA, and was a WWII veteran.
GHWB should have understood how monumentally essential the U.S. Marshall Plan was to setting post War Europe in the correct direction.
It may have seemed madness to those that had to live with rationing, to flood in after the War and help Germany and Japan recover.

But today Germany & Japan may be better allies to the U.S. than we are to them.

R5,
I sometimes try to stay off my soapbox. Due to your #2,417 I'm on it.

- The Berlin Wall fell.
- GHWB shrugged it off, virtually ignored it. I D I O T !!

The following is a rough draft of a letter GHWB should have sent Gorby within a week or two of the Berlin Wall coming down:

Dear President Gorbachev:
For decades the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were locked in a mutually depleting Cold War that threatened our mutual annihilation.
That War is now over, and some might expect the victor to harvest the spoils.
But the United States of America maintains a proud tradition of welcoming our former adversaries as friends, as we have with both Germany and Japan after WWII.
Not a mere rhetorical welcome without substance or concern, but genuine, substantial peace and prosperity.

The Soviet economy was a zero sum game. For government to have more, the good people of the Soviet Union had less, and for the Kremlin to keep pace with the Pentagon, the good people of the Soviet Union were forced to have a great deal less.
As president of the United States I offer to you, to Russia and the good people that populate her, the same determined hand of friendship that it is our tradition to extend.

It will be a very long road Mr. Gorbachev, measured not in miles, but decades. Many challenges and obstacles await us in our mutual effort to welcome Russia to a far more prosperous, more comfortable, more secure future.
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." There is no benefit to delay. The sooner we begin to rebuild, to modernize, to benefit all of Russia the better.

I have appointed a liaison team to establish communications with their counterpart working group in Russia.
This combined team can begin by establishing the objectives Russia chooses to achieve, prioritized to your preference, to be executed only upon your approval.
If any time you sense a snag in their progress, or if you simply wish to touch base to solidify mutually beneficial diplomatic relations, please feel free to contact me directly.

Both our nations have paid a price. But the wisdom of your world-class leadership is surely equal to this task that lays before us. Our liaison team has communication keys to share with yours, for their consultation with Germany, Japan, and other Western nations eager to offer constructive suggestions on how to optimize Russia's post Cold War transition to Western style prosperity.

All best to you and and Raisa.

Your partner in Russia's prosperity, with kindest regards
United States President George Herbert Walker Bush
202-456-1111

As you know R5, President GHWB did not send that letter, or anything like it.
And here we are, Russia an authoritarian State, threatening its neighbors Cold War style, lead by a former KGB.

It did NOT have to be this way !

Yes, it was a huge opportunity lost.
And what Reagan had done to bankrupt and break up the USSR was evil as well, essentially pretending to weaponize space with SDI.

 

[sear]

"Yes, it was a huge opportunity lost.
And what Reagan had done to bankrupt and break up the USSR was evil as well, essentially pretending to weaponize space with SDI." R5 #2,421

I'm no Reagan fan.
And reports I recall of it at the time indicated Reagan avoided consultation with his experts on it, and simply unilaterally announced SDI. "Star Wars"
Ordinarily I might be open to quibble. BUT !
With these WMD arsenals, humanity hangs in the balance.
In that context, perhaps we can soften our criticism a little. Some of this is counter-intuitive. Reagan's SDI, by bankrupting the Soviets may actually have benefited humanity including Russians, by cutting the Soviet politburo's tenure short. *
It was after all a totalitarian dictatorship.

My alarm at all this is we might at least have TRIED to bring Russia around. We didn't.
And now Putin is threatening nuclear escalation if he doesn't win in Ukraine. Trump has a tiger by the tail, and has clue zero.

* counter-intuitive: some take shame that the U.S. is the only nation on Earth to have used nuclear weapons in War, AND lament the loss of human life therefrom. BUT !
Some expert military strategists have extrapolated the casualty rates in the Pacific islands as we pressed closer and closer to an invasion of mainland Japan.
And some of those estimates indicate our nukes may have saved lives, because of the tenacious we Japanese military troops were fighting to the (pointless) death.

anagrams:
Ronald Wilson Reagan = A long-insane Warlord (or Insane Anglo warlord)
Ronald Reagan = A darn long era

 

[Rigby5]

I'm no Reagan fan.
And reports I recall of it at the time indicated Reagan avoided consultation with his experts on it, and simply unilaterally announced SDI. "Star Wars"
Ordinarily I might be open to quibble. BUT !
With these WMD arsenals, humanity hangs in the balance.
In that context, perhaps we can soften our criticism a little. Some of this is counter-intuitive. Reagan's SDI, by bankrupting the Soviets may actually have benefited humanity including Russians, by cutting the Soviet politburo's tenure short. *
It was after all a totalitarian dictatorship.

My alarm at all this is we might at least have TRIED to bring Russia around. We didn't.
And now Putin is threatening nuclear escalation if he doesn't win in Ukraine. Trump has a tiger by the tail, and has clue zero.

* counter-intuitive: some take shame that the U.S. is the only nation on Earth to have used nuclear weapons in War, AND lament the loss of human life therefrom. BUT !
Some expert military strategists have extrapolated the casualty rates in the Pacific islands as we pressed closer and closer to an invasion of mainland Japan.
And some of those estimates indicate our nukes may have saved lives, because of the tenacious we Japanese military troops were fighting to the (pointless) death.

anagrams:
Ronald Wilson Reagan = A long-insane Warlord (or Insane Anglo warlord)
Ronald Reagan = A darn long era

But remember that the only actual "Soviet politburo tenure" we "cut short" was that of Gorbachev, the only really good thing that came out of Russia.

With the 2 nukes we used in WWII, you have to remember that actually the Japanese had been trying to surrender over half a year before we dropped the 2 nukes.
The reason we did not want to accept their surrender is that we wanted to compare the plutonium and uranium devices.
If you read the "Potsdam Diaries" by Truman, he explains that he told Stalin to pretend he did not understand what they meant with their attempts at surrender.
Since there were no US ambassadors the Japanese could talk to, they were trying to go through the Soviets to surrender.
What actually ended the war was mining the South China Sea, as that prevented food from China, and caused massive starvation.
Which actually is not legal under the Geneva Conventions.