I am glad the US media has done a decent job of reporting on Russia and being pretty fair about the country. I know I was absolutely shocked to learn that Russian media is now state-controlled, that's no joke. I visit numerous politics/current events forums and one, I was amazed to see that the Russian posters practically brush aside the fact there media is state-controlled, numerous ones have the belief that Russia tried "Democracy" and it failed, so it's worth moving on and that the US is an empire threatening Russia.
It really opens your eyes and the events that have transpired these past several years only look very, very bad. The main contention, has been and will be for a long time, is the US Missile Defense shield. The idea of the shield is pretty weak and I think would of totally been better to be a project somehow under wraps, that way if another country (like Russia) initiates development we already have the know-how and don't have to worry about being the one that is the instigator.
Original Article
However my reasoning is not the one Russia has for it, Russia thinks the shield is intended against them. The problem is there will be a total of 10 interceptor missiles in Poland. For those that don't know, Russia currently has 5,830 active nuclear weapons. So if Russia attacks us with all there active nukes (note: again, this is a defensive shield), we'll be hit with 5,820 nukes, damn us!
The excuse is then that if we build 10, then the next moment we'll have 100 built and so on. Excluding the fact it is a defensive missile shield, as in it is NOT a nuke silo, the point doesn't make much sense. If you acknowledge the actual 10 is bad, but not terrible, then make some noise and then if it expands, THEN complain heavily about it.
Worse, Russia is now re-starting it's Cold-War practices of planes buzzing by countries such as Norway, now apparently Japan and even in the western Pacific. This doesn't really bother me as NATO has been doing this for a while, although the amount of border violations by NATO planes doesn't compare to Russia.
My last point is the rhetoric coming from Russia. The case in point is Russia's response to the news the US will shoot down it's dead satellite - read it here.
Russia basically says that we are lying about the satellite and that we are lying about it so we can shoot it down. Oh and we are going to do that to show we can shoot down other countries satellites. What is this, 1980? It's just crazy, frankly.
The worst part of all this is the fact that bad things are piling up and it's heading in a very bad direction. I've got a lot more to say, so expect a part II.