[drzaiusapelord]

>Russia is bad, private enterprise is good

Considering Putin is playing politics with space, namely limiting critical RD-180 sales after the west criticized his illegal annexation of parts of Ukraine, as well as funding and arming rebels who are purposely targeting civilians, well, what exactly do you want us to say here? Engage in more mindless political correctness? Sing kumbaya around the campfire as to not offend Russiophile HN'ers?

Putin's Russia is bad. They're dishonest partners and the US should keep its space policy under its national borders for sanity reasons. Look at the early retirement of the ISS. Russia is taking its modules and leaving the project in a few years, again as punishing the west for criticizing their illegal annexations. Previous to this the ISS was thought to be a project with a decade or two of service left.

Also, Putin's mismanagement of his economy means he just cut the Russian space program by a third and what's left is good at flying Soviet-era Soyuz and building Soviet era RD-180's but can't keep post-Soviet Proton-M's from exploding. From a practical stand-point, ignoring everything else, we simply don't need or want their tech now that the RD-180 based rockets are being made redundant/replaced and Orion/Dragon flying astronauts in the next 3 or so years.

[nraynaud]

the US invaded Iraq, and kill people everywhere in the world on a regular basis too, overthrow governments, helps dictators and lie to people all the time. Nobody gets ahead when you only look for scapegoats and with Manichaeism as a policy.

We are bringing back the world into the 20st century, this will be a big problem.

[drzaiusapelord]

That's fine, you are very welcome not to buy our rockets, iphones, software, and processors if you want to protest our foreign policy. We're not buying Putin's stuff, so don't buy ours.

I don't see a problem with this.

>overthrow governments

The middle east is migrating to democracy and has the least amount of dictators in charge in my lifetime, thanks to US foreign policy. While I think foriegn policy is hard to judge, annexing land Russia-style for "fuck you" reasons is very different than overthrowing dictators murdering their people and those people begging for US/NATO/UN intervention, which we sometimes provide. The world tried non-interventionism and it got us WWII. Better the US/NATO making these calls than autocratic powers with annexation agendas like China or Russia.

[laurencerowe]

>The middle east is migrating to democracy and has the least amount of dictators in charge in my lifetime, thanks to US foreign policy.

US/Western policy in the region can hardly be described as pro-democracy. We've been propping up dictators and overthrowing democratically elected regimes from Iran in 1953 to Egypt in 2013.

[ryanlol]

>The middle east is migrating to democracy and has the least amount of dictators in charge in my lifetime

How's that democracy working out in Libya and Syria?

Many (probably pretty much everyone actually familiar with the situation) would argue that things were better under those dictators.

[shit_parade2]

Egypt is the best example.

Go read Obama's Cairo speech, do impassioned, if only he believed in his own words.

No, instead we watched a people overthrow a corrupt regime, establish a democracy, and then continued to fund the mitary junta and ignore the country as it becamenobce more a dictatorship which just recently sentenced its former president to death.

Egypt, neighbor to Israel, and the largest secular middle Eastern country by population is too important to the supposed US political interest to allow democracy, especially if that democracy doesn't agree with our policies. It is entirely morally bankrupt, anyone who defends such policy is a warmonger.

[drzaiusapelord]

>How's that democracy working out in Libya and Syria?

How was India immediately after its colonial rule? Or South Korea after the war?

Its incredible how people conveniently forget how long transition periods are for societies that were previous non-democratic to a democratic one. Ten to fifteen years from now it will be a very different picture. Migrating to a democratic capatalistic economy is an incredible thing. GDP comparision between North and South Korea below:

http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/default/files/image...

It was rough for the South Koreans until the 1970s then its been all gravy. They went from war ravage rural wasteland to the most envious economy in about 20 years.

[foobarqux]

There is no population on earth that has been grateful for "democracy bombs" to have been dropped on them.

[ryanlol]

Will it be different in 20 years? Or even 50? Right now these countries are warzones, and the stronger parties seem to be those more willing to pick up weapons and slaughter people.

[nraynaud]

Life is not a competition towards who has the stupidest, most antagonistic or most isolationist behavior, that's the whole point of discussing in a forum, trying to put ideas in people's head instead of trying to starve them economically or bombing them.

My idea in the initial post was to have people think about one point of view about this deal. In particular because it seem people are mostly from the left here, but there is a real Reaganian aspect to the move.

[shit_parade2]

Are you aware of the extensive US driven sanctions against Russia? We pressured the French to reneg on a hardware contracts with Russia, why would they not return the favor?

[drzaiusapelord]

If Putin didn't like that, he was more than welcome to end the Crimean occupation and stop shooting children in eastern Ukraine. Again, Putin made space political.

[shit_parade2]

Perhaps he should foster a Mexican coup, you know if the US doesn't like it they shouldn't of some the same in Ukraine.

Get off your myopic high horse, both the US and Russia are imperial empires bathed in blood.

[drzaiusapelord]

Comparing the US's relationship to Mexico with Putin's relationship to Ukraine is idiotic. Sadly, false equivalence is the typical Russiophile's last defense.

[sangnoir]

I think he's comparing US's relationship with Ukraine to a hypothetical Russia-Mexico one. I'm not going to be as bold and say "US fostered the Ukranian coup", but I am certain they were very happy about it.

The deposed former president of Ukraine, who happened to be close to Russia, had been democratically elected - his removal most certainly wasn't democratic by any stretch of the imagination. You can tell infer the US's political attitudes if you parse the language of US media / politicians at the time. If they are "protesters" rather than "rioters" or "insurrectionists" - they are friends. I perfectly understand that it furthers US interest to pull out Ukraine from Russia's sphere of influence.

Just my $0.02, as an outsider.

[67726e]

It's all a part of the playbook, and has been for a while: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

[shit_parade2]

No its not. Regional power and influence is an important concept for sovereign countries. The US is more interested in insuring its neighbors are well behaved than if a country across the Atlantic likes it.

The same is true for Russia, if Russian-Canadian relations are tense that's not as nearly important as whether its neighbor Ukraine is bombing civilians on its border.

America is not exceptional, your argument requires we treat America and Russia with different moral thresholds, that's insane.

[drzaiusapelord]

>America is not exceptional,

You're on an American site, on the American made internet, using American root DNS, using American made TCP/IP, using an American OS, writing in American English, and on a site about American entrepreneurship in the American silicon valley/tech industry discussing America's space program, which is the envy of the world.

There's a reason we're not all talking on some Chinese or Russian site.