I don't believe Russia needs anything from little Poland. Trump has put the word out to all of the Nato countries they have to double their financial commitment to Nato. In other words they have to buy a lot more armaments from raytheon, general dynamics, mcdonald douglas and other western arms suppliers. Having the US put up and man a military base would probably be much cheaper.HuckleberryFun wrote: Thu Sep 20, 2018 5:19 pmCoal, lots of coal... and an educated hard working population that generates revenue. Other than that....eelj wrote: Thu Sep 20, 2018 5:11 pm I'm curious, anybody know why Russia would want to invade Poland? Would it be for their vast mineral reserves? Timber oil and gas?
For the same reasons they always have:
1) for a buffer zone to protect their borders against invaders, real or imagined
2) as a window to the West hundreds of kilometers closer to Western Europe
3) the strategic Baltic ports
4) because it is in their self-assigned sphere of influence and traditional hegemonic preserve
5) because little Poland is a possible “threat” in the Russian mind
Re: Fort Trump
27Poland and Russia have a bad-blood history going back centuries. Stalin "moved" Poland West after WWII. He sliced off the eastern 3rd for the Soviet Union and chopped off an equivalent amount from eastern Germany (including much of East Prussia and Danzig--renamed Gdansk) and made it part of Poland, followed by MASSIVE relocating populations, both German and Polish. Ethnic cleansing.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."
Re: Fort Trump
28I'm no big fan of Stalin or for that matter Putin. But the big reason for the big Russian obsession about little Poland is not about ethnic cleansing but the fact that Poland has been the historical corridor for invasion of Russia by the west, dating back to the reign of Ivan the Terrible.
Re: Fort Trump
29Polish kings were elected. It may surprise no one to know that Russia tried repeatedly to influence those elections with bribes and assorted skulduggery to get Rus friendly kings on the throne.eelj wrote: Thu Sep 20, 2018 11:24 pm I'm no big fan of Stalin or for that matter Putin. But the big reason for the big Russian obsession about little Poland is not about ethnic cleansing but the fact that Poland has been the historical corridor for invasion of Russia by the west, dating back to the reign of Ivan the Terrible.
It worked: Ivan the Terrible’s counterpart, the Polish king Stanislaw the Cuddly, was no match.
(OK, I made the last bit up. Fake History! No Collusion!)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_e ... _in_Poland