11 comments

• Shallow Minded Reader

  August 8, 2025 at 12:20 pm

  Not quite Bob, the Azeris have a close relationship with Israel and lots of cash from oil revenue. If you are a cash buyer, where do you shop? Spacex or Roscosmos? Has nothing to do with what the Ukro-Nazis, the Uniparty Neocons or the Drunken fools in the UK say about so the called failing Russian economy which grew at over 4% last year. Projected to slow this year, but who can you really believe when it comes to economic predictions?? Its all a psyop on you.
• Dick Eagleson

  August 8, 2025 at 4:08 pm

  As usual, things are a bit more complicated than your reflexive and tedious Russophilia accounts for. The Azeris are a Turkic people and their relationship with Israel tracks with that of Turkey. The relationship between Israel and Turkey, once close, has been increasingly strained by the Islamism of the current Turkish regime in recent years.

  The Azeris recently took a piece of Armenian territory that was majority Azeri in population despite the Armenians having a defense pact with Russia. As both Armenia and Azerbaijan were formerly part of the Soviet Union one can see that, whatever their differences with each other, both nations can obviously see the current Russo-Ukraine War as part of Putin’s long-time ambition to restore Russia’s borders to those of the erstwhile Soviet state, making both of them future items on the Russian imperial menu. In the wake of complete Russian default on their defense pact, the Armenians are now looking to Turkey, of all places, for help tamping down remaining tensions with Azerbaijan. Given the bloody history of Turkey and Armenia, to see the latter turning to the former and away from Russia is – well – interesting to say the least.

  But it is also merely a part of Russia’s decreasing influence in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Kazakhstan is pulling further away from Russia by the day. Right now it’s pretty much a race between failing Russian finances and Kazakh annoyance as to which factor will see off Baikonur as a viable Russian launch facility.

  Even the Serbs have made some recent energy-related moves that clearly indicate an intent to tilt away from Russia and toward Western Europe.

  Russia continues to act the gorilla to the extent it can, but it’s down from 800 pounds to maybe 200 and losing weight by the day. It has lost the ability to produce, or even acquire, anything of military consequence at rates more than fractions of those at which the Ukrainians destroy same. Russia being Russia and Putin being Putin, I expect the Russo-Ukraine War to continue right up until Russia is literally unable, physically, to continue or until Gospodin Putin accidentally falls out of a window. But I think we’re appreciably closer to that future point now than we are to the start of the war in Feb. 2022.

  You talk of “psyops” while quoting Russian government economic statistics as it they have any sort of validity. The Russians are running psyops alright, but the only ones falling for them are pathetic specimens such as yourself.
• Shallow Minded Reader

  August 8, 2025 at 5:13 pm

  The Russian GDP growth last year was 4% according to the IMF.
• Steve Richter

  August 8, 2025 at 7:44 pm

  I assume SpaceX cannot build a launch pad outside of the US. But does that restriction apply to Elon and him operating a 2nd rocket company? Are American aerospace engineers allowed to work for a foreign company?
• Robert Zimmerman

  August 8, 2025 at 8:51 pm

  Steve Richter: Musk or anyone with security clearances would probably face criminal charges if he tried to get work with foreign governments. It’s called treason, in case you hadn’t heard. :)

  Once again, why this desire to run? Musk is a fighter, which is what we need more of.
• DJ

  August 8, 2025 at 9:12 pm

  Dick Eagleson, your comments are spectacularly well voiced and I always enjoy reading them. But on the Russiaphobia, Russia has military technology that the US will not have for some time. Internationally it is understood that the US deep state even under Trump is doing as much as possible to undermine every country that has ties to Russia. This Azerbaijan super win just took only a few billion dollars to the right people and “voila” the US has a stake in the land bridge. Now it can set the greased skids toward NATO and US bases again right on Russia’s border. But nothing to see there? The US and the UK play dirty all around the world. Overlay the US military bases around the world and overlay that with Russia’s military bases around the world. Then do it with China too. If of course one wants to believe that the US just does good to the world, then alright. I am not in that camp. (I once was, by the way). So, yes, Russia is having a tough time dealing with 30,000 sanctions. Would not the US hurt if that were applied to us? So their space industry is not anywhere near where it once was. But the US has now pushed countries to BRICS by the dozens. Once you look at the overlay maps of military bases around the world, you will see that Russia was never the 800 pound gorilla. That esteemed position is taken by the good old US. Just sayin. But I absolutely enjoy reading your comments.
• mkent

  August 8, 2025 at 10:30 pm

  ”But does that restriction apply to Elon and him operating a 2nd rocket company?”

  Said rocket company can use *no* American technology without a license from the US government: No hardware, no software, no tools, no processes, no drawings, no analysis, no computer models, no process specs, no material specs, nothing.

  ”Are American aerospace engineers allowed to work for a foreign company?”

  Conducting a defense service for a foreign entity without a license from the US government is a violation of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

  Despite being continually being shot down by our host, this question comes up over and over again on this site. Seriously, why is the answer so hard to understand?
• mkent

  August 8, 2025 at 10:50 pm

  ”Russia has military technology that the US will not have for some time.”

  Hahahaha! Ahhh, no. Russia’s military is completely outclassed by America’s in every way. If America entered the war in Ukraine it would roll up the entire Russian military in just a few months.

  ”Internationally it is understood that the US deep state even under Trump is doing as much as possible to undermine every country that has ties to Russia.”

  Excellent! That’s what we pay them to do. I’m glad to hear they’re finally working for America’s interests instead of against them. Score one for the Trump team.

  ”Overlay the US military bases around the world and overlay that with Russia’s military bases around the world.”

  If Russia doesn’t want American military bases on its border, it should refrain from invading its neighbors. It’s not that hard to do. Really, if the Russians just went home and sat on their butts for an extended period of time, that particular problem would take care of itself.
• Edward

  August 9, 2025 at 4:41 pm

  Steve Richter wrote: “I assume SpaceX cannot build a launch pad outside of the US.”

  This is not strictly true. There are some nations in which U.S. rocket launches may occur. Rocket Lab is a U.S. company with New Zealand origins, and it is allowed to launch from New Zealand. Several nations are considered friendly and some amount of technology transfer seems to be allowed.* However there are International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) restrictions** that apply to friends as well as adversaries.
  ________________
  * I once worked on an X-ray telescope for NASA, and we were required to share our designs with NASA. Strangely, NASA’s Japanese partners on that satellite, who were building their own X-ray telescope a few months behind our own, and the Japanese made theirs look amazingly like ours, just larger. (Larger is better, right?)

  ** ITAR is supposed to protect national security and support foreign policy. ITAR even restricts foreign access to U.S. citizens, but there can be cross coupling in which there are employees from or to companies in certain other countries. Strangely, the communications satellites I built were classified as munitions, for ITAR purposes. We sometimes had difficulty sending failing flight hardware back to the foreign manufacturer for repair. I guess someone in the U.S. government was worried that the friendly Europeans might figure out how to make their hardware right.
• Dick Eagleson

  August 13, 2025 at 4:02 am

  Shallow Minded Reader,

  The IMF has no independent means of establishing GDP figures for any country, especially countries with considerable motivations to paint as bright a picture as possible. The IMF, in short, pretty much takes the word of national statistical bureaus that the numbers they publish are correct. Of the alleged 20 fastest-growing economies on Earth according to the IMF, over half are nations in sub-Saharan Africa. You may judge for yourself how accurate those numbers are.

  Official Russian statistics about pretty much everything are works of fiction. About many things, certain countries simply stop reporting any figures at all when it becomes patently ridiculous to continue telling the usual lies. Russia, for example, no longer publishes fertility rate figures. The PRC no longer publishes youth unemployment statistics.

  The only IMF GDP growth number for Russia in 2024 was an estimate that was published in October of that year. Here it is. 3.625%.

  I also asked for a Russian population number in this report and it shows 146.080 million for 2024 – down a bit from 2023, which was also down a bit from 2022. Both the GDP and population numbers are fictional. The Russian economy is shrinking, not growing. It could hardly be doing otherwise as Ukraine bombs more and more of its heavy industry and rail infrastructure into flinders.

  The population numbers are equally fictitious. Russia has been lying about its population for at least two decades. Given both the million+ KIAs already incurred in Ukraine and the exodus of two to three times that many men in the 18 – 40 demographic to avoid also becoming KIA statistics, the population of Russia may be as little as 130 million. No one outside of Russia really knows and I suspect even inside the country there isn’t much exactitude available anent this number. Russian military units routinely report more troops than actually exist as “ghost soldiers” are a traditional way for corrupt officers to pad their exchequers by collecting the pay of phantoms. Comparable convenient lies are rife in the civilian governmental institutions too.

  But you are – for whatever reason – a true believer in whatever Russia has to say about itself. I don’t pretend to understand why you have this particular mindset unless you happen to be of Russian ancestry yourself and it’s just garden-variety tribalism at work here.
• Dick Eagleson

  August 13, 2025 at 6:53 am

  DJ,

  Thank you for the kind words.

  I fear, however, you entertain some misapprehensions anent both Russia and the West.

  The Russians don’t have any military capabilities the US lacks. The air-launched “hypersonic” missiles with which it has been sporadically peppering Ukraine do not have maneuvering warheads and are not endoatmospheric for most of their trajectories. They are “hypersonic” only in the narrow sense of traveling at or above Mach 5 during at least part of their normative flight profiles. They are simply an air-launched variant of a venerable ground-launched artillery missile. Whether fired from the ground or in the air they follow classic lofted ballistic trajectories.

  The US now has an air-launched version of the Standard Missile SM-6 that has long been carried on naval units – especially the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers – and launched from vertical launch arrays whose lids are at deck-level. The new air-launched version could be regarded as a rough equivalent of the Russian “hypersonic” missiles used against Ukraine. The US, of course, is also in the process of deploying actual endoatmospheric maneuvering hypersonic missiles of new and original design.

  The Trump administration is not “undermining every country that has ties to Russia,” it is undermining the relationships, not the countries. And it’s a very low-effort exercise that consists mostly of answering the phone when any nation concerned about Russia’s current national behavior calls seeking assistance to cut dependencies on Russia. Evidently the Presidents of both Armenia and Azerbaijan, despite their own recent military dust-up, are of one mind when it comes to not wishing to once again become part of Mother Russia. The Trump administration which has, frankly, been a bit dim-witted anent Russia policy until recently, seems finally to be figuring out the actual lay of the land in Russia’s neighborhood and doing things that should prove helpful in both the short and long terms to isolate it and limit its influence.

  Russia claims to fear “aggression” by NATO and complains about member nations being on its borders. Prior to launching the latest Russo-Ukraine War, however, the only borders Russia had with NATO were those where the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad touches Lithuania and Poland and where the eastern borders of Latvia and Estonia touch Russia proper. While it is certainly true that the Poles could probably consume Kaliningrad in an afternoon, if suitably provoked, they certainly aren’t going to do that just for grins unless Russia does something even more colossally stupid than its Ukraine invasion – like attacking Poland and Lithuania from its lapdog satrapy Belarus in order to establish a “secure” land corridor from Belarus to Kaliningrad.

  As for the rest of its pre-war NATO adjacencies, I doubt seriously that anyone in Russia – especially Putin – lies awake at night worrying about the possibility of a bolt-from-the-blue blitzkrieg launched into Russia by those slavering warmongers in Estonia and Latvia and the mighty legions they command.

  I think mkent said it best above – “If Russia doesn’t want American military bases on its border, it should refrain from invading its neighbors. It’s not that hard to do.”

  In any event, invading Ukraine again has served to roughly triple the border mileage Russia now shares with NATO nations as long-neutral Finland is now a newly-minted member of said alliance precisely because of said invasion. The Finns already have an abbreviated nation owing to past Russian aggressions. They’re, understandably, not the least bit interested in being further short-sheeted by the Russian army. Finland is arming up at a furious rate and, as its President recently observed waspishly, “We’re not doing this because we’re worried about the Swedes.” The Swedes, of course, have also joined NATO as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  Whatever the details of the recent agreement between the US, Armenia and Azerbaijan it is unlikely to involve large US military bases or even small ones. Armenia, in any case, has no border with Russia as Georgia is a buffer between them. Azerbaijan does have a modest amount of border with Russia, but the part of Russia it borders is Dagestan, an area that is not, for the most part, ethnically Russian and which has also been restive for some time.

  It would be nice to have some particulars anent your assertion that “The US and the UK play dirty all around the world.” The Brits once had a formidable expeditionary military capability, but it is, at present, a shadow of its former self. How and where do you see the Brits as “playing dirty?” The main dirty play the British government is currently involved with is oppressing its own citizens by jailing them for remarks made on social media platforms.

  The US still does have the most formidable expeditionary military capability in the world. It’s origins go all the way back to the re-establishment of the US Navy and its use in conducting a punitive expedition against the Barbary Corsairs during the Jefferson administration. But perhaps the dirty play you allege the US is involved in is not military but something done by the US intelligence apparat? Details, please.

  In any case, the extensive network of US military bases – which you seem to regard as sinister – are there because the US has a lot of mutual defense treaties in force. One cannot effectively contribute to the defense of places half a world away using strictly assets located on US national territory. The US has bases sited in accordance with threat loci. The four most belligerent nations on the planet are Russia, the PRC, the DPRK and Iran. The US overseas military base network is arranged so as to limit the capability of all four of these nations to threaten their neighbors.

  You bring up BRICS. BRICS is pretty much a nothing-burger organization. It isn’t a military alliance. It isn’t a trade bloc. It has no foreign policy separate from those of its member states – which number 10, by the way, not “dozens.” Despite a certain amount of loose talk, it has no real alternative to the US dollar as an international trade currency. The acronym was the invention of a Goldman-Sachs economist whose specialty was emerging markets. Two of its members, India and the PRC, cordially detest each other and have clashed, militarily, a number of times in recent years.

  You are technically correct that Russia was never an 800-pound gorilla – that was the Soviet Union. It had thousands of deliverable nukes at its height and didn’t need an extensive foreign base network because it covered so much land area that it could threaten a sizable chunk of the world from bases on its own territory.

  But rust, as the saying goes, never sleeps. The once-titanic Soviet military machine has crumbled a great deal over the last 30+ years since the demise of the Soviet Union. What it had left it has mostly burned through, to no real effect, in Ukraine. The condition of its much-diminished nuclear deterrent cannot reasonably be assumed to be much better than that of its conventional forces.

  So it goes. But I think better times are coming. Russia has accelerated its own inevitable collapse by undertaking a war that only aggravates its already terminal demographics and adds economic ruin to the mix. The PRC, likewise, is becoming a hospice nation, half of whose current citizenry will be gone by mid-century and whose own finances are tottering. The collapse of the regime will come much sooner than mid-century. The only real sporting proposition anent these two nation-state-level old folks homes is which of them implodes first. It’s a real horse race.

  The small-fry troublemakers – the DPRK and Iran – can be dealt with as comparatively minor exercises when the time comes. With all four of today’s leading aggressor states being on their last legs, the world, in as little as another decade, could be a much more pleasant and peaceful place.