Cold War US fleet being reactivated

[South]

https://www.trtworld.com/americas/us-re ... leet-17228


Good afternoon all,

Article about reactivation of a Cold War fleet.

Note the reactivation with "11 officers and four enlisted personnel".


~ Bob
eastern Virginia

[Robert Rojas]

Greetings to both brother South and the community as a whole. Howdy Bob! Well sir, in light of your introductory posting of Saturday - May 05, 2018 - 9:10am, old yours truly has been viewing this particular national security development with quite a range of mixed emotions. When the Warsaw Pact and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolved roughly thirty years ago, I was of the school of thought that it would not be prudent to engage in any manifestation of disarmament given the multitude of unknowns that geopolitical vacuum might OR might not create. I believe it was Sir Winston Churchill that once stated and I will paraphrase "The hun is either at your throat or at your feet" and I dare say the "HUN" is, once again, well on the road to lunging at our figurative throats. Over the past thirty years, at least from my perspective anyway, both Democrat and Republican administrations have crafted security and defense policies that might not necessarily have been in the best interest OR interests of the United States of America. Now, to prevent the forum's moderatorship from going into apoplexy, I will refrain from initiating a droning political treatise on those disparate security and defense issues. So, with that said, I really must wonder if our greatest national security threat is the threat that we have created for ourselves. After all, the possession of aircraft carrier battlegroups notwithstanding, there is still that omnipresent and metastasizing nightmare that is our National Debt. I believe that debt is now in the area of twenty two trillion dollars. I guess we'll just have to keep those printing presses going to pay for the United States Navy's reconstituted Second Fleet. Hopefully, our illustrious Republic will not collapse from within. Well, that's my initial two cents worth on this broad reaching topic of interest - for now anyway. In any case I would like to bid you a copacetic day over in the Old Dominion that is the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Best Regards,
Uncle Bob

[South]

Good morning Uncle Bob,

My view from about 30 years ago:

I considered the disestablishment of the USSR as a STRENGTHENING mechanism and aspect for Moscow. They ditched the Czar's buffer states with the economic burdens and developed their "Near Abroad" foreign policy. This gave Moscow the benefits of the buffer states...and variations to the near abroad doctrine in re the European buffer states. The Warsaw Pact was not / is not needed. The mayors of Vyborg, Russia and Greifswald, Germany can best explain this. They are at the terminus sites of the Nord Stream pipeline.

(I'm omitting current matters like an under the Baltic line, etc. I am keeping this material as recent history and not current events.)

The US political establishment develops security and defense policies for the US political establishment. Recall the urgently needed submarine base at Kings Bay, Georgia established about the time "native son" President Jimmy Carter got the job.

We have mirror-image views on the real danger: the out-of-control national budget (as of years ago; not mentioning reforms).

The USN's Second Fleet is a combination of disguised unemployment and a work-relief act for the shipyard industry and related defense contractors.


~ Bob
eastern Virginia, USA