Russia warns of retaliation as NATO plans more deployments in Eastern Europe

Alan K. - Mr. Korb; Much like Adm Yamamoto's apocryphal description of America as a "sleeping giant" in the falsely attributed "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.", you can poke a sleeping bear with as short a stick as often and hard as you want to PROVIDED the bear stays asleep.

Adm Yamamoto's "I can run wild for six months … after that, I have no expectation of success" was an eerily accurate projection as the Battle of Midway came almost exactly six months after Pearl Harbor.

His "The only way for Japan to win the war was to dictate terms in the White House." is almost consistently taken out of context and was a veiled reference to the fact that he simply did not believe that there was any realistic prospect of Japan "winning" any war with America that America chose to actually fight.

The Japanese War Plan was based on the assumption that America WOULD NOT fight a war to secure distant lands which were of only marginal value to it - especially not against the country that the American governments had been covertly encouraging to establish a hegemony over those lands.

IF the carriers had been at Pearl on 07 DEC 41, AND IF Vice Admiral Nagumo Chūichi (or Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo if you insist on "Westernizing" his name) had ordered in the second strike to take out the remaining surface combatants and base logistical structure, THEN there is a possibility that the "national shock" would have been so great that America MIGHT have agreed to the early negotiated peace that the Japanese leadership were counting on to justify the risk of "waking the sleeping giant".

IF you combine that theoretical with the actual of General MacArthur's inept bungling response to the Pearl Harbor attack that lost what would have been left of the American military forces available in the "Pacific Theatre", THEN the odds that the "national shock" would - indeed - have been sufficient to give Japan the victory which it believed it needed for its own national security.

no worries. HRC will hit the reset switch again

The problem with NATO is they don't do hardly anything. They back down more than the resident.

SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth - Sergeant; There is also the possibility of "Пожалуйста, не бросай меня в тот терновый куст Братец Кролик." ("Please don't throw me into that briar patch Brother Rabbit.") being the operative words here.

SSG Dennis Grossmann - Staff; NATO does what it can within the limits of what the US will let it do. In that regard it's very similar to the League of Nations (which probably would have been a "Good Thing" if the United States of America [actually the Senate of the United States of America] had taken part in it and supported it fully).