Buy it! Buy it! Siberia and the Russian Far East, too! This is sooooooo cool! All the pelmeni I can eat! Hooray!
Seriously, I think we could gain a lot from a Siberian purchase. Mineral rights. Tigers. We’d be bigger than Canada. All the pelmeni I can eat. Like, I could move there and disappear.
Chuck the conquest idea, man. Just write a check. Dibs on the Baykal shore. And all the pelmeni I can eat!
Um…I’m not trying to be mean, but:
[ul]
[li]Where’s your proof that Siberians “want” to join the US? Or that they’d try to break away anyway? Cites please![/li][li]That doesn’t answer the questions about the rest of Russia (or even China) getting stroppy. Would the American public go to war over Siberia? Can you honestly see the UN backing America over this unprovoked act?[/li][li]Chechnya proves nothing. It’s another Afghanistan for Russia; pit them against a major, non-guerilla armed force, and they’ll inflict heavy casualties, even if they lose in the end. And how will you stop Russia re-arming and trying again without invading the whole of the country?[/li][li]How would the Japanese get it if the US didn’t?[/li][/ul]
Summary (again): why risk a new Cold War (or even a hot war) with Russia, and a loss of political influence, trade and friends globally, as well as massive loss of American life, for Siberia?
Silly, silly, silly…
“Never get involved in an Asian land war.”
– Every competent non-Asian strategist in history
“Trying to conquer the Russias is impossible.”
– Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, et al., post mortem
I rest my case.
It’s all about RISK man… you just can’t do it…
[hijak]
Ever notice that in RISK, that collection of areas is always red? Did RISK come out before or after the whole communist/red scare? I was just wondering if RISK was trying to be non-PC so kids would buy it (in it’s day… but I suppose the indo-china area isn’t yellow, so who knows?)
[/hijak]
Re using the Bering Strait:
The trouble with using airfields in western and southwestern Alaska as staging posts for the conquest of Siberia would be that the weather up there is notoriously fickle. People who live in places like the Aleutian Islands, who are dependent on air support to bring in supplies, just get used to the way the weather will sock in and they’ll have to wait another day or two.
Here’s a sample, for Kodiak Island, from the FAA “Flight Tips for Pilots in Alaska” website.
http://www.alaska.faa.gov/flytoak/Southwest/SWEST.HTM#kodiak
And here’s for Bethel.
http://www.alaska.faa.gov/flytoak/Western/WESTERN.HTM#bethel
Did you see Michael Palin’s PBS travel series on the Pacific Rim? Great stuff.
You people are ALL missing the point: Russia is going to BREAK up! Eastern Siberia is being raped by the Moscow “government”(thieves). All the money flows out, nothing goes in to the people there. The USA need Siberia’s resources. We offer them a deal-USA-style government, standard of living, etc., in exchanges for the rights to develop Siberia’s riches-sounds like a deal they would love to have! We don’t need to land an army there to do this-just :
-set up a democratic government (headed by some local gwnwral)
-arrange for the USA to protect the government
-introduce a bill in Congress to grant them statehood
Sounds like a plan to me!
We may also want to consider granting statehood to British Columbia, and the Phillippines-then we could lock up the WHOLE NORTHERN Pacific, for centuries to come!
National Geographic had a great article on Siberia a couple of months ago.
Here’s a link: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0011/feature2/index.html
Not someplace I’d like to live, but think of the eco-tourism potential.
Cites, please? Or is this actually IMHO material? At the moment this is rapidly becoming “We should do this! We should do this!” without any attempt to answer the points raised by anyone else…
(As usual, no offence meant)
egkelly said: *Russia is going to BREAK up! *
No, Russia is not going to break up. Not exactly, anyway. I think that the ethnic minorities in what’s now known as Russia are going to break away or die trying over the next few decades. However, as always, if Russia’s economy pulls together, secession will seem much less interesting, and much of the populations of these peoples will find a way to live with Russian rule, like they have for so many centuries. They’re used to it.
Russian Russia will not break up. Ethnic Russians populate Eurasia from the border of Belarus to Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk. Aside from a few groups low in number, Siberia is mostly Russian, though sparsely populated. No matter how corrupt Moscow is (or gets to be), I can’t imagine eastern Siberia willingly applying for statehood. A breakup is extremely unlikely, but still more likely than the new states of Kamchatka, Sakha, Irkutsk, Baykal, Okhotsk, Ob, etc.
Concerning your suggestions:
set up a democratic government (headed by some local gwnwral)—They already have one. Corrupt, but it’s democratic. Also: what’s a gwnwral?
arrange for the USA to protect the government—We’re kind of doing this for Russia in general right now, through foreign aid (which our new president has vowed to cut).
We may also want to consider granting statehood to British Columbia, and the Phillippines—I wasn’t aware that British Columbia had petitioned Congress for statehood. I remember Quebec did back in 1994, I think, but we didn’t take them up on it. And the Philippines? No way, man. They didn’t appreciate it when we tried to colonize them in 1900; I think they’d be all the more opposed to it now. I don’t think they’d even like it if we asked.
We stopped imperialism in the early 20th century. We did the right thing. Look what it did to Japan in WWII w/ china. They got greedy and then the shit hit the fan.
Well?! Don’t leave us in the dark, egkelly! Tell us! Did Bill Doherty get to solder a strap directly to the anode terminal, or not? 
Sorry, tracer, but you don’t have Need To Know for that information.
[continuing hijack]
I dunno what you’re talking about. All the Risk boards I own (3 of em) have Asia as green. Maybe something about the verdant fields of Siberia, or maybe the Gobi Desert?
Anyway, everyone knows that if you want to really take Asia, you have to push up from Indonesia through Siam. That whole Kamchatka deal never works out right. It’s all about the power of Australia! Muhahaha - ahem sorry.
[/continuing hijack]
What makes it so surprising that other people from other cultures do not want to become part of the United States?
Maybe it’s the steady flow of individual immigrants who paint this picture, but trust me, in general, the world does not really want to become American. Especially not most people in places like Siberia who have no idea what exactly is America!
I realize some of you mean these suggestions to be tongue-in-cheek, and I’ve had a few chuckles myself over it, but I’m getting the feeling that some of you are serious about this.