Yeah, I was under the impression that the Mafia bribery and terrorist payoffs were largely under control now.

Let's count.

Ok. If we're talking modern military history (20th century onwards) I'll do a count.

Conflicts involving Russia (including in the form of the USSR, and not including internal conflicts):
- World War I
- Polish-Soviet War
- Invasion of Georgia
- 1938-39 Soviet-Japanese border conflicts
- Invasion of Poland and Bessarabia
- Winter War against Finland
- World War II
- Continuation War against Finland
- Partisan Wars in Baltic States
- Pacific War against Japanese
- Hungarian Revolution
- Invasion of Czechoslovakia
- Sino-Soviet border conflicts
- Invasion of Afghanistan

Conflicts involving the US:
- World War I
- Polar Bear Expedition (intervention on the Russian Revolution)
- World War II
- Korean War
- Bay of Pigs Invasion
- Domincan Intervention
- Vietnam War
- Invasion of Grenada
- Occupation of Beirut
- Invasion of Panama
- Gulf War
- Somalian conflict
- Kosovo War
- Invasion of Afghanistan
- Second Gulf War


Well there you go, the US has been in more armed conflicts and been to war with more countries.
I guess it's still debatable but to me it looks like the US is the more militarily active one.

Veitnam was a conflict. It was an Executive Decision to move troops overseas into combat. Congress never declared war.

"We're not declaring a war, we're going to war. We haven't declared a war since the second World War."

War is a matter of fact, it doesn't get any less real because it hasn't been declared.

Balth, I would add the Russian-Japanese war from 1904-1905.

Anyway, it doesn't look like there's a HUDGE difference....

Hah, no shit I was going to post the same thing. I never understood why people use that argument.

No argument, just making a correction.

It's not a correction, either.

very on-topic...

Considering we are talking about wars that Russia and the US were involved with, it is.

Come on...

Out of anyone in the thread making useless posts, it would be you with your last two. We were legitimately talking about what constitutes a war, which directly relates to the discussion of wars with Russia and the US. You come on.

Oh by no means is it. I have a cousin who was once part of the CIA and now works for the department of national security, and he said that this kind of thing still goes on in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. Russian generals will give anything away for a few rubles.

Sometimes you have to think the government is in on it, because the bribes are so great and the deals are so large that it is amazing that they do not pay attention to them. But then you realize that the state of Russia's economy is still not that great (even though drastically improved from the 1990s). A man I know works for a Canadian company that runs luxury hotels all over the globe. They set up one in Moscow in 2005. The Russian mafia came in about a month after the hotel opened, held the entire workforce hostage, and demanded to be given all the furnishings and aesthetics in the building. The hotel was then shut down and the Russian mafia sold all the furnishings and aesthetics afterwards. Everything is completely untraceable.

Yet I hear from Russians everyday that it isn't corrupt anymore. Strange that we get stories like this in 2005.

It was interesting to read the topic

How so? Okay lets see. An Russian/Israeli man who is working with the FARC guerillas from Colombia in the 1990s attempted to purchase a nuclear submarine from the Russian Federation with all the crew to be used to deliver cocaine to American and Europe. The plot was foiled when the man was arrested before he could do anything.


American special forces in 2004 find an Al Qaeda munitions dump in the middle of a cave. The stash contained RPG 17s and 29s, AK47s, Dragunov SVD sniper rifles, VSSK silenced 12.7mm sniper rifles, and high explosives. The guns still had their serial number on them and were traced back to a Russian armory. The Russians said that the weapons had either been left over from the cold war or were stolen. This is clearly a lie, the VSSK was not available till after the cold war. So how do they get there? Either they were sold to the terrorists or Russia really has to look after it's armories. Which one do you think is more likely?