Rocket-rattling

Observing recent talks and threats from the Russian quarter, I would be surprised if the expression "rocket-rattling" didn't make a come back quite soon.

"Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, formless in its inception, turned into a program for free world development. Leadership had begun to reassert itself. Against the dark background of the Soviet satellite, Russia's diplomatic rocket-rattling and fear of weakness in the free world's leadership, President Dwight Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan met last week in Washington. They took an idea, which at first was little more than a hope. "


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,867837,00.html

Also, "reds" might again send the graph skyward in the coming years.

Time Magazine:

DECADE-PER MIL
1920s 12.44
1930s 20.87
1940s 34.68
1950s115.30
1960s 46.07
1970s 12.86
1980s 6.51
1990s 6.68
2000s 4.15

http://corpus.byu.edu/time/

The only thing is that Putin is not a big-C Communist, but rather just yet another authoritarian leader within a supposedly constitutional political system, and the other "Communists" out there generally aren't what they used to be either (e.g. China, which is more just a somewhat corporatist (in the old sense of the word) authoritarian state than anything else these days).

I was thinking more of the rocket-rattling that Bush will be doing if he gets permission to base them in Europe.

>>I was thinking more of the rocket-rattling that Bush will be doing if he gets permission to base them in Europe.<<

I thought you were referring to "reds" for whatever reason from your previous post.

I've heard of sabre rattling. I guess this is the modern version.

I don't think that the "cold war" between the US and Russia will ever be as the important as it was 50 years ago, and I doubt this term will ever be as prominent as it was in the 1950s.

I don't know if you guys are old enough to remember the 50s, but in those days everything in US foreign policy seemed to revolved around the "east-west conflict" betwen the US and USSR. Neither the US or USSR are as important as they once were, and they are now (almost) natural allies. Any disputes we now have seem trivial compared to the disputes between Eisenhower and Stalin/Krushchev. I was a little kid at the time, but I still remember when Krushchev gave his famous "we will bury you" speech (which was brilliantly mistranslated, BTW).

<I don't think that the "cold war" between the US and Russia will ever be as the important as it was 50 years ago,>

You mean that you don't think that Americans will ever again be stupid enough to believe that all Russians are evil, right? I do hope so. Mind, most Americans are now telling us that all Muslims are evil. So what's changed? Not much, IMO.

<<I don't think that the "cold war" between the US and Russia will ever be as the important as it was 50 years ago,>>

BTW, the Cold War involved more that just the Americans and Russians.

So if Bush goes ahead with his Star Wars program will it be lightsabre rattling?

No, it'll be lightsaber rattling. ;)

:) Uriel You say tomato...