Considering that the missile system in Poland would be mostly ineffective against a full Russian strike, I doubt that Russia truly feels threatened by what we're doing in Poland. Even if they did, it's their invasion of Georgia that pushed Poland into agreeing to base the missile system in the first place. Poland has a much more legitimate fear of Russia than Russia does of Poland, and Poland being our staunch ally while Russia is at best neutral and more likely more of an enemy than China ever will be, who cares what the Russians think? Our concern should be about what the Polish think, otherwise why do we have allies in the first place?

Russian has never given a damn about what other countries think, except for the fear of US nuclear reprisal. If they really want to invade Poland, they'll wait till they can find an excuse, or eventually they'll just do it anyway. Instead of worring about whether or not we're giving the Russians an excuse to invade its former satellites, we should be worrying about how we are going to convince Russia that recreating their empire would be suicidal.

Weren't the Germans and Austrians already militarized?

Yes. The systems can only be used for defense and the stated purpose of them are for defense from Iran. If I'm expected to believe upon face value that Iran is only pursuing nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, why can't the other side assume we're being true to our stated purpose? Besides, why is Russia so concerned about them? If they're not planning on launching a nuke at Europe, there's nothing to fear.

If Russia wants to get into a military p*ss fight, things will get ugly. But our Ruskie friends won't come out victorious.

I see that Bear Stearn has forgotten about Japan.

And the First World War. Which as I recall, the Russians were the first to militirize.

JJ, I think I missed something here.

Russia's neighbor Poland is going to host missiles intended for use vs. Russia ...

... and it's *Russia* that flexes its muscles by warning Poland that those missiles will be duly targeted?

and the media:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVNblG9PJMk

I see that Bear Stearn has forgotten about Japan.

No, I haven't. The Russians have lost many small wars and won even more of them.
I wasn't so much making a prediction for the future as I was trying to point the obvious military threat to Russia - coming from the West. This general simply said that in case of a military conflict with NATO, Russia would hit Poland with nukes. There are a lot of military reasons for that and some historical as well - the most powerful armies of their times have attacked Russia with total devastating wars. Russians know what is coming and the response is going to be of a kind.

As far as winners and losers go, looking at the state of US finance and continuing political and financial corruption... War is won not only with arms!

I also suspect that reminders of a particular piece of Polish history are being brushed off and fed into the Polish political discussion. The statues of Józef Piłsudski, are certainly being shined up.

Their concern is not anything out of the ordinary.

That doesn’t mean, however, that we need to replace them all with ridiculously expensive F-22s. Much cheaper new F-15s would more than fill the need in most cases.
...
The F-22 was designed to fight a Cold War mission that no longer exists. Potential adversaries are improving their fleet with Russian-made jets, so we need upgrades. It’s doubtful, though, that we need a fleet of F-22s and F-35s.