First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, tipped by some analysts as a possible successor to President Vladimir Putin, said on Friday Russia must achieve nuclear arms parity with the United States.
"Military potential, to say nothing of nuclear potential, must be at the proper level if we want ... to just stay independent," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Ivanov as saying.
"The weak are not loved and not heard, they are insulted, and when we have parity they will talk to us in a different way."
Ivanov was speaking to veterans and members of Russia's military-industrial commission, which he heads and which is marking its 50th anniversary.
*sighs*
I wonder what the contrast would be if they were, well, not so insulted at being ignored. In My Personal Experience, Russians seem to get very offended if you simply lose contact with them if they were at one point very close friends or important in some fashion at some time. They often feel that they should remain the center of attention even if circumstances have changed. People drift apart. Circumstances change. Nations rise and fall.
Russia is not the parity power of the US and hasn't been for well over a decade (then in its Soviet phase). While for a time, it seemed Russia was going to be our ally, even then Russia was not in a position to influence events, so why consult? To them, that's an insult. Big time.
On another blog, Jussi Jalonnen, a Finnish individual that I have communicated with for quite some time first over SHWI in usenet and later in blogs and email, stated about some Eastern Europeans he has dealt with, "when dealing with them, what _they_ believe is obviously more important than my own questionable views of reality." He meant it in a very different context, but I do believe that it holds true here too.
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