It rests on three geostrategic imperatives: that Russia must remain a nuclear superpower, a great power in all facets of international activity, and the hegemon the political, military, and economic leader of its region.
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Reporters covering the Cold War sought interviews with rebel leaders, often sneaking off into dangerous territory on the other side of the Khyber Pass to file a hagiographic portrait of human bravery confronting the might of a nuclear superpower - and winning.
The global superpower and nuclear peer that was the other party, the Soviet Union, has been out of business for over a decade.
Despite its regional superpower status and nuclear arsenal, it still sees itself living on the knife's edge with little or no margin for error.
He was also aware of a more immediate risk in those cold-war days: a smaller visitor (such as the one that had exploded over Siberia in 1908, flattening 2, 000 square miles of forest) might be mistaken by either superpower for a nuclear detonation and trigger Armageddon.
In the same speech, he proclaimed Iran a superpower, trumpeting its development of nuclear and rocket technology as symbols of national virility.
The usual riposte, of course, is that such superpower restraint is necessary if others aspiring to possession of nuclear weapons are to be dissuaded from acquiring them.
By engaging with Russia on nuclear questions and giving it the status it craves, of a quasi-superpower, America hopes to get traction on other issues, such as Iran and non-proliferation.
Above all, there is the lesson that in defiance of the U.S. superpower and its allies, North Korea has by now conducted three nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013 and the U.S. has taken no direct military action to stop them, or to definitively preclude yet more.
Considerable care is in order in with regard to reductions to levels of nuclear warheads so low that China and possibly other nations may aspire to secure "superpower status" by approximating them .
Today, Russia is no superpower, although it is keen to parlay the vestiges of its once-vast nuclear arsenal into restored international prestige and power.
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