Do we want to look back decades from now and recognize that at this critical juncture in history, America, through its inaction, cemented its future on the dust heap of former world powers, including the Roman, Ottoman, British or Soviet empires?
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The Czech MEP was the first man in space not to be from the US or the Soviet Union.
Migration, for example, is a major issue in Russia, which has the most immigrants in the world after the U.S. Current estimates range from seven million to twelve million, many of them from the North Caucasus or former Soviet republics like Tajikistan.
The case is believed to be the first time in Soviet or Russian history that a defendant will have been tried posthumously.
Some of them are economic, such as the renegotiation or forgiveness of Soviet-era debt, as well as faster entry into the World Trade Organization.
Di Centa, brother of former Olympic champion Manuela di Centa, is the first athlete from outside Scandinavia or the former Soviet Union to win the Olympic 50km race, the most prestigious on the cross-country program.
And at a time when the influence of Islam is growing in all Central Asian countries, other Soviet or pre-Islamic Zoroastrian traditions are slowly disappearing as some people stop celebrating events considered incompatible with Muslim beliefs.
This is especially true since Moscow could use its influence with the three other successor states, or with former Soviet republics that are non-successors, to deploy covertly internetted defensive capabilities that Russia itself would be unable to have under the ABM Treaty.
Whether one believes this Soviet disclaimer or not, the reality is that the Germans have become the aggressive syndicators of a Soviet debt bail-out scheme drawing on other Western governments and financial institutions.
Accordingly, Soviet willingness or ability to redeem bonds at maturity could directly affect the economic well-being of those who hold such Soviet debt instruments.
Several are owned by post-Soviet oligarchs or carpetbagging Americans, and some are burdened with perilous levels of debt.
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In the past, American grand strategy has been one of splendid isolation (from 1776 to 1941) or containment of the Soviet Union (1948-1989).
Their official biographies rarely spell it out, but gaps in individual CVs, or foreign postings during Soviet times, strongly suggest it.
Indeed, no bilateral strategic arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union or Russia has ever been ratified during a lame duck session.
But through incompetence or neglect, the Soviet authorities never told her mother.
No longer able to sell its sugar, nickel and oranges at vastly inflated prices, or import artificially cheap Soviet oil, Cuba plunged into severe recession.
Today, thousands of people line up for Easter processions and make pilgrimages to old monasteries and churches that either survived Soviet times or have been restored.
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One storeroom full of cardboard box files contains KGB dossiers recording the fates of hundreds of thousands of people, deported or arrested by the Soviet authorities.
He is the first Russian leader to have regularly taken holidays outside the former Soviet Union or to have close foreign friends who call him by his nickname, Vova.
Military leaders protested that this was far too little to achieve foreign policy professed goals, while civilian leaders resisted militarizing the federal budget or economy as in Soviet times, according to Global Security.org.
This new Russia, strident but erratic, requires a subtler approach than either the straightforward rivalry of Soviet times or the handouts and advice (not always very helpful) offered to Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.
Would, for example, the damage be limited to a heightened sense of abandonment by the United States on the part of key allies, leaving in its wake concerns about a strategic power vacuum and the need to accommodate the Soviet Union or other threats?
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In both cases, the governments of Japan and the Soviet Union downplayed or simply underestimated the problem.
Russian inflation is at or near its post-Soviet low, and interest rates are also near post-Soviet lows.
For the first few weeks after the landings, casualty rates sometimes matched those of the Western Front in World War I (or of the German-Soviet fighting).
Key technologies transferred by or through Germany to the Soviet Union include: high accuracy machine tools, deep underground tunneling machines, telecommunications equipment, underwater sensors, sophisticated computers and manufacturing equipment associated with microelectronics, advanced composites and superalloys.
It is instructive that no one can provide a comprehensive or accurate accounting of how much aid has been committed or delivered to the former Soviet Union and what became of the aid and credit flows that did arrive.
It has built one of the world's fastest-growing economies, thanks mainly to the large-scale export of oil, metals and grains, which helps to ensure that it doesn't rely too heavily for trade on Russia, its former Soviet neighbor, or on China.
In the past, he has maintained that the Soviet Union could double or triple its debt without any debt servicing problems.
The U.S. deterrent strategy of graduated escalation relied on the ability to hold at bay, albeit temporarily, a Soviet attack on Europe or a proxy in the Far East, thereby creating intrawar firebreaks.
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