The shadow of an American or Russian veto will colour the next year at the United Nations.
In the years of crisis and decline that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union, three things enabled Russia to hold on to its status as a great power. The first was the large stockpile of Soviet nuclear weapons that confirmed it as America’s only serious counterpart for the purposes of strategic arms control. The second was its natural abundance of oil and gas that provided a platform economic recovery in the boom years that coincided with Vladimir Putin’s first two …read more
Source: New Statesman
