Just wanted to put these two snippets out here. One - Kissinger& #39;s recollection of his conversation with Brezhnev, May 1973. Brezhnev: "Look, you will be our partners, you and we are going to run the world."

The second snippet is from Yeltsin& #39;s comments to Clinton 20 years later, in January 1994. "The two of us have a unique potential as partners... without cooperation of the two of us, it is hard to envisage a peaceful and stable world."

This to me points to a remarkable continuity in Moscow& #39;s expectations (let& #39;s call it wishful thinking). Cold War or not, Communism or not, the Soviets/Russians expected to be accepted as equal partners in a "condominium" (in Brezhnev& #39;s case) or a "cartel" (in Yeltsin& #39;s case).

This was of course an unrealistic expectation, both during the Cold War and after. Brezhnev and Yeltsin (and I might add Gorbachev here, for he shared in their naiveté) failed to understand that global politics are a pecking order: you just can& #39;t have a condominium of equals.

All of this reminds me of the toast from the 1967 Soviet comedy. "Let us drink to our desires always coinciding with our capabilities." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD8vcxXqRk8">https://www.youtube.com/watch...