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Missing the [Russian] elephant in the room

Stephen F. Cohen is professor of Russian studies at New York University. Writing for The Nation initially, and reproduced on IHT, Cohen raises a question simply ignored by the American presidential candidates [and indeed the world at large] - Russia in 2008.

"None of the U.S. presidential candidates has seriously addressed, or seems fully aware of, what should be America's greatest foreign-policy concern - Russia's unique capacity to endanger or enhance U.S. national security.

Despite its diminished status following the Soviet breakup in 1991, Russia alone possesses weapons that can destroy the United States, a military complex nearly America's equal in exporting arms, vast quantities of questionably secured nuclear materials sought by terrorists, and the planet's largest oil and natural gas reserves.

It also remains the world's largest territorial country, pivotally situated in the West and the East, at the crossroads of colliding civilizations, with strategic capabilities from Europe, Iran and other Middle East nations to North Korea, China, India, Afghanistan and even Latin America. All things considered, U.S. national security may depend more on Russia than Russia's does on the United States.

Yet U.S.-Russian relations are worse today than they have been in 20 years. The relationship includes almost as many serious conflicts as it did during the Cold War - among them Kosovo, Iran, the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia, Venezuela, NATO expansion, missile defense, access to oil, and the Kremlin's internal politics - and less actual cooperation, particularly in essential matters involving nuclear weapons."

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