uh i i hope i don't consider them a uh threat because uh uh we sure have taken down a lot of security measures that that we once had um i don't know seems um um
maybe a little bit young to remember the uh i'm only i'm i'm twenty two so i don't think i remember the uh
uh
you know the height of the Cold War and and whatnot but i
huh-uh
i don't know i don't consider the Soviet Union a threat in that uh by any means just because of the fact that there's not uh uh anything that they have to threaten us with anymore
well there not i mean there really is no Soviet Union now unfortunately they still do have a lot of uh nuclear weapons
exactly that's that's true that's
uh-huh
and uh the one thing that worries me is is question of stability and control
um-hum
and uh i think it's too early to say you know whether they're going to develop some stable societies there in one form or another
um-hum
or whether this uh old uh Russian tendency to
turn their fate over to some insane ruler is going to surface again
sure yeah
they didn't they didn't have a very good track record even before the revolution
no they really didn't uh now you know they never really have had democracy there in any sense so
no no
um
it's going to take both democracy and economic progress and uh resolution of their nationalist institutes i guess
right
all of that is going to have to happen and if any one of them turn sour they could still be uh dangerous simply because they might not
you know they just might sort of lose track of what they're doing
right
um i i guess
i'm not so concerned about an organized danger uh
maybe for the maybe for the simple reason that um
despite the fact that they do have uh you know probably a large uh substantial nuclear capability
uh i'm not sure that that all of that capability is organized anymore i mean you know just along with it with the dissolution the that the of the uh
Soviet Union i think that a lot happened with the dissolution of their of their military power
but that's really part of the danger because they still have uh you know i think there still uh missile uh bases or silos in uh
um-hum
in uh Kazakhstan probably in Ukraine
right right
as well as in Russia uh those in Russia may be some of them in areas that uh may have uh
right
strong local national sentiments because they aren't all Russians you know they're a lot of enclaves they have other nationalities
yeah sure
uh-huh
and if even one uh
missile silo got in the hands of someone who is uh determined to
cause trouble for some for some reason they might launch a missile on someone
i think i see your point uh you have you have uh where once you had uh one government controlling a a a large number of missiles now you have several
smaller governments uh highly volatile
governments and militaries and it's not always clear which one of them is in charge
militaries yeah sure
well that's maybe the uh the uh extreme pessimistic view
um-hum
um think if uh Yeltsin has a chance and if they can follow his lead in the other republics or whatever they want to call themselves now
yeah
um they'll probably come out of it okay
um-hum
uh do you see
uh i have not perceived and i wonder if you've perceived any uh uh antiAmericanism uh sentiments uh on any level like you know that that we receive from the from the Middle East for example
what in the former Soviet Union
yeah
um not much i don't think i think that uh
probably or uh or uh image there is pretty good most places as i understand it
right
um-hum
do you worry that we might uh overstep i guess my question is do you do you think that there are ways that we might overstep overstep our bounds and provoke uh
provoke anger in the Soviet Union and and what would those what would those steps be
provoke a threat
what might make them angry at us may make the people angry at us or the governments or both or
um-hum
you know both i guess
well
i think if they uh
thought that we were taking advantage of their uh current preoccupations with internal matters or with
um-hum
