“On the issue of nuclear weapons Americans are considerably less warlike than Russians…”

I’m not sure that the poll results shown in the graphs support your conclusion. All the charts show public support for the hypothetical arms-control measures by wide margins. The biggest difference in favorable “support” responses between American and Russian respondents was only 11 percent; the smallest difference was only 5 percent.

What the poll shows is that a majority of both the Russian and American people support efforts to reduce nuclear armaments. Depending on the exact question Americans tend to support this from 5 to 11 percent more than Russians.

But as we know, it is not always the views of majorities that prevail. Oftentimes a minority of hard-core “hawks” can prevent such measures from passing, even against the will of the majority. For example, polls also show that a large majority of Americans is in favor of their country withdrawing from Iraq. So why is the US still there?

Far more telling than the percentages of those who “favor” arms control measures is the percentages of those who “oppose” them, shown at the right of each chart. Here we can see that only a minority of people in each country are hard-core “opposers” of arms control, but that minority is significantly larger in the US than in Russia (almost three times larger in one case). Although the hard-core “opposers” are a minority in both countries, they are a much larger minority in the USA, and you can bet that they form quite a vocal minority.

The reason for the larger gap in the middle for Russian respondents to the poll is due to a cultural difference between the US and Russia. When Americans are asked their opinion on something (anything), they are much more likely to offer that opinion, even if they have no clue about the subject matter and don’t know what they are talking about. Russians are much more likely than Americans to answer “not sure” or “don’t know” if the poll question is about something they are not sure about or don’t know about.

When adult Americans were given a map, showing only the outlines of countries, but no country names, and asked to write the name of a few key countries in the right spot on the map, 3 out of 5 could not correctly identify the continent of Australia. Seventy-six percent of adult Americans couldn’t find Iraq on the map. But if you ask an American his opinion on anything having to do with Australia or Iraq, he is sure to give it to you.

The large gap in the middle of the Russian response are people who answered “don’t know”, and who are thus at least open to the possibility of being persuaded that increasing arms control treaties is a good idea, especially if the leadership of their country tells them that it is. This is a typical Russian response: if you don’t know the answer to some question, it is best to say so. When the relevant experts examine the question and give their expert opinions, then those experts should be trusted, as they are in a better position to know the correct answer than the average man on the street is. Americans by contrast are much more likely to speak first and get facts later (if they bother at all).

Therefore we can imagine that the large gap in the middle of the Russian responses represents those people who are at least open to the possibility of supporting new arms control measures. Even if we imagine that only 33% of these “undecided” Russians (1 in 3) could be persuaded to support arms control, and 67% (2 out of 3) of the them morphed into hard core "opposers" of arms control, it would still make the Russian “support” category bigger than the American one in every instance shown.

However, the hard-core "oppose" column (red) are people who have already made up their minds and decided that they don't want arms control. That column is significantly larger on the American side than on the Russian side (three times larger in one instance). Therefore your conclusion that Russia is a nation of "hawks" and America is a nation of "doves" is not supported by the data shown.

After the USA has committed unprovoked aggressions against Yugoslavia and Iraq, Russians understand that the only "insurance policy" against "humanitarian bombings" is an arsenal of nuclear weapons sufficiently large to inflict unacceptable damage to any potential enemy.

In other words, you're confirming you want a fight. Well, that's convenient, because you've got one. Guess you think you'll do better THIS time, not like the USSR, huh?

Wanna bet?

Yes, you're right, we think we'll do better this time... because now we know from experience that the "great civilized West" won't lift a finger to help us once we destroy our own state with our own hands to please it and because now we have immunity against the lies of Western influence agents aka "human rights activists", "the NGOS", etc. The last but not the least: at present Russia is led by people who are a lot smarter than the senile Brezhnev and with a lot more guts than the invertebrate Gorby. Please compare the results of WWI and WWII... on the Eastern front, of course!

"After the USA has committed unprovoked aggressions against Yugoslavia and Iraq, Russians understand that the only "insurance policy" against "humanitarian bombings" is an arsenal of nuclear weapons sufficiently large to inflict unacceptable damage to any potential enemy.

That's very true... The USA only bullies countries that can't fight back. It would never attempt such aggression against a China or a Russia (or even an India or a Pakistan), for one simple reason. These countries have the ability to strike back, and inflict massive damage on the US in the process.

When one is speaking about a nuclear war, the whole concept of "winning" is an absurdity. This old lesson, which was well known at the time of the Cold War, is something that the US is its more recent initiation of wars of aggression around the world seems to have forgotten.

It's a sad fact, but in the present world, dominated by the insane American quest to take over the world and its resources, the price of "freedom" for any country is having the nuclear bomb, and having the capacity to punch back at the Americans. Any country anywhere in the world that lacks this capacity either already has been or will soon become a target for US attack.

From Russia's standpoint it is clear that the cynical and savage American drive to dominate the world and its resources will not be checked other than by with force, or the threat of force. Therefore the most urgent requirement for Russian national security is to insure that Russia will maintain a nuclear force capable of annihilating every population center in the US.

The Americans are still laboring under the delusion that this is a problem that they can spend their way out of, and this is what motivates them to continually seek the ability to wage a nuclear war without incurring the inevitable catastrophic consequences. This is what motivates them for example to continually fantasize about such things as "star wars" or missile defense.

Russia does not need to match the USA's expensive and wasteful weapons programs dollar-for-dollar or system-for-system. Russia only needs to insure that it has an arsenal large enough to blast the Americans to their eternal reward in hell. And make no mistake, Russia will retain this capacity regardless of what the Americans do. This defensive capacity is the only thing protecting Russia from falling victim to the same sort of barbarism that the world has just witnessed in Iraq.

But Russia cannot view its own security in a vacuum. It is not enough to simply stand by and watch while the US initiates one war of aggression after the other in the world. It is to Russia's advantage to partner with those nations in the world which have still not been destroyed and assimilated into the American imperialist system, such as Iran and Venezuela. Russia must also share its own technology in the sphere of weaponry, especially nuclear technologies, to assist these nations in also developing the capacity to defend themselves. In some instances this involves cooperation at the level of basic research, and in the final analysis it would involve direct transfers of military technology, such as missile technology and nuclear warhead technology.

The American president can continue mouth his murderous threats against the world (that the US will start "world war 3" and whatnot), but Russia is not afraid of The US and its threats. Russia's security is not dependent on the goodwill of the aggressor. It is dependent on Russia's own capacity to defend itself, and Russia will retain the ability to defend itself against this savage enemy regardless of what they do.

Slobo Milosevic was a murderer.

The russkies are still livid that their "slavic orthodox brother" was taken out of power.

Who's attacking russkie-land?

The idea of democracy.

And Vlad Dracul Putin and his henchmen are doing all they can to defend themselves against mythical boogie-men, in order to prevent any real democracy.

So they push the idea all over the Internet that russkie-land is like a corporation, and that electing Putin is like electing a chairman of the board - and that is "equivalent" to democracy.

Stupid russkies.