This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, August 1st, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

A newly emboldened Russia hopes to once again become a truly European nation as President Dimitri Medvedev makes

overtures toward a new Russia inclusive security framework.

Stanley Cobra, a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, comments.

What the Russians are saying is that they are part of Europe. They always have been. They look at the War of 1812 when they feel they

helped rescue Europe. They look at World War II, where they were a principal partner in the Great Alliance rescuing Europe.

They feel they are part of Europe.

When the Cold War ended around 1990 in 1990, Cato co-sponsored a conference in Moscow with the Academy of Sciences and I distinctly recall one of the Russian academics and we will

now be part of a global civilization that stretches from New York to London to Paris to Moscow to Vladivostok.

This will be part of the global civilization.

In other words, no more class struggle, no more division.

The wall had come down and we would now be part of this

global civilization. And I think wasn't that that was sort of a presumption that

parties on both sides really made? I think so.

I think there was a sense.

But then this idea of expanding NATO got underway

and the Russians felt they were excluded.

They were told they had a voice and not a veto

that decisions were made without them.

And Meddetta's proposal now is, look,

he said in a speech in Berlin, Europe rests on three pillars.

...