There is a general consensus among european politicians that Russia would never attack anyone, that the power-politics of the cold war is gone forever. This may be true within the EU and european states. Concerning Russia however there is plenty of evidence that suggest the opposite, like how the Georgian conflict was handled for one. Estonia was also put under heavy pressure last year as the statue honoring soviet solders of WW2 was relocated. A ethnic-russian minority was indirectly commanded from Moscow to carry out organized actions in estonia. Ukraine is also feeling the pressure as they are highly dependent on energy from their northern neighbor.
Russia IS playing the power-politics game, and is in the process of getting more and better military hardware to continue to do so. Furthermore, there is a widespread support to re-establish Russia as a superpower on the global scene. The russians want this, Putin is playing on that and it is his #1 priority make no mistake about it. He and the Kreml players care not for the HIV-epidemic spreading throughout their country, infrastructure, healthcare and education is all in the backseat on the road to re-establish mother Russia as a superpower. The fertility rates in Russia is about half of what is needed to maintain the current population. It's a major problem, perhaps the biggest problem Russia is facing in the near-future, yet it is quietly ignored.
European politicians do not want armed conflict. Well who can blame them because who in their right mind would? However, looking at the facts they tell us we should be very cautious. This indeed warrant a higher military capacity than currently found within the european states. Since military capacity is very expensive, no politician in their right mind want to suggest this, as it would be political suicide. So they play along, pretend it's all green grass and blue skies.
I'm afraid all of this will backfire on us (europeans) before it does on the russians. It smells very much like the 30's.
Edited for readability.
