I’m just saying what happened.
Obama (and Clinton) grasped for grand strategic schemes using proxies and secret wars, without concern for consequences - and he failed miserably, and created great chaos.
A strategic rival simply stepped in the way and blocked him.
Maybe Putin will wind up hanging from a lamppost some day, but Russia is not going anywhere. Obama has also cemented in place Russia and China as long-term strategic rivals, so he has created long term barriers to USA policy everywhere.
Well obstacles are normal but let’s not overestimate authoritarian systems and underestimate our own!
China made smarter economic/financial moves than Russia but it is still more dependent on the U.S. than vice versa and there are cracks in its social order that are covered up by the short term material/financial gains they’ve made this decade.
Russia is better off economically than...the Soviet Union, but the country wants the glories of the latter back and chose the return of empire over economic diversification, freedom, and rooting out kleptocratic corruption. Let’s see where that goes.
A lot of countries have found that out the hard way over the last few centuries.