You forget that post-Soviet Russian hostility toward the U.S. has been reactive — under Clinton we completely disregarded Russian interests in the Balkans, attacking Serbia, which had been a Russian ally from the time of the Tsars, and beginning under Clinton and continuing under Bush pushed the borders of NATO east into the former Soviet Union, all during a period of weakness when Russia should have been wooed as a partner on the world stage, rather than treated as if the Cold War were still on — after all, remember that the Soviet Union fell because Russia seceded!
Let me ask, how would or should the U.S. react if a friendly, elected government in Mexico or Canada were overthrown by street demonstrations in the national capital and replaced with a hostile, anti-American government, and the electoral base that had most strongly supported the elected government happened to be in a state or province contiguous with the U.S. and that state or province declared independence rather than submit to the anti-American rebel government?
That’s analogous to what happened in Ukraine — I know someone from Luhansk, the separatist movement is real and indigenous, even if it is backed by Moscow.
I would hope that in my contrafactual analogous circumstance, the U.S. would come to the aid of the pro-American separtists, and do not fault Russia for doing the same.
Mind you, I think Putin is wrong in thinking he can use the lunatic Ta’ajili Shi’ites who run Iran as pawns in a game of balance of power politics vis-a-vis the U.S. and NATO. This is the one serious misstep he has made in my estimation. Of course, Russia has simpler relations with the Muslim world than the U.S. because it has only Sunni enemies. Thanks to Carter’s fecklessness and the historical circumstance that the Shah was one of “our bastards” during the Cold War, we have Shi’ite enemies as well as Sunni, so it would be a reasonable move vis-a-vis the Muslim world for Russia to align with Iran. The problem lies in the fact that the Iranian regime cannot be relied upon to behave as a normal actor in international politics because of the apocalyptic doctrines many of their leading clerics hold.
