I am going to add one more thing. I wish them success. I am happy for the direction their country has taken, with the fall of the USSR and I hope it leads to more and more prosperity, goodness, and success. I think too many Americans treat them like enemies and leave them feeling like we want to keep them down. That is a big mistake that has cost us the little bit of trust we were beginning to gain. The burden was with us to build trust after the collapse of the USSR because we were the stronger one. Instead we have squandered the opportunity and re-established mistrust, leading to a second Cold War. It is one of the great tragedies of our time and we carry the blame. As they regain strength, we could have been allies rather than enemies. But the U.S. has been busy tossing all of its fundamental values. Russia has not become perfect, but they have been moving in the right direction while we have been moving in the wrong direction. Who will God bless?
What a crazy world.
You’re going too far for me. Russia does have an authoritarian drive toward domination outside its borders. Something of its own caliphatic-type sense of destiny for global domination, and that is a risk that should be recognized. It is, for example, an implicit ally of Iran’s, and Iran has a stated goal of destroying the US militarily.
Squashing ISIS may be a good outcome, but naivete and romanticism re: Russia is not a good thing.
Oh, and the short answer to Obama’s support of the Sunni ISIS over the Shia Iran’s puppet Assad in Syria, is that not only are “our friends the Saudis (and Jordanians and...) Sunni, but so are Indonesia and Pakistan from Obama’s youth.
I had a professor who predicted we would become more like Russia, and Russia would become more like us. I don’t have a visionary bone in my body, naturally, I scoffed at the notion.