On Awakening to the New Russia
(since 1991).
It is the first time ever there exist some kind of Russia which is neither :
* "Communist", Stalinist, Bolshevik, nor
* Imperial Tsarist, nor
* Despot-led (Ivan the Terrible, etc.), nor
* Mongol-controlled (Dzhenghis Khan and the Golden Horde, etc.).
Thus, we have got a new Russia, in theory at the least. What may be going in inside some circles or other within that country can be anyone's guess.
Nevertheless, the structural changes introduced in Russia are a matter of the written record, publicly known, and these are the only basis on which any subsequent diplomacy can depend.
This might have little to do with whom do you believe or not. : it has everything to do with not assuming there to be an adversarial relation based solely on old stories about some antediluvian modes in the international relations.
And what the politicians in the USA (possibly other countries) do ? -- Those people seem to think along some 17-18th century lines ; at best along the lines of 1914-17, as though there had been no actual progress made in the meanwhile.
An US President argues that the region has been traditionally a seat of trouble ; on such a premise some new 50-billion boondoggle is being proposed in the form of a ballistic-missile defense system placed in the Central Europe. To defend whom from whom is not anywhere nearly clear.
Some of the facts are : the war 1914-18 had been occasioned by an assassination of an Austrian Prince by a Serb man (Surely there had been some trouble in the region).
However, what the US President (and/or his advisers) seem not to notice : at that time there had been three great empires in existence : the Russian, the Austro-Hungarian, and the German. All three had collapsed in 1917-18. Is the present-day situation in the region anywhere nearly like the one then ?
The present-day situation consists of a number of variables. The few constants are : the old empires do not exist any longer : the Warsaw Pact so-called (which was run from the Kremlin) no longer exists.
Now is the time to think along some new lines.