Life in the Trump Era, Part 2

[Ma'ake]

Putin has been in power for 18 years. Even the 4 years he wasn’t president he was Prime Minister.....to a president who is now his Prime Minister.

As a country we likely got too enamored with the idea that Russia had changed.

Completely agree. Putin was a KGB agent, during the heyday of Soviet power.

Especially after being rebuffed for inclusion in NATO and the EU (the Euros were aghast at the brutality Putin (apparently) unleashed in Chechnya to consolidate his autocratic power) he's been on a long campaign to exert Russian power by destabilizing other nations.

Russia's economy is half the size of California's. A return of Greater Russia isn't going to happen, economically.

For the US, Putin has been on an aggressive campaign to get the sanctions against Russian oligarchs lifted. That's the key fact that Americans of all political persuasions need to remember. We need to stop arguing and posturing among ourselves and keep our eyes on the ball.

[LA Ute]

As a country we likely got too enamored with the idea that Russia had changed.

Yeah. It was wishful thinking. With 1000 years of a paranoid culture, resentful of the West‘s treatment of it as a second-class citizen, Russia is not a place that’s easy for the rest of the world to deal with. It never will be.

Completely agree. Putin was a KGB agent, during the heyday of Soviet power.

Especially after being rebuffed for inclusion in NATO and the EU (the Euros were aghast at the brutality Putin (apparently) unleashed in Chechnya to consolidate his autocratic power) he's been on a long campaign to exert Russian power by destabilizing other nations.

Russia's economy is half the size of California's. A return of Greater Russia isn't going to happen, economically.

For the US, Putin has been on an aggressive campaign to get the sanctions against Russian oligarchs lifted. That's the key fact that Americans of all political persuasions need to remember. We need to stop arguing and posturing among ourselves and keep our eyes on the ball.

Hey! Good post. It’s an ironic possibility that Putin will cause the United States to develop a bipartisan foreign policy again, at least as regards Russia. Wouldn’t that be something?