Soldato
I can assure you that if we played our cards right after dissolution of Soviet Union - Russia would be a place we get cheap fossils from and China would be a manufacturing warehouse of the world with both being extremely friendly and loyal. We could have made sure neither had ICBM's. When Iron Curtain fell, Russians thought the US/West were really as good as they said and all their woes came from communism. Instead they spent all their 90's 'democratic' years literally starving to death and seeing 10 year olds prostituting themselves for food. Then came authoritarian Putin the saviour. Could you imagine if we actually supported Russia in 90's what we could have achieved?? We'd have one of most loyal populations on earth and CCP would never had a chance to last in China.
We had a chance to dominate world long term - instead we spent it on bombing couple countries under false pretence and ****** it all away. To the point Russia and China now feel like all that Cold War stuff about how great America and West were/are is all false. 30 years ago we had both of them thinking we're the best thing since sliced bread. Now they realize we are full of crap and nothing good is coming from us at all - quite frankly if they kill us they'd be better off.
So we got this:
From This
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Eur...sians-loved-the-US.-Where-did-it-all-go-wrong
We aren't to blame for Russian corruption. The black market had been keeping Russians going for years, communism fell and the new government sold off all the state assets for peanuts for kickbacks. A few became billionaires and the people were left with nothing. I can't see what we could have done to prevent that. Putin just stepped in and made them all give him a massive chuck of their ill gotten gains and he would protect them. We all saw what happened to those that refused. The idea he is for the Russian people is pure propaganda.
I can't see anyone invading Russia. There is no appetite for such a war. At the same time Russia can't be allowed to expand its borders into sovereign countries like Ukraine. We should be making it crystal clear that an invasion will not be tolerated. Should probably have invited Ukraine into the EU and maybe even NATO. Yeah Putin would have freaked but invading a EU and NATO member would be a huge risk from his point of view.