This is interesting:
“Putin’s vision is not to restore the Soviet Union but to restore Russian greatness,” said Kathryn Stoner, a Stanford University professor and expert on Russia. “It’s the Russian empire, which is a very clear political and economic system.”
“Stoner called that system “Putinism” and described it as a complex mix of de facto authoritarianism at home and anti-American obstructionism abroad. It is by no means a Soviet-scale threat to the United States. But experts describe it as a controlling, culturally conservative system that Putin actively promotes to counter what he sees as a degenerate and decadent West.”
“They’re definitely setting themselves up in opposition to the United States,” said Fiona Hill, an expert on Putin at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Being the leaders of a conservative coalition of countries who oppose gay rights and gay marriage and those who want to see less of a role for the church, more of a secular society.”
There an element of truth in it - the West is flabby, morally decadent and militarily weak. Like the metrosexuals Obama and Kerry, its all bark and no bite. The West simply opposes Russia and sides with fascists because it has lost sight of its own values. There is no reason in the world why Russia should copy the West.
Kerry warns Russia? Let me see, is that the fifth or sixth “line in the sand”? With so many lines, it’s almost like a football field.
NATO spends 10x the amount of money Russia does on defense, and 60% of the world's total. Our procurement budget alone is 50% bigger than Russia's entire military budget. There are many ways to describe the West, but weak is not one of them.
I have to hand it to the Russians - they are as good as selling themselves as the good guys to many right wingers in the post-Cold War era as they were to many left wingers during the Cold War. A shambles of a kleptocracy that can't even provide clean water in hotels during the Olympics despite spending a record amount of money for any Olympics, yet retains the loyalty of right-wing supporters abroad, definitely knows a thing or two about information operations.
It all hearkens back to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s warnings to the West about its moral weakness in the 1970’s and his view that there was moral strength in Russia.