The best analysis that I have read (professors Rajan Menon & Alexander Motyl, Rutgers University) concluded that while Russia’s recovery is undeniable, it is far less substantial than prevailing wisdom avers. Using every measure available, military health, economic vitality, human capital and “soft power” assets, Russia is in trouble. Putin’s façade of toughness and skyrocketing energy prices, while providing Russian elites with money and confidence to talk tough are in the end, not sustainable. For popular appeal, Putin, having dismantled democracy, is now using the language of Great Russian nationalism (i.e. chauvinism and xenophobia). However, history shows that “talking loudly while carrying a small stick” can push states to overreach, producing upheaval at home and abroad, and in Russia’s case, especially in what it calls its “near abroad.” The problem will not be that Russia is too strong to handle, but that it is too weak to make a good and reliable partner.

Volodia, Toronto, Canada

No one, certainly not the politicians who claim to be running our ship, should be under any illusions about President Putin. He spent 20 years in the KGB, successor to the MVD, Stalin and Beria's NKVD, the Cheka, and all the other organs of represion that have weighed so heavily upon the people of Russia and it's Empire.
20 years conditioning in that culture is not going to foster any libertarian mind-set. I would suggest that he is a Class 1 successor to Stalin. Our Intellegence gatherers would be well employed researching his charecter forming years. A team of behavioural psychologists woud be well employed reseaching hs body language and his behavioral traits.

Time spent in such a reconaisance would not be wasted.

W D Toulman East Yorkshire.

W D Toulman, Walkington, United Kingdom

Russia gained far more through feigned cooperation and manipulation during WWII and the immediate aftermath than it did during the entire cold war. (See "The New Dealers' War: FDR and the War Within World War II" by Thomas J. Fleming and Roosevelt's Road to Russia by George N. Crocker.)

Putin is an ex-KGB man and knows this. We have more to fear from the fox than the bear.

Publicus, Carmichael, California