History

These so-called "verbatim" memoranda add further indication onto the pile that the West fundamentally doesn't respect Russia through the entire post-Cold War period and why should they? The USSR was locked in a near half-century confrontation with the West. The inevitable battle lines were expected for decades to cut through the middle of Germany and then suddenly, without any concessions or sacrifice whatsoever, socialist Europe collapsed through Gorbachev's actions and the frontier of NATO moved from central Europe into the USSR itself.

As Putin puts it, "Soviet power changed the world, voluntarily. And Russians gave up thousands of square kilometers of territory, voluntarily. Unheard of. Ukraine, part of Russia for centuries, given away. Kazakhstan, given away. The Caucasus, too. Hard to imagine, and done by party bosses."

But the truth is that of Mao's: political power grows from the barrel of a gun. You have nothing if you gave away the gun. The West knows exactly what Russia sacrificed, and the unspoken reality whenever they hear Putin bring this up is that they couldn’t be happier with what Russia did. Because now, rather than fighting it out in West Berlin, the West gets to pitch the two largest former SSRs against each other. Even the junior partners of the first Cold War are validated in their vassalage because the battlefields are now safely far away from even these original sacrificial pawns.

Why would anyone bargain or cooperate with an adversary that might get hijacked by a comprador and give away the whole house to you without having to negotiate anything in return, so long as you be patient and wait? This has been the operating geopolitical mentality of the West since the Cold War, which is to say that they only have to squeeze their eyes shut and hold out for the escalating nightmare to end. This is the true psychological source of all those endless "[insert adversary here] collapse" fantasies and makes the West incapable of respecting or acknowledging any contemporary counterparts.

You can see Putin begging to join the West without Russia being reduced to a junior US partner. In response to Bush stating (both amusingly underestimating the speed of change and also echoing the current Trump rhetoric about Russia): "Russia belongs to the West; it is not an enemy. In 50 years, China could become a big problem. Russia's interests lie with the West. And you should be like the West," Putin apparently cautioned (which has now completely come to pass): "What you said about 50 years in the future is important. Russia is European and multi-ethnic, like the United States. I can imagine us becoming allies. Only dire need could make us allied with others. But we feel left out of NATO."