It is dangerous for the United States to make plans on the premise of a Russian collapse. That outcome is not to be excluded, but neither is it likely. Russia will be around for quite a while; it never will regain the position that the Soviet Union held in 1980, but it will remain a force for the foreseeable future. Washington never quite grasped that the Russians are chess players, and chess is a game in which one cannot bluff. One deals with Russia only through strength, and America's strength is bleeding away from a series of self-inflicted wounds.
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