I have a number of comments for this article. I thought it would be helpful to explain where I am coming from.<p>A good place to start is what happened after WWII ended. The world was divided between two great powers, and what you would expect to have happened, given the past history of the world, is for this to lead in a decade or two to a massive war between them.<p>So why didn't that happen? Basically because of some extraordinary economic, technological and governmental changes that had happened over the preceding several centuries.<p>For thousands of years tribes and states had engaged in regular warfare. This was because they were based largely on agriculture. Even in empires, most of the people still were peasant farmers. This lead to warfare in two ways. One is that populations would often grow too large for agricultural output, the other was that the wealth was in the land and so the way to gain more wealth was through conquest.<p>The industrial revolution, based on modern science and technology, and operating under free market economics, lead to some radical changes. Radical increases in agricultural productivity, and in addition health advances lead to lower population growth. In addition, the main source of wealth was now industry, rather than land. And one consequence was the rise of democracy.<p>Nonetheless, warfare persisted. But nuclear weapons radically changed the logic of warfare, and made it suicidal, rather than an often-rational choice. And so we have had a remarkable 70 years of peace.<p>The problem is that Russia has never really adopted to the new era. Politically, it is authoritarian, rather than democratic. Economically it practices crony capitalism, and one consequence is it is very poor at technological advancement, and depends far too much on natural resources for wealth. And with respect to international affairs it thinks we are still back in the old era where great powers continually try to conquer each other, both for wealth and to eliminate military threats. And so it is pursing a policy of trying to gain back every part of the empire it lost when the Soviet Union collapsed.<p>I feel sorry for the Russians. Putin is taking them down a path that will lead to stagnation and maybe violent conflict. And, alas, Trump doesn't see this at all. That's because he is himself very out of touch with the realities of the modern, post-war era, and mistakenly thinks Putin is an excellent leader.