No. He’s stating that the USA and Europe want to halt Russia’s disintegration if

No. He’s stating that the USA and Europe want to halt Russia’s disintegration if possible. Because more chaos is worse for both strategic and humanitarian reasons.

And that China is a threat, almost entirely because it’s an autocracy, and we have not yet made the prohibition on dictators and tyrants a mandate for war.

Russia will decline of course. But a rapid collapse is worse than a gradual contraction (which is already happening.)

RU will advance like the academy: with tombstones. The Soviet era citizens must die off before the younger generations can reform the country.

Can Russia remain integrated? Very hard to see how. Can the Russian economy modernize? Of course. Could Russia see the equivalent of an Ataturk? Of course. But political turnover and reform, the end of the FSB, and trying to maintain any sense of order without them across all those time zones without an even greater fragmentation than in ’91, when the RU are not a high trust people, and would need to take personal responsibility for rule of law, when still in economic deprivation, is a very challenging prospect.

Reply addressees: @steventduffy @ELuttwak