It's been a year. LET'S DO SOME MORE RUSSIA ANALYSIS.

I still believe that Russia remains a poor country, essentially 3rd World in development orientation. It imports food and exports basic commodities exposing it to vulnerabilities. Apart from vodka and caviar, it makes almost nothing that anyone wants. Arms don't count here. Its relatively large population compared to a few other advanced economies keeps looking forward to a better life which institutionalized incompetence and corruption have made impossible. # Going forward say two decades, I wonder what the endgame of Putin's nuclear brinkmanship is all about. In the most unlikely event that the United States will implode or becomes completely dysfunctional, I wonder what makes the Russians imagine that the Chinese and Indians will simply sit back while Putin & Co pick up the pieces. A cursory glance at the GDP listings show Russia taking a position behind Korea and more than a dozen others including India, Brazil not to mention China. # The question remains what all this waste of resources in advanced weaponry is all about. China wants and needs a stable US system and economy on which its own economic trajectory depends. The iconoclast Putin wants to upset all that. China may react and Russia will not like that. A chinese economic blockade or sanction of Moscow will probably be worse than anything that President Obama has thrown at them. So Putin better watch out. I don't see Russia still having the ability to defend its several thousand kilometer long border with China if push comes to shove. # This comment has nothing to do with the righteousness of US posturing and Foreign Policy under various administrations culminating in the "Russian" plant in the White House. The discernible aims of Vladimir Putin make absolutely no sense whatsoever in this current world. The man seems to have more in common with Kim Jong Un than he can ever imagine. Or perhaps he knows that already. The rest of the advanced world needs to urgently call him to order. His ego is a danger to everyone. # Putin touts new nuclear weapons, claims can't be intercepted