Hey Washington

They deserve each other. The Spanish, Portuguese and Russian/Soviet empires turned to sh*t everything they touched. Compared to North America or Australia/New Zealand? What a sad joke!

To say that about the Spanish & Portuguese empires takes a whopping great deal of ignorance.

I can only conclude that you have spent precious little time in Latin America to chauvinistically proclaim their inferiority to the bourgeois yet stable countries of the English-speaking New World.

Methinks Brad Evans should go back in time and be one of the enslaved tribes of the Aztecs… or perhaps one of their human sacrifices… and see what he thinks of the Spanish empire then!

Back to your main point: everything Obama and his crowd touches turns to dust. Let us rejoice and thank the gods.

Did the Russians ever stop pissing off the US?

Only for most of the 1990s.

While I am someone who appreciates Russia’s return to certain pre-revolutionary traditions, and Putin’s public faith, I must disagree with your premise. While American policy vis-a-vis Russia has been absurd, Russian policy has not. Russian foreign policy is driven by standard BOP considerations, and domestic stability. Russian third-world clientelism is not (and never has been) a reaction, but instead a clear-eyed attempt to express the Russian national interest. This would almost certainly be the case regardless of American policy.

B.T. Van Nostrad,

Why should we rejoice that everything Obama touches turns to dust? I find it increasingly tragic (especially after eight horrific years of George W. Bush) & it certainly does not bode well for the future.

There was some disarmament and some cooperation, but as I understand it, it wasn’t exactly a love-fest. They never stopped their aid for Cuba for example. Behind the Gorbachev and Yeltsin facades there were significant nationalist (i.e., anti-American) forces jostling in parliament. They seem to have regained control at this point.