WASHINGTON -- An old saying in politics in Moscow is that relations between the United States and Russia are always better when a Republican rules in the White House. We are statesmen, and the Republicans are statesmen. Because we both believe in power, it is easy for the two of us to understand each other.
The problem with this saying is the paranoid mind-set behind it, for it implies that the nature of Russian-U.S. relations has not changed fundamentally since the Cold War's end -- that the animosities that exist between the two countries are those of two permanently implacable geopolitical opponents.
Russians, it seems, can only feel good about themselves if they are contesting with the world's great power head to head. Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin considers the Soviet Union's collapse "the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century."