From Megan Stack's article in the Los Angeles Times:"There's no future in Russia for pro-American policy," said Nikolai Zlobin, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the World Security Institute in Washington. "You can build your whole career based on anti-American policy -- build a political career, become a famous journalist or public figure. But if you promote the idea of friendship with America, you'll be denounced immediately." The Cold War is a faded relic in American memory. Now there are Iran and North Korea to worry about; a few years ago, there was Saddam Hussein. And so it is perhaps easy to forget that, in Russia, the Cold War remains a poignant and powerful idea. Talk of current events often conveys the distinct sense that Russia is clinging to the idea of an American threat. If there is no hostility with the United States, the ...

This is all news to me, but in an article in Foreign Policy, Peter Savodnik argues that Russia has given up on its quest to build itself back into a superpower, and is instead settling for the push for "a new international system" and other institutions and coalitions of multilateralism.  The rub of it is that Russia can't afford to keep up the confrontation status quo with Washington in the midst of an economic crisis.  If Russia wants to get more involved in rule-based international institutions, that can only be a good thing.

The basic answer is that Moscow, after years of trying unsuccessfully to reclaim its superpower status, has concluded that a new system is needed. Of course, a greatly weakened Russia is in no position to coauthor, with the United States, a new geopolitics. But it can initiate a conversation meant to

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