If you want to wrap your head around Russia's current attitude in the world, you have to understand the Russian view of three key periods: the breakup of the Soviet Union, the chaos of the 1990s, and the so-called color revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. Dmitri K. Simes ably deals with the key issues here, but I just want to highlight this insightful quote about U.S.-Russian relations in the 1990s:

We haven't played everything brilliantly with these people; we haven't figured out how to say yes to them in a way that balances off how much and how often we want them to say yes to us. We keep telling Ol' Boris [Yeltsin], "'OK, now here's what you've got to do next – here's some more shit for your face.'"

–Bill Clinton to Strobe Talbott, 1996

Blake Hounshell is Web Editor of ForeignPolicy.com. He has been blogging this week from the Salzburg Global Seminar session on Russia: The 2020 Perspective.