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When the US tried to prevent the acceptance of the petro-euro by bombing Iraq, Mr Putin, Mr schröder and Mr Chirac were the main force opposed to it.



While I am no Kremlinologist, Putin seems to believe that the US has overplayed its military card. In his support of the Syrian regime, it was indeed the US government that blinked first and that had to break its word after the US had painted itself in a corner.



Russia is a country whose elite formerly spoke French and whose composers, writers, mathematicans mixed with their Western counterparts. In November 2010, there were talks about the affinity with Europe as outlined by Mr Putin and Mr Ackermann (http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9JNVSC80.htm). He might have read and agreed with the slogan "geography is destiny" as in Jared Diamond's book on "Collapse".



Mr Edward Snowden only feeling safe in Russia (due to Merkel's reticence), but almost certainly prefering to live in the heart of Europe, is another piece in this puzzle.



While I see the historical role of the US measured in several generations as slightly more positive than negative, the generations x/y have not had too many nice things to observe since 1991, neither politically (Clinton in Waco, Clinton impeachment, Bush in the supreme court, 9/11, absurd accusations of Obama's citizenship, deadlock), nor militarily and not even economically (http://poststar.com/news/opinion/editorial/commentary-is-the-u-s-economy-stuck-permanently/article_4056c41a-6ba7-11e4-bf09-0bc814ac24c7.html ). Putin has been emphasizing a "multi-polar order" for a while.



While the authors' perspective looks like making some sense (of not seeing that much sense in Putins' actions), they do not see the many pieces of discontent and blowback that have been building up to the US, at least since Gulf War I veteran "Timothy McVeigh" via "Chelsea Manning" to the emergence of the Islamic State. Noam Chomsky has argued in 2004 that there are two main paths for the US, "hegemony or survival". For me personally 2004 was the year I realized that a "Kuhn'ian paradigm shift" is on the horizon, and it became clear to me on January 15th, 2012 when Obama cancelled the military maneuvre at the strait of hormuz that the former concept (hegemony) is definitely not sustainable. Again, this does not at all mean that I was favoring the Russian/Chinese media and politicians who at that time kept talking WWIII (the real reason that Christian Wulff as the 2nd German president stepped down within less than two years). But neither do I like deadlocked and inflated (I mean this as a technical term that describes Keynes'ian as opposed to Hayek'ian actions) Americans telling Europeans what to do.



Once the people of the EU realize this, thus reaching enlightenment in the Kant'ian sense of self reliance, the conferral of a "noble" prize on them will have made sense, retrospectively.