Russia, What Drives it, and its Modi Operandi

The United States needs a common enemy—the country functions in a more coherent manner economically, politically, and socially when there is an oppositional other. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1991 and American hegemony began its rein, attention shifted toward the Middle East and the Balkans: leaving Russia to rebirth into a world power. Contributing to Russia’s meteoric rebuild, and subsequent current decline, was what Goble calls a mafia-style takeover of the Russian economy by oligarchic businessmen who eventually moved money out of Russian economic circulation. A now-flailing former power, an increasingly unpredictable Russia has shown that it is not afraid to use both cyber and physical offensives to regain stability and former glory.