Wake Up, Uncle Sam: The Russians Don't Care What You Think

The American century was the last one, just as the British century was the one before that. "Damage relations with the United States"? They don't care.

Get used to this, because you're going to be receiving a lot more of it. Welcome to being what you made us (although we have since declined even from this): one among half a dozen very powerful countries in the world, but that is all.

By way of illustration, Russia, with Serbia and others (most obviously Armenia and Belarus), could and probably will announce a firm intention to recognise and defend any declaration of independence by South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh or the Republika Srpska, including any decision to be incorporated into any of the states so announcing, all the while as enclaves both against Islam and against its pretended enemy but in fact close friend, those who have moved from "neither Washington nor Moscow, but International Socialism" to "neither Christendom nor the Dar al-Islam, but Global Capitalism".