Source: The Washington Quarterly
Russia will most likely be one of the pivotal countries in the twenty-first century whose eventual orientation will help shape the future global system. Thus, as the U.S. presidential candidates present their foreign policy visions, Russia’s thoughts and aspirations, although taken with a grain of salt, should not be treated as irrelevant.
Ideally, from a Russian perspective, the next administration will act on the basis of U.S. interests, avoiding slipping into the fundamentalism of democratic ayatollahs or the antiauthoritarian crusades of the new cold warriors. Although Russia does not want a hegemonic United States, it also does not seek to supplant the U.S. system with a different one; it merely wants to make sure that the United States stays within its borders and respects the legitimacy of other regimes.