History of US Russia geopolitical relations and political situation according to Cohen.

“at the same time the bitterness regarding the United States in the Russian political class and the security elites. Because Putin cannot make decisions Unilaterally he can’t, he’s the decider as George Bush used to call himself, he’s the decider. But he has to bring along his team, which is divided. But the anger at the United States has to do more than anything with what they regard as broken American promises to Russia over the last 20 years. And everybody says oh you mean Bush’s promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand if Gorbachev would agree to a reunited germany and NATO it began there. But look what happened after 9/11. Putin put himself way out of his ballpark with his own people when he told George bush whatever you want will give you. And do you know what he gave us? He gave us American lives, not only did he give us Russian information and right to travel and supply Afghanistan over Russia. But there was a fighting force left over from the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan called the Northern Alliance with the Russians and continued to train Russian officers in Afghanistan. He gave that to Bush to do the early fighting and so for every Northern Alliance soldier who died fighting the Taliban to drive him out of Kabul, it would have been an American soldier. What did he get what did Putin get in return? Quickly Bush withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty Unilaterally. That was the bedrock of Soviet’s nuclear security and we started this missile defence again and Bush undertook a second round of NATO expansion to Russia’s borders. So how does Putin explain how smart he is to his own people? You give and they take and if you really wanted to go into it you could look at the reset because it was that all over again. Russia gave everything we asked for, we gave nothing in return. So there’s this anger that you can’t trust the Americans and until recently there were only two people who could vouch safely for American policy in the white house. Henry Kissinger because they trust him but Obama won’t see him, so far as I know and Merkel. But Merkel now is maybe going down. Her numbers are plummeting in Germany because of Greece because of Ukraine because of the refugee crisis now because of Syria. So it’s not clear if some really important things would come from Obama to Putin. It would be nice if he could get it in writing and even in writing I mean he really needs to know that Obama’s got his back, just as Obama needs to know Putin’s got his back politically. But I think it’s possible it’s called leadership.”