…the US, Europe, and Russia could have attempted an amicable relationship.

Could have and definitely should have. First the Reagan administration lost an opportunity with Gorbachev (who was trying to move the USSR from a command-economy statist ‘communism’ to a more Euro-style socialism) by simply not believing he was making an honest offer. The Cold War had gone on long enough that opinions about the Sovs had ossified in the US. There finally seemed to be some progress with Yeltsin. It was never going to be an easy transition; the USSR didn’t have the necessary resources.

It was clear to those of us living the the US that things were dire in Russia (similar to the way things were bad in early-1930s Germany). We needed the political will for a new Marshall plan, which might have happened, given the take-away lesson that comes out of 1930s Germany.

But then the 9/11 attacks happened, leading to an American preoccupation with Islamic terrorists —end result the US turns into a security-oriented state and spends billions of dollars on first chasing Al-Qaida out of Afghanistan (which made some sense short-term) and billions more on invading Iraq (which made absolutely no sense at the time and actually compromised the effort to kill the mastermind behind those 9/11 attacks).

So here we are. That moment of opportunity to help the USSR (and possibly encourage it towards more representative government) has most definitely passed.

It’s all a bit too recent for there to be a good historical analysis of this. I’ve read enough history to know that the full story doesn’t come out for about a hundred years — but I lived through this period and that’s how it appeared to me, particularly the devolution into a security state and the Iraq invasion being utterly nonsensical — and I won’t even start in on the snipe hunt for WMDs.

Yes, I’m a Boomer — so you can probably blame this mess on me :-(