>>... give them a hand up as we did with the Marshall Plan after World War II.
You're aware the US offered the Marshall plan to the USSR post WWII - and was refused?
I think Reagan never offered something like that to Gorbachev as they had trouble believing he was legit. There was a fairly short time to do something. We hesitated, then alQaida distracted us all with the 9/11 - and we were off having a war with a behavior (terrorism). By the time we got our heads out of that, Putin was leveling Grozny, pretty much had control.