Is it prepared to back up its rhetoric with force? (In Syria the answer has been no.) And has it really thought through the implications of the positions that it has taken towards Moscow?
In 2014, in the wake of Russia's annexation of the Crimea, Mr Putin spoke to the Russian Duma, noting that "if you compress the spring all the way to its limit it will snap back hard. You must remember this", he stressed.
As Nikolas K Gvosdev noted recently on the website of the National Interest - a US policy magazine dedicated to the pragmatic "realist" view of foreign policy - "The prudent response would either be to find ways to de-escalate the pressure on the spring or to prepare for its snapback and to be able to cushion the shock".
Whatever the errors of the past and whoever may be responsible we are, as they say, where we are. And where is that? Are the US and Russia really on the brink of conflict over Syria? I don't think so, but what about the idea of us all entering a "new Cold War"?
Paul Pillar, for one, thinks this is not the right term. "There is not the sort of global ideological competition that characterised the Cold War and fortunately we do not have another nuclear arms race," he told me.
"What is left is great competition for influence and Russia is a power of a lesser order than the Soviet Union was and than the superpower United States still is."
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2019-11-15
2019-11-15
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2019-11-15