Much ink has already been spilled lamenting the end of the post-Cold War era of American hegemony and the emergent strategic competition with Russia and China. Moscow has been described as a manipulative alien power, which, since at least the invasion of Crimea, has been seen as subverting American democracy and world stability. But this telling severely undersells how much the burden of the current state of affairs falls squarely on the West’s shoulders. Russia could not have achieved what it has without a healthy mix of complacency and wishful thinking on our part. The latest example of this has been Washington’s decision to lift sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
