by flagamuffin

In the 1990s, many people thought Russian progress toward that home simply required new policies: With the right economic reforms, Russians would sooner or later become like us. Others thought that if Russia joined the Council of Europe, and if we turned the G-7 into the G-8, then sooner or later Russia would absorb Western values. Such privileges were never even extended to China, which is a far greater economic and political power. This is because we’ve never believed that China would be “Western.” But deep down we believed that Russia would someday join our club.