Don't hate the player, hate the game. "Hmm... Gullible Donny is about to tarred and feathered and run outta the country. Gotta start greasing up the new guy..."
If I'm Putin, I want to destabilize a Clinton regime. Russia pretends to be a global player but they just don't have the materiel or money to really make a run at it. They've always looked way more powerful than they actually are and managed to be an empire for as long as they did primarily by letting the US convince the world they were one. With America retreating from geopolitics as fast as it can for the past four years the Russians have been forced to have an opinion about Turkey, Syria, Azerbaijan, China, India, you name it. Instead of simply being able to go "we're not American" they've had to practice original statecraft. There's a very real place for Brand X in most ecosystems and Russia is a great Brand X against the US and China. They ain't about to put on a cape, though. If I'm Putin, the past four years have convinced me more than ever that what I really want is a de-legitimized conventional US government. Fumbling populists require way too much heavy lifting by Russia. I kinda feel like if the Russians really wanted this to go Trump's way they'd be pushing a lot harder.
Russia is a weird entity, man. It is primarily one enormous city, a billion acres of fuckall, and a small handful of backwater industrial wastelands with life expectancies of 55 years. And corrupt from bottom to top. It's a wonder it works at all... it is a house of cards that everyone knows is a house of cards, and a couple Afghan goatherds with single-shot rifles were able to hold off the USSR for the better part of 20 years. It doesn't make sense, in many ways. BUT. Now that the US is out of international politics for good, all those hands are going to reach out to someone else for the money we used to send them to prop up their untenable regimes. Hence every 'bad guy' in the middle east rushing in to shake Putin's hand... in the hope that cash and weapons flow forth promptly. Because China is dangerous to partner with. The sheer scale of what the Chinese can bring to bear - in money, manpower, technology, or weaponry - is hard to fathom. You also know that China holds grudges, and will destroy things just for the sheer theater or psychological impact of it. So if you are a petty dictator and looking for a Big Brother or enabler, Russia is your one place left to go. Which could result in sapping the Russian economy (even further) if Putin supports every old US ally out of hubris, or, it could result in these failed states/insurrections in becoming even more piratical, once let loose from the chains that have bound them. Once set afloat without any support from major funding, what's a Somali pirate to do...? So I could see things going either way... Russia steps in and becomes the sugar daddy to (even more) shitheads, or those shitheads have to go it their own and throw themselves entirely into the totalitarian regime model that will be their ultimate downfall in 3-7 years. It is a weird time to be alive, man. I almost prefer the time when the Russkies nuking us was the primary concern...
So a couple things: This is a common idea that's super-neet but has led to a world of hurt. So Iran-Contra in a nutshell was the CIA selling Iran TOW missiles in order to get slush money to fight the Contras. All told the Iranians got about 2500 TOW missiles at a unit cost of around $50k ea. That's $125m worth of weapons to guys that had the South Asia station chief murdered who painted "death to America" in their airport because Reagan couldn't get his dirty war otherwise 'cuz Congress said no. Not a good look. But while the CIA was getting hung out to dry, Operation Cyclone was fully funded to the tune of three BILLION dollars to put frontline military hardware in the hands of guys who were about ten years from giving Osama bin Laden a place to hang and painting 'Death to America' in their airport. There's an islamic myth that Afghanistan is where Islam stood up to imperialism that directly led to September 11 and other shit and there's a capitalist myth that Afghanistan is where the USSR couldn't cut it but the fact of the matter is, we boxed up Stinger missiles off the line in Palmdale and had them on donkey convoys to the Khyber Pass within a week. It was funny - growing up there were all these surplus Enfields floating around for pennies and it wasn't until I read Charlie Wilson's War that I realized it's because the CIA had gathered up as much untraceable ordinance as they could before Mike Vickers said he needed a better Stratego set so all this shit was sold for pennies military surplus. The USSR rolled into Afghanistan in 1979 and rolled out in 1988. We rolled into Afghanistan in 2001 and... wait for it... See, this is important because the USSR couldn't afford to deal with American hardware in Afghanistan. They're poor. They're the guys who built five space shuttles they couldn't afford to fly. Reagan's whole move was to outSPEND the Soviets and it totes worked. And Russia is still poor. They raised their retirement age last year because their pension crisis is bigger than ours, they got into a pissing match with Saudi Arabia over the price of oil that absolutely gutted them and what resources they had when Yeltsin took over have been summarily shoved into the hands of oligarchs. Russia is some cities and some impoverished wasteland but I mean, so's China. something like 95% of the wealth in China is within 100 miles of the coast. Geopolitically it's worth thinking of it as an American middle class with a Canadian wasteland full of poverty. America spends a fuckton on foreign policy which is certainly something to object to. But the important thing to keep in mind is there aren't really any other countries out there who can afford to keep up financially. Thus, it makes sense to want your old model back. You knew what was up. Obviously you want to bend it as much as possible to your will but I mean... a Trump II administration is gonna be a lot of work for everybody. Biden won't suddenly decide "ya know, fuck Kurdistan."a couple Afghan goatherds with single-shot rifles were able to hold off the USSR for the better part of 20 years.