The artless fools running our American federal government over the last 8 years have been substantially preoccupied with petropolitics and deconstruction of the goverment handed to them by the previous administration. Leading up to the 8 Bush II years were 6 years of a conservative congress who paid more attention to the lurid and scandalous behaviour of Clinton/Lewinski than to the international scene.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, the USA has been internally preoccupied with: a pageant of neoconservative social engineering proposals; privatization of nearly everything; political consolidation of dominionist megachurches; impeachment of a president for lying about sex; a buildup of militarism following the 9/11 attack; attacking the wrong country (arguably) in response to 9/11; the re-election of a president who has proven to be considerably less than useless; a global financial trainwreck; and, finally, the handoff of a platter of shit sandwiches to the next administration. What a time it has been.
And since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the USA has squandered its substantial goodwill and failed to summon international leadership by Presidents 42 & 43 in the constructive engagement of new Russia. Magic moments in history have come and gone, unused. In the mean time, Russia has experimented with capitalism in their unique way. But the experiment has not been much of a success. So, Russia did what Russia tends to do- it has advanced strongmen into power. And they are KGB alumni as well. Golly, what a surprise.
It could be that Russia might have been refractory to whatever help we might have offered. But we didn’t really try much beyond helping them decommission nuclear warheads.
So, now we see that Russian sentiment is falling back nostalgically towards Joseph Stalin- Uncle Joe. The government is actually confiscating materials archiving the atrocities of Stalin. The rationale is that Stalin made them a superpower, so his indiscretions and sins can be overlooked. Putin and Medvedev- king and rook- are gradually consolidating power the old fashioned way- they’re taking it under the blustering pretense of security. It’s like a game of chess. You advance enough pawns to get control of the middle of the board. Then you castle your king (Putin) and begin the projection of power across the board.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Stalin’s Beria and the NKVD differed from Bush the Lesser’s Homeland Severity for being effective (and then some. “It was officially admitted that there had been some injustice and ‘excesses’ during the purges.”) Bring your papers to an airport. Young Nikita Khrushchev built the Moscow subway to spec and on time. Does it matter how many corpses are in its foundations?
Putin and Medvedev have not been feminized, compassionalized, kinder and gentlered, or diversitated. How many female Marines sum to one drunken psychopathic Russian soldier? If Russia is willing to bleed it can drown anything the US will throw at it.
America’s true problem is that contraception limits expendable lives to those in the slums. This does not encumber the Muslim Middle East, India-Pakistan, or China hence diifferent tactics and their presumptive victories at will. There is only one effective counterpoint argument.
The Russians don’t have quite so many bodies to throw at a problem – they had had significant decreases in lifespan after the fall of Communism – since they haven’t been made good (and I assume most Russians aren’t raking in the oil money, exactly) I don’t see them having Chinese -size masses of people to use. The last few years have not been kind to their military – Chechnya I, II, etc. imply that 1 female Marine probably counts for about twenty underpaid conscripts (and if she has pocket change, food, or jeans she might not need to fire her weapon). Given some years of oil money, they might develop the tech and enough illusion to make them a problem.
The lack of US engagement is part of the problem, but ultimately they lost the potential benefits of capitalism (assuming you think there were any) to a horde of kleptocrats and mobsters. People felt better during Communism (well, those that survived, and who fit well in the box it left them). If you’re going to be run by the unelected, they probably figure it’s better to be run by an iron-fisted despot than by the mobsters of Moskow and St. Pete. I don’t know that we could have given them advice on how to run their economy, unless it’s on how to plunder, and I think they already knew how to do that.
The will to consume life en masse doesn’t make a country strong, but merely psychotic. If you kill everyone who doesn’t agree with you, you’re going to be very lonely on the playground (at least until someone bigger comes along – then you’ll be dead).
The high price of oil killed Russian democracy. Commodity rich nations do not need to create internal demand-a consumer class- to grow economically.
See the whole Arab world as an example.