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The starting point for understanding the deterioration in the relationship between the U.S. and Russia lies in Washington rather than Moscow. After 1989, Russia was a defeated power. Despite the fine words and some limited gestures, the Americans have treated it like one. Their policy has been one of encirclement.

The great drama of Russian history has been between its state and society. Put simply, Russia has always had too much state and not enough society.

I would be delighted if the United States could have a positive relationship with Russia, and I would be thrilled if the Russian people, who are so capable, had a normal country that they could chart a different future.

Russia will not soon become, if it ever becomes, a second copy of the United States or England - where liberal value have deep historic roots.

I thought that in general we in the United States were too optimistic in believing that the Soviets might alter what had been for a long time, as a matter of fact for centuries, fundamental Russian policies in respect to the rest of the world.

From the country with limited hope to grow your own business and express your own personality, Russia has become the land of significant opportunity.

When the Soviet Union fell, optimistic scholars believed the world had shifted inexorably in the direction of free markets and liberal democracy. Instead, the West gradually embraced bigger government and weaker social bonds, creating a fragmented society in which the only thing we all belong to, as President Barack Obama puts it, is the state.

We have been getting out of the situation where we found ourselves in the early '90s, when the Soviet Union disappeared and the Russian Federation became what it is - you know, with no borders, with no budget, no money, and with huge problems starting with lack of food and so on and so forth.