The widespread campaign to portray Russia as a menacing global threat is deeply wrongheaded. For all Vladimir Putin’s bluster, in 2018, he cut the Russian military budget. His policies, no doubt, express Russian resentments fed by provocative US actions after the end of the Cold War, which included extending the NATO to Russia’s borders, in violation of promises made by the administration of president George H W Bush; ignoring Russian warnings against trying to incorporate Georgia and Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; and helping to inflict on Russia the shock therapy economic policy of the 1990s, which created and enriched the Russian oligarchs, impoverished millions, and looted the country’s treasury.