A nation must think before it acts.
Russia, we are told, is different. Such is the vast nation’s fundamental divergence from Western norms that the nature of that difference is almost ineffable. That is why Russia has oligarchs, while Europe and America merely have an array of whimsical, untouchable billionaires; why Russia’s military adventurism and undemocratic client-states are condemned, while the interventions and allies of its NATO opponents should never lack the benefit of the doubt; and why its historically recent adherence to brutal capitalism is absolutely nothing like our own.