Lifeofthemind

I should have clarified that I was discarding the naval/land power analogy for the sake of the argument to approach the question from a different angle. Yes the US is the Naval power and Russia the land, but in this case I think the US is in the Spartan shoes and Russia in the Athenian. It does go against the prevailing notion of Athens/US as democratic and Russia/Sparta as totalitarian I know. But consider Sparta as a conservative society with a longstanding legitimate political tradition, and Athens as the revolutionary one (which it was). Russia doesn’t have a political tradition anymore, we do. We’re the conservative ones here, and we’re forming a league of free states against a hegemonic power, just as Sparta did.