Not even the farright were voting against ethnic Germans . <| sep |> I ' m pretty sure he has more weight on him now than in HS . Also on tape he never displayed great speed as he got caught quite a bit . <| sep |> Seems they would get more done by staying home . <| sep |> He seems to be reaching pretty far in the list of reasons here , Putin doesn ' t necessarily need anti american or ' anti globalist ' narrative to rule it ' s just one piece of a wider apparatus , the economy might pick up if sanctions are lifted and the oil price goes up soon there have been some moves that suggest that this will happen iirc . I ' m not sure if ' standing up to the US ' was the principle or even a major motivation for Russian intervention in Syria also , the US had long ago backed off from doing anything major there and was letting the sunni alliance basically take the lead on everything but fighting isis . Obviously I ' m an internet pleb and don ' t know as much as a FP writer , but it seems like a less ' slow creep ' natoeu expansionist policy toward russia would probably solve most of the tensions here and could even slow or reverse the Russian ' pivot to asia '. Wouldn ' t this basically end the ' colour revolutions ' also ? I thought the only Russian objection to them was that they put in pro western ' liberals ' in the first place . If the Trump administration does this there doesn ' t seem to be a lot of potential for conflict here . Chances of conflict in Central Asia seem low also , the US seems to have given up on competing with Russia and China and instead was trying to isolate a Chinese block in east asia with the TPP and related military strategy . But I am not all that sure that the Trump administration will do this given his security picks and rumored foreign policy short list so far , it ' s stuffed with second rate neo conservatives , super pro israel people , iran haters and all of the above . The main area with potential for conflict assuming that they will ' reset ' relations based on an agreement not to expand nato any further east and lifting of sanctions , a big if between the two countries seems to be Iran . Trump has made noises about getting rid of the nuclear agreement and has pro israel cabinet picks , Israel would like to reassert it ' s reputation in the region and attack Iran in some way . On the other side Russia is a big ally of Iran who has just signed a big military deal and is allied with them not sure how closely in Syria . Oddly this article doesn ' t seem to mention that at all .