Relationships Are Based on Perception and Reality

[From article]
It was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who observed that relations between two actors really involve six "persons": each actor's self-image, each actor's image of the other and, finally, what each actor actually is.

[. . .]

Igor Panarin, a professor at Moscow's Diplomatic Academy, has gone so far as to predict the disintegration of the United States in the next decade.

[. . .]

Obama himself is largely viewed in Russia as the American Mikhail Gorbachev, but Russians are less impressed than other Europeans have been with Obama's brilliance and rock-star popularity. They remember the Gorbi-mania that conquered the globe at the moment the Soviet Union was about to crumble.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/30/AR2009113003156.html

Strong enough for a 'reset' with Russia?
Russia's Dmitry Medvedev with President Obama in Singapore last month.
By Ivan Krastev
Washington Post
Tuesday, December 1, 2009