It's not just backwards, it is an existential threat to the United States and the rest of the developed world. We are at a critical time when Russia is only getting bolder and bolder, despite economic hardships and sanctions, and we need to once again provide balance against their power. Unfortunately, the entire military industrial complex was rapidly retooled in the 90s and the defense/intelligence apparatus lost all expertise on dealing with Russia. This expertise is important because Russia has historically placed a lot of importance on human intelligence, espionage, and geopolitical manipulation with long term operations. Any sort of conflict (military or otherwise) with Russia will leave much of the US establishment with their pants down because they are used to manipulating small countries without strong leaders and bombing civilians, not fighting a proxy war against a major power with a comparable (human) intelligence apparatus.
So not only is the US bureaucracy entirely unprepared for such a confrontation, but the US electorate just chose a failed real estate mogul turned reality TV show star to go head to head against a former Cold War operative that trained and worked for the KGB/Stasi. And go head to head they will. You can bet Putin will exploit the Trump presidency for as much as he can and there's little we can do to stop it other than voting Trump out of office next time.
I don't quite share your bleak assessment of the US IC's ability as far as Russia goes, but otherwise spot on. And it doesn't matter anyway if you don't trust any of your advisors or intelligence reporting.
Im curious, why not? I don't doubt the abilities of the US/five eyes intelligence community, especially in SIGINT, but they forgot how to face a remotely comparable adversary in a proxy war. They need operatives who are used to thinking ten steps ahead of a KGB trained spy, not radical Islamic guerillas.
I think the best analogy is the infamous wargame the US armed forces carried out in the 2000s. The blue team had an aircraft carrier and other cutting edge weaponry while red team had only basic equipment available to insurgents. The high tech weaponry worked just fine in Afghanistan but when faced against a comparable adversary (red team was led by an equally experienced general), the entire blue team was ripped to shreds by a few dozen men and some speed boats. Obviously the western intelligence apparatus is superior to Russia's but it has spent the last 20+ years focused on a completely different type of adversary. It would be like using an aircraft carrier to fight in the middle of the Himalayas.
That's true, in a shooting war with a peer we haven't had much practice since Kosovo. However, neither has Russia, and while they have been putting on a show of force in Syria, that is basically them at almost max deployment and force projection capabilities. They don't have the money or manpower to fight a prolonged shooting war. John Schindler put it best, Russia is "Mexico with ICBMs". The ICBM part is what should scare us all, especially if they have a stooge in the White House.
