Is Donald Trump a traitor?!

[Anomalocaris]

1.  Ok
2.  Ok
3.  A) fair enough, B) not a chance.  It has outsized military and intelligence capability for its economic strength because it is a wasting but still present legacy bequeathed by its Soviet past, but its minuscule economy and moribund demographics will prevent it from sustaining a major international role beyond its immediate borders over the long run.  C) yes, but part of the reason why Russia restored some of the abilities lost with the fall of Soviet Union was a visceral sense that the US And NATO has been hell bent on taking over nearby nations that has tradtionally been in its sphere of influence of without which it can not maintain long term territorial security in order to make it permanently impossible for Russia to pursue an independent role in the world.

Yes, what putin has done is really a response to the Clinton and Bush policy from 1992-2008 to strip Russia of her traditional sphere of influence and to meddle in the domestic politics in Russia and nations traditionally in Russia sphere of influence boomeranging back on us.   However, success in international arena does follow from letting my enemy do onto me what I’ve already done to him.   So the fact that we enthusiastically meddled in the domestic politics of Russia and her traditionally satellites is no reason to not retaliate viciously against Russia doing the same to us.

No reason besides Russia still holding onto its nukes, and recently announcing that he has nukes that are for all intents and purposes invincible. Even if that's just a bluff, they still have more nukes than America does, and more than enough to wipe out life as we know it. That would appear to be a good reason to not retaliate viciously against Russia.

Yes, their apparent strength is likely to be unsustainable, but has that ever stopped them before? Scratch that, has it ever stopped America before?

Nukes are defensive.   You can’t use nukes to take territory or subvert foreign governments.  Conventional superiority and effective intelligence/covert operation is what it takes to assert global influence.  Nuke simply means Russia can’t be steam rolled militarily even when NATO has overwhelming conventional superiority.  Otherwise nukes don’t allow Russian to do much Russian normally would not be able to to for the lack of its won conventional superiority.

Russia is but a third rate power that can’t be concquereored but which really can’t conquer by force anything beyond what remains of its former sphere of influence, and have no propspect of ever being able to conquer those by force either.

But it does have effective leadership and effective intelligence/cover operation branch that seeks to compensate. That will undoubtedly score a few successes, not the least of which is to take down the US by installing trump. But Russia remains a weak power that would lack the capability to follow up and take full advantage of the openings created.