The Kremlin and much of Russia through media indoctrination views this as a birth right and baseline requirement. The ability to inflict damage against the United States and NATO through proxy nations is the most powerful weapon that the Kremlin possesses and getting that back along with their slave state proxies is practically enshrined as a holy sacrament of religion. When the USSR had control over the Eastern Bloc, they bled it dry and ground those populations under their heels from Stalin to Gorbachev for every kind of resource you can name to feed Moscow’s endless hunger for power, prestige and wealth.
Russia’s leadership has been presenting itself through indoctrination to their population that Russia as the rightful inheritor of Rome’s legacy and the Western world’s sole worthy authority since before the formation of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Their propaganda is as vile and dishonest as it can get. There is no bottom to which the Kremlin will not stoop to hold or increase their power.
The PRC has the exact same form of ultranationalist indoctrination only they use different source material to villify any and every other competing nation while telling the story that only China is worthy of being the world’s sole authority on any and every thing. Pay careful attention to how the once highly guarded, softly spoken and quiet diplomats of China now seem drunk on power swaggering into talks with the US and Australia like the biggest swinging dicks in the northern hemisphere.
Correlation may not imply causation but I can’t help but see how much has changed in their behavior since 2016 and how empowered they are now to wage open ideological warfare against democratic nations that aren’t just democracies in name only.
Our last administration was just one long bad joke on the American people and our ability to be taken seriously by enemies and allies both on the international stage. The weakness is so uncannily in China and Russia’s benefit that I can’t see clear architecture in its execution as anything other than intentional acts of sabbotage and treason of the foulest intent.
If you want political and historical context, I’ll be happy to provide it.