Yes, it was that New Yorker article that I was remembering. In particular, this bit:

> In 1996, during a summit meeting in Moscow, Clinton went for an early-morning run with Talbott in the Sparrow Hills, near Moscow State University. Clinton had known Talbott since they were students at Oxford, and confided his anxiety. He did not regret the expansion of NATO or the decision, at last, to battle Serbian forces in Bosnia. But he knew that he was making Yeltsin’s political life excruciatingly difficult.

> “We keep telling ol’ Boris, ‘O.K., now, here’s what you’ve got to do next—here’s some more shit for your face,’ ” Clinton told Talbott as they ran. “And that makes it real hard for him, given what he’s up against and who he’s dealing with.”

> Earlier that year, Yeltsin had summoned Talbott. “I don’t like it when the U.S. flaunts its superiority,” he told him. “Russia’s difficulties are only temporary, and not only because we have nuclear weapons but also because of our economy, our culture, our spiritual strength. All that amounts to a legitimate, undeniable basis for equal treatment. Russia will rise again! I repeat: Russia will rise again.”

I thought this bit was interesting:

>In 2008,[...] Russian hackers accomplished a feat that Pentagon officials considered almost impossible: breaching a classified network that wasn’t even connected to the public Internet. Apparently, Russian spies had supplied cheap thumb drives, stocked with viruses, to retail kiosks near nato headquarters in Kabul, betting, correctly, that a U.S. serviceman or woman would buy one and insert it into a secure computer.

That's interesting. Stuxnet used a very similar strategy. It was identified in 2010, but could have been in use earlier. So I wonder if the Americans/Israelis got the idea from the Russians, or vice versa. Or maybe they both got the idea from malware hackers. Or employed them ;) Maybe even the same malware hackers. That'd be a trip!

And yet so far Yeltsin is still wrong: Russia's difficulties appear to be permanent. Population and life expectancy have declined. GDP growth has been low and erratic; currently their economy is smaller than Italy. They rank 131st on the worldwide corruption index. All of these problems are self inflicted.

Maybe so. But time will tell.

In any case, it's not the accuracy of the prediction that matters here. It's the motivation.

And it's also not very charitable. It's an aspect of a mindset that perpetuates the cycle of violence. Long term, it works better for victors to be forgiving and magnanimous. But sadly enough, it's probably too late for that. Maybe about a century too late.

Where is a good place to learn about these things in the future. I'm a bit floored by all this but want to keep tabs on it all too.