Is This the Root of the Current US - Russia Conflict?

From the "Associated Press"

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UNITED_STATES_RUSSIA_ANALYSIS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-07-03-03-07-53

Analysis: Root of tattered US-Russia ties date back decades

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The stumbles, blunders, and policy chaos that have sent increasingly frosty U.S.-Russia relations into what many now call a new Cold War might have been inevitable.

The fundamental hopes and fears lurk, sometimes subconsciously, in the collective minds of the Russian and American nations despite the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly a quarter century ago. That puts their world views at odds and on a collision course, with the crisis over Ukraine the latest and biggest confrontation.

That dismal relationship more often than not can be linked to the eastward expansion of the NATO alliance and Moscow's refusal to believe America's promises that it does not threaten Russia. There's also Russian President Vladimir Putin's seething anger over his country's loss of superpower status.

Back in friendlier days, after agreement on the NATO-Russia Found Act in 1997, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said she saw the trouble brewing.

Albright, writing in Foreign Policy about the late former Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, recalled her friend as a flexible realist, but she also cited differences already evident soon after the NATO-Russia deal was signed.

"From the first time we sat at the same table at a NATO meeting, it became clear that no matter what was signed, we would see that key agreement differently," Albright wrote.

EDITORIAL COMMENT:- For some reason the rest of the world keeps on thinking that they actually have interests which take priority over the interests of the United States of America and this is a perpetual surprise to the government(s) of the United States of America. I mean, just because the government(s) of the United States of America have a rather poor (I'm too polite to say "abysmal") record of following through on promises made and/or truthful representations presented is absolutely no reason why any other country shouldn't give 100% faith and credit to everything that the US government)s) say.

The American people deserve better government(s) then they elect. (But no one is going to magically transform the pack of jackasses that get elected (there being only two letters in the alphabet "D" and "R") into conscientious and dedicated people who are more interested in the benefit of the country as a whole than they are in benefiting their own pocketbooks