One word captures the character of Russia: terrible. Like a thread, it runs through the course of Russian history. Russia, as we know it today, was consolidated in the 16th century, by Ivan IV, the Grand Prince of Moscow. The Grand Prince Ivan became known to history as Ivan the Terrible (Grozni). He was “terrible,” not in the sense of being horrible or evil, but terrible in his awesome powers, terrible like the Old Testament God, “For the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible.” (Deuteronomy 10:17). The last century of Russian history has been terrible in a very different sense; terrible in the sense of proletariat coups, pogroms, and gulags.

Despite the risk of fatalism, truly certain aspects of a nation’s character remain unchanged over time. Dynasties and revolutions have come and gone, but the Ile de France has been a center for arts and fashion from the building of Chartres through the time of Picasso, to today; Poland has never been able to repel invaders; China loves behemoth bureaucracies, and so on. Similarly, throughout its history, Russia has struggled with the question of its European identity.

The Russians are separated from Europe, not only by geography and filioque clause, but also by social progress. The Russian people are a mix of Vikings and Mongols, and although this gives them the blonde hair, blue eyes, and high cheekbones that many of us find so attractive, such a heritage does create the best precedent for liberal democracy.

On the playground of international relations, Russia is a hulking, but slightly deranged foreign exchange student. While the other children play tag, he sits on the perimeter and rips the legs off ants. The other children are wary of befriending him because of his penchant for cruelty, but unable to ignore him because of his size and ferocity.

To make matters worse, Russia is perennially harboring a modernization inferiority complex. An anecdote is illustrative: Peter the Great hoped to modernize Russia. So, he took his court to the Continent, and they toured the great universities, asking the greatest minds of the day to inform them about the latest scientific advances. In Holland, Peter and a company of nobles watched a surgeon operate on a cadaver. The smell and gore were enough to make the dukes vomit. Peter, embarrassed by his men’s weak stomachs, and desirous that the Europeans not think the Russians backward, ordered a duke to walk up to the corpse and take a bite of it.

During the Cold War, the perennial aggression of Russian leadership was mated to military prominence, but after the disintegration of the Soviet Union (thanks Gorbachev), the Russia problem receded into the background. To the fore came a number of non-issues—Somalia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, etc. Although today, due to the strong leadership of Putin, Russia is a growing concern among the U.S.’s defense establishment, the majority of our attention is focused elsewhere. The administration has focused on “the Axis of Evil.” And the popular imagination has been captured by China, inspired in part by its amazing commercial success, as detailed in Friedman’s The World is Flat. Though Iran, China and, to a lesser extent, North Korea, are potential threats to national security, Russia, in IR jargon, is trying to balance the hegemon. In particular, Russia is undermining U.S. interests in the Middle East.

The most flagrant and shocking example of this is Russia’s giving of intelligence about U.S. troop movements to the Iraqi Republican Guard. This information was gathered by a spy in the U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, and was passed on to the office of Russia’s ambassador to Iraq. A scholar from the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank in Washington D.C., was quoted in the Washington Post as saying, “This is one step short of firing upon us themselves with Russian equipment….It’s actively aiding and abetting the enemy tactically. It’s hard to get more unfriendly than that.”

It has been suggested by Thomas Ambrosio in Europe-Asia Studies that the U.S. invasion of Iraq catalyzed Russia’s most recent push to gain prominence. The current leaders of Russia’s defense establishment began their careers during the Cold War, at a time when the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were evenly matched. When the U.S. pushed, the U.S.S.R. would push back and the status quo would be preserved. When the U.S. prepared itself for the Iraqi invasion, the Russians, who have longstanding military and economic ties with Iraq, were spooked by this intrusion near their borders; so, naturally, they pushed back--but to no avail. The realization that the United States could act unilaterally was a sobering shock, and from then on, the Russians have been trying to regain their footing.

To this end, the Russians have been a foil for U.S. policies in the Middle-East; particularly when it comes to our stance on Iran and Hamas. Russia has not supported the U.S., Britain, and France’s efforts to pressure Iran into stopping its nuclear enrichment efforts. But Russia is not only passively refusing to cooperate, but is actively aiding the Iranian nuclear projects. Russia has agreed to supply the Iranians with nuclear fuel and has won an $800 million contract to complete a nuclear power plant in southwestern Iran.

Russia has also been the first great power to officially recognize the terrorist organization Hamas, which recently came to power in Palestine. By recognizing Hamas and supporting the Iranian nuclear energy projects, Russia is projecting to the Muslim world an image of itself as the lone country with both the will and political clout to stand up to the United States. Russia is therefore able to capitalize off the United States’ general unpopularity in the region. In the scheme of realpolitik, Russia’s power gain is a loss for the United States. But, in a region vitally important to U.S. security interests, any loss in power is especially troublesome. With another power in the region, Arab countries may be emboldened to force U.S. troops from their country. Moreover, although Russia is an oil rich country, the U.S. is not. Petroleum is crucially important to our economy and (therefore) our military, and Russia gaining control over oil reserves beyond their borders would represent a serious threat.

In a similar vein, last week announcements of the planned IPO of Rosneft, the Russian state-owned Oil and Gas company, made headlines. Billionaire investor George Soros explained in the Financial Times the threat this poses. Rosneft, state-owned and managed by Putin’s cronies, is a tool of the Russian government, and as such, will have the interests of Russia, rather than the interests of its stockholders, in mind. Rosneft could use its monopolistic control over regional fossil fuel reserves to pressure other countries—Ukraine has already felt Rosneft’s sting. One cannot help but admire how well Russia has mastered the power-politics of the 21st century by capitalizing on its strengths: oil reserves and military competence.

Another worry is the ever-deepening Sino-Russian cooperation. It brings to mind the image of two pitbulls preparing to fight a bear. Last week, the Russians and Chinese warned the U.S. not to antagonize Iran and concluded a deal to ship billions of tons of Siberian crude to China. Although the Russians obviously had financial incentive to do both—Iran is a major trading partner and Chinese money is as good as any—the strategic implications, for the West and especially the United Sates, are troublesome. In the former, Russia and China are undermining U.S. foreign policy; in the latter, we see the U.S.’s two strongest rivals growing even stronger. Russia received a much needed influx of cash, and the Chinese got fuel that they badly need to expand their economy. Economic strength is directly correlated to military might. The richer Russia and China become, the more likely it is that they will stand-up to American policies across the world. This would not be a problem if both countries were stringently democratic and committed towards human rights and regional peace. But any such commitment on their part is dubious; indeed, by embracing both Iran and Hamas, they’ve shown a willingness to help pariah states against Western interests.

It is important to note that in spite of this, U.S.-Russian tension is not personal; there are no hard feelings on either side. U.S.-Russian relations are not haunted by the sort of trans-historical animosity that poisons Chinese-Japanese or Arab-Israeli relations. The U.S. never colonized Russia; Russia never massacred Americans. The U.S. and Russia are in conflict because of the intrinsic structure of realpolitik. Two large countries, two countries with advanced weapons systems and their own particular spheres of influence will ultimately be rivals, and rivalry inevitably leads to conflict—though, thankfully, the conflict is not always a hot one. U.S.-Russian relations are strained simply because the United States has the position of hegemony that Russia covets.