When did we stop "building bridges"?

I'm not talking about infrastructure here, either.

Russia signs a baker's dozen treaty agreements with Turkey, one of which will put a brand-new nuclear power plant in Turkey (worth $11 billion to the Russians all by itself) while others extend Russian pipelines from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea (pouring another $30 billion into the Russian's pockets, with annual percentage payments of as much as 10% of initial costs!). Russia and not Iraq will now become the biggest energy partner that Turkey has.

India did the same just last year, reaching agreements that equalled more than $100 billion in trade and energy contracts for Russia (along with massive sales in military technology). Russia has enjoyed very lucrative agreements with almost all of the former Warsaw Pact nations in regards to trade and energy, many of which are now (or soon hope to be) NATO members.

The wife thinks I am obsessed with the Russians... that I see them as some kind of "bogeyman" waiting in the shadows to pounce on us while we sleep. Perhaps I am focused a bit too strongly on our former adversary, but I won't harp on the dangers that the Russians present to our economic security. Instead, I'll focus on the failings of our own economic policies.

As Jambo said, perhaps a vibrant and growing Russian economic factor is a good one for us, as it takes much of the pressure off of our foreign policy agenda. I won't discuss the growth in technology, capability and resources of the Russian military at all. We are still better at war than they are.

I'm wondering how helpful it would have been to our flagging economy, however, had WE agreed to help the Turks build a nuclear power facility for a cool $11 billion, or we had brokered a deal to sell the Indians surplus naval platforms for $3 billion each, or we had spent even half the time the Russians did thinking of imaginative ways that we could do business with Eastern Europe or other former Soviet states that would pour revenue into our economy the way it is pouring revenue into the Russian economy.

Think on this: The one clear advantage we always had over the Russians was the technological edge. All throughout the Cold War, we had the better, faster and more capable technology, and I don't mean simply the military stuff, either. Cheap, functional commercial technology was the most sought after stuff on the Soviet black market... VCRs, TVs, radios, computers, software, games, shoes, clothing, even ballpoint pens, for Pete's sake! Now, they have a $100 billion dollar agreement with the second largest producer of commercial computer technologies (and the fastest growing producer, I need to add) and a market for their commodity resources that constitutes one-fifth of the entire world's population.

In 1998, Russia suffered a "depression" that rivaled (some say surpassed) the crisis of 1929-1930 in the US. This crisis was what cost Yeltsin and his ex-Communist coalition government their power, and ushered in Putin. Since that time, the average monthly income for a Russian worker has gone from $80/month (2000) to $640/month (2009), an increase of 800% in less than ten years. In that same 9 years, their GDP averaged a rate of growth of more than 8% each year... driven by non-traded goods and services rather than oil or gas prosecution, too (source HERE). No Russian companies since 2000 have needed government bail-out money, the Russian government has not needed to raise taxes, and the forecast for future economic development in Russia is as rosy as anyone could hope.

I worry that very soon, I won't need to hearken back to the days of Reagan to find examples of how to turn around a bad economy... I'll just point to Russia and say "There is the example we need to follow!" Doesn't anyone else find that thought depressing?