Thanks, Mr. Van Wolferen, for an excellent and honest article. I agree with all of it. As soon as I heard about the US supporting a regime change in Ukraine that included neo-nazis as state ministers of internal security and defence, while mouthing rhetoric about bringing democracy to Ukraine, I thought that the US elites have become totally cynical, corrupt, delusional and dysfunctional. This view was solidified by my remembering neocon lies about the Syrian government using chemical weapons against their population, the Iraq WMD lies, etc. I now believe that the US economy/government is completely dysfunctional, and the dysfunction arises from its increasingly desperate attempts to maintain dollar, and especially petrodollar hegemony. Since Nixon rejected the gold standard in 1971, and Kissinger made deals with Saudi Arabia for oil surpluses to be denominated in dollars, the US has militarily enforced dollar hegemony. It has not posted a trade surplus since the late 1960s, and is totally indebted; a fact it can ignore as long as petrodollar hegemony is maintained. I agree that Europe is probably being blackmailed due to the structural weaknesses of its banking sector, controlled overall by Wall Street: the BNP Paribas fine was apparently going to be 'forgiven' if France did not complete its sale of warships to Russia. Increasingly reckless militarism to defend dollar hegemony, the basis of American empire, or super-imperialism (Michael Hudson) will be our immediate future. The structural weaknesses of the American economy demand this. Look at the fate of those leaders who tried to follow an independent economic path and change their accounting of oil wealth in currencies other than dollars: Saddam Hussein, Assad, Ghadafi, and now Putin. China is also now in their crosshairs, especially since their yuan/rouble pipeline deal with Russia. Putin was correct in pointing out that American militarism will only be checked if the dollar loses its status as a reserve currency, and America will be forced to act as an ordinary, and not as the 'exceptional', 'indispensable' nation, to quote Obama's recent phrases. It will be forced to seek out peaceful trade and fix their internal problems in e.g. infrastructure, education, and banking reform. In the meantime, the US Fed's printing presses can keep churning out dollars and racking up debt, based on no real standard of universal value, to pay for their immense military spending. European countries, plus the anglosphere, are the enablers of this destructive, and dysfunctional addiction to US dollar supremacy. I think now that the dominant perspective in Washington is to take out Russia and China before the dollar loses its reserve status. And that can mean, possibly, even nuclear war, in which Europe will pay perhaps the heaviest price. Wake up, Europe, I repeat, our immediate future as enablers of this destructive addiction is to be complicit in increasingly dysfunctional and delusional American neoconservative aggression. The America of 2014 is not the America of 1945. You may not agree with what I'm saying, but my motivation is sincere: I am frankly terrified that the US and its media are pushing a direct military, even nuclear, confrontation with Russia so that its elites do not lose their overweaning power.