Dan Carlin (has great podcasts on historical and modern issues) had a few interesting things to say on this topic. How Putin is basically the Russian version of Reagan, and how the West got so used to treating Russia like a third rate power that it lost the ability to deal with a nation in resurgence like Russia with any sort of deftness at all. We got so used to dealing with smaller powers like Iraq and even Iran for that matter, where we in the West can push them around with no real ramifications but now we are dealing with an almost equally powerful Russia and our leaders have no idea how to deal with them other than the same way we dealt with minor powers.