Russia today is potentially a model for the US in 10-20 more years. Both states have lost a lot of the first/bestest/mostest superlatives that made them admired world leaders. Among the major ones remaining for both nations is their military strength.

I disagree. Fundamentally they’re arriving at these places from different historical trends and in different material situations. Russia as much as it might have tried to move beyond it has and will have forever its history as the Soviet Union for 70 years. It has the connections to and loyalty of the global south it helped. It does not have friendship among the Atlantacist western european nations who form the former major colonizing nations of the 18th through 20th centuries and who have as their defender, champion, chosen successor and rescuer (in WW2 from the Soviet forces who would have liberated all of Europe, instead these colonial powers were saved from communism but occupied by another capitalist power and bent the knee, becoming its vassals, retaining wealth but diminished influence and power). There are other things but that’s a very big one. The US just shot one of Germany’s knees off with the Nordstream sabotage and they took it and asked for more. Russia could not do that to China or any other country really and not have a major incident where they have to either make it right with reparations and an apology or relations would deteriorate and they’d be at the edge of war with them or certainly sour the region against them. The US not only did it, it’s now planting misinfo to point the fingers at Ukraine so when all the dust settles and they’re destroyed they’ll be saddled with the blame and the US can walk away with clean hands.

Fundamentally the US is the last in a line of consolidated inheritors of the white supremacist anglo-colonial-capitalist project of imperialism, domination, racism, colonialism (including neo-colonialism via the world bank and other funds) that goes back at least 300 years to the beginnings of capitalism and global empire. It has subjugated western Europe, Ukraine situation has proven they will bend the knee and take any whippings or punishments the US pleases to inflict on them. Russia on the other hand is stuck. It has no friendships among these colonial powers, it is not their inheritor or guarantor, it benefits from their overthrow in trade with Africa which would be denied it as long as Africa is subjugated to the French.

Comparing the US to Russia is like comparing Apples to Olives.

So the problem with the soft-landing idea and I hope for it myself but I must recognize this. The US is the last of a line. Britain peacefully handed over the reigns and allowed their empire to slip from them to the US because it would continue the white supremacist capitalist project. China will not do that. Russia will not do that. For the first time in over 300 years that project is in danger of completely imploding and being lost forever. This is unprecedented for them. They are panicking in a way none of them ever did when the European empires slipped to become controlled by neo-colonialist means with US capital taking most of the lion’s share because they were still part of the family of whiteness, of the trans-Atlantic bourgeoisie elite, though many didn’t realize they’d become junior partners they can accept even that without bitterness because their interests will be looked after before those of colored folk, before those of the proles.

Indeed the Vietnam war was perhaps in a way the US signaling to all the European empires it was taking up the slack, it would carry their burden in controlling these post-colonies for them one way or another and though the US eventually lost they punished Vietnam and hurt them, made a huge show of what they do to those who stand up to them and a huge show to their European vassals what they would do for them despite the fact they were now junior partners.

Thing is Russia never had world hegemony. The USSR was a super-power yes but they had challenges. They had shortages, they were besieged and embargoed and attacked their entire existence. They never got a decade or two on top as sole hegemon as the US did and they certainly never had a situation where they inherited colonial holdings and shifted them to the new neo-colonial model only for that to begin to slip through their fingers. Russian bourgeoisie certainly wish they could find themselves in that position but alas they do not. The Americans and Europeans shut the doors of their Atlantacist bourgeoisie club to them in their face every time they approached. They will not share the plunder, the methods, the intelligence, anything. They will rebuff them at every turn. They missed out on the 19th-20th century colonial grabs and the neo-colonialism that followed, there is no room for plunder in the modern world with the Atlantacist set sucking up all the oxygen in the room.

So when the US declines it will not look like Russia in the 90s or the 2000s or now. It will look different because of the connections, material interests, forces, and existing concentrations of capital, influence, multi-national spy operations (eyes alliances), blackmail and power it exercises over many other first world global north countries. If Russia falls China will be in trouble. If the US falls its vassals worry they will be destroyed, that western Europe, Israel, Japan, occupied Korea, etc will all now be weak so they will prop it up to some degree, maybe even to their dying breath at knife-point who knows. That is why the US is stronger too. It is not simply a bunch of cowboy yankees, it is the will, collected loot, influence, heritage of centuries of colonialism and plunder from a dozen nations that it guards and ensures continue on a certain scale. It is a collective stay rich and on-top club for whites generally (labor aristocracy) and for the Atlantacist bourgeoisie set.