Russia is more stable and unified than NATO is

In Ted Bell's thriller series of novels featuring updated "James Bond", Lord Alex Hawke, Russia's President Vladimir Putin is a major, regularly occurring character. Putin's portrayed as a talented and courageous, but emotionally disturbed man. Putin has drinking bouts with Hawke, in which he tearfully begs for advice from the British Lord half his age, about how to avoid being overthrown and butchered in Russia by his "oligarchs". Hawke advises Putin always to submit to the superior wisdom of the Western leaders, because, otherwise Russia will be "destroyed economically". Now, I don't know to what extent the leaders of NATO are being influenced by Mr. Bell's books, but, sometimes it looks like they're taking their playbook from him. Maybe NATO intelligence specialists are reading Mr. Bell's novels, because, they sure don't seem to be basing their views on historical reality, at all. Historically, centralized powers like Russia and China have tended to be more stable, not less stable than more decentralized nations. Sure we "won the Cold War". The Soviet Union broke up, after three quarters of a century. But, you know, that may have just been an historical blip. Russia seems to be reconstituting itself. Books claiming that "dictators will never threaten the world again", written in the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union, seem to have been very premature in their conclusions. NATO is probably overextended. It's very unclear whether France, Germany and Italy would fight to the death to defend Lithuania or Finland. The economic sanctions against Russia are leaky, much of the world is perfectly happy to trade with Russia, and these sanctions may be hurting the West more than Russia. In any case, large nations like Russia are largely self-sufficient economically. The real issue is centralization versus decentralization of power. Which really works better? And, that varies quite a bit, from one generation to the next, historically speaking. Tom Clancy's been writing thrillers for decades wistfully predicting the collapse of China, because of its "impractical" economic policies. Yet, China continues to grow explosively, largely because of, not despite, its centralized planning and development. And, we're seeing in the continuing successes of Russia in Ukraine, that centralized planning simply works better than vague economic theorizing and laissez-faire Capitalism in warfare. As for "James Bonds", we can see what happens to them when they're captured by Russia: 007 -- licensed to be liquidated!