The desire to humiliate America motivates our enemies in the Middle East and Africa; it inspires China, which believes it is the Middle Kingdom between heaven and earth, above all others; and it is often as intense, if less hostile amongst our allies in Europe, where once-great powers have been eclipsed by American economic, strategic, and cultural authority. It is the fate of the giant that everyone wants to pull him down.

There is, however, no person on the planet who wishes to humiliate America more than Vladimir Putin does. Russia’s Cold War defeat at the hands of the U.S. galls the Russian tyrant as painfully today as it did when it happened, 37 years ago. The world has moved on since then, but the Kremlin kleptocrat cannot get past it.