The Nation has an interesting article by Stephen F. Cohen:
The Missing Debate
The policy implication of that bipartisan triumphalism, which persists today, has been clear, certainly to Moscow. It meant that the United States had the right to oversee Russia's post-Communist political and economic development, as it tried to do directly in the 1990s, while demanding that Moscow yield to US international interests. It meant Washington could break strategic promises to Moscow, as when the Clinton Administration began NATO's eastward expansion, and disregard extraordinary Kremlin overtures, as when the Bush Administration unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty and granted NATO membership to countries even closer to Russia--despite Putin's crucial assistance to the US war effort in Afghanistan after September 11. It even meant America was entitled to Russia's traditional sphere of security and energy supplies, from the Baltics, Ukraine and Georgia to Central Asia and the Caspian.
Such US behavior was bound to produce a Russian backlash. It came under Putin, but it would have been the reaction of any strong Kremlin leader, regardless of soaring world oil prices. And it can no longer be otherwise. Those US policies--widely viewed in Moscow as an "encirclement" designed to keep Russia weak and to control its resources--have helped revive an assertive Russian nationalism, destroy the once strong pro-American lobby and inspire widespread charges that concessions to Washington are "appeasement," even "capitulationism." The Kremlin may have overreacted, but the cause and effect threatening a new cold war are clear.
Because the first steps in this direction were taken in Washington, so must be initiatives to reverse it. Three are essential and urgent: a US diplomacy that treats Russia as a sovereign great power with commensurate national interests; an end to NATO expansion before it reaches Ukraine, which would risk something worse than cold war; and a full resumption of negotiations to sharply reduce and fully secure all nuclear stockpiles and to prevent the impending arms race, which requires ending or agreeing on US plans for a missile defense system in Europe. My recent discussions with members of Moscow's policy elite suggest that there may still be time for such initiatives to elicit Kremlin responses that would enhance rather than further endanger our national security.
American presidential campaigns are supposed to discuss such vital issues, but senators McCain, Clinton and Obama have not done so. Instead, in varying degrees, each has promised to be "tougher" on the Kremlin than George W. Bush has allegedly been and to continue the encirclement of Russia and the hectoring "democracy promotion" there, both of which have only undermined US security and Russian democracy since the 1990s.
I think he's right - the future of Russia and US depends on how our future President handles the foreign policy regarding Russia. I think we can't afford another Cold War, and I truly beleive that since inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia in the US-vs-Russia debate it may be even worse than Cold War...