Commentary
Russia is not as strong as the United States, except for nuclear weapons.
Russia is not the main threat to the United States—that threat is China.
Back in 1985, during his visit to Paris, Mikhail Gorbachev told French President Francois Mitterrand that the Soviet Union was not strong. In fact, said Gorbachev to his French counterpart, Russia was a banana republic with nuclear weapons. 
No doubt this came as something of a surprise to Mitterand. The French had just kicked out more than 100 Soviet spies, mostly for technology espionage. On top of that, France had enlisted the help of a secret agent in Moscow, Vladimir Vetrov (known in security circles as Farewell), who turned over reams of information on the Soviet shopping list for Western, especially American, technology.  If Russia needed America’s technology, the clear conclusion was that Russia’s military buildup was vulnerable because the Soviet Union had a weak, low-tech industrial base.
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