I am equally pessimistic about American leadership. It was the more astute leadership in Russia and elsewhere (from an amoral standpoint) that I was referring to. That was my main point. America is in a rapidly weakening position, while the other predator states are making extradordinary progress. In all of this I get a whiff of what WB Yeats famously stated:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.