How powerful is Russia? by Leon Aron

lthough less than 1 percent of U.S. world trade is with Russia (a fraction of the Sino-American trade) and, under Putin, Russia looks more and more like a petro-state, economics is not everything. Russia is the world’s other nuclear superpower, it is unique geostrategically, spanning Europe and Asia (and, so far, giving us an invaluable “northern route” to Afghanistan). So yes, the U.S. still has to “worry about Russia.”


http://www.aei.org/article/foreign-and-defense-policy/regional/europe/plenty-to-worry-about/