@bolwerk The best example of this is the Cuban Missle Crisis. I don’t know if you are intimately familiar with the dynamics of that standoff but it was beyond intense with the stoic resolve of Kennedy and his advisers being the reason Khrushchev backed down. He later admitted he was scared shitless at what he feared Kennedy would do. His letter to Kennedy shows just how intense this event was….
“Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter that knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you, because you yourself understand perfectly of what terrible forces our countries dispose.”
“Consequently, if there is no intention to tighten that knot and thereby to doom the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war, then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie that knot. We are ready for this.
Letter From Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy, October 26, 1962[69]”
That said, in defense of “black Rockefeller Republican”...we do not and more than likely will not know what was and is being said in private between the Russian’s and our administration. This hubris by Putin playing out in the media is exactly what Russia is hoping for and IMO is the only real card they can play right now as Obama’s and Kerry’s harsh words do back up real sanctions that will have real effects we will see play out in time.