Russia's economy has revived remarkably after the 1998 crisis, but it is still addicted to Western investments, aid and credits. Encircled by NATO to its West and US troops stationed in its central Asian hinterland, Russia's capitulation is complete. In the aftermath of conflicts to be engineered by the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Syria and, potentially, Cuba - Russia may feel threatened geopolitically as well as economically. Both Iran and Iraq, for instance, are large trading partners and leading export destinations of the Russian Federation. If anything can undo the hitherto impressive personality cult of Russia's new "strong man", Vladimir Putin, it is this injured pride among the more penumbral ranks of the country's security services. Russia's history is littered with the bloodied remains of upheavals wrought by violent ideological minorities and by assorted conspirators. Hence Putin's tentative - and reluctant - attempts to team up with China and India to establish a multi-polar world and his closer military cooperation with Kyrgyzstan and Armenia - both intended to counter nationalistic opposition at home. Luckily, the sense of decline is by no means prevalent. Russians polled by the American Pew Research Center admitted that they feel much better in a world dominated by the United States as a single superpower. The KGB and its successors - Putin's former long-term employers - actually engineered Russia's opening to the West and the president's meteoric ascendancy. And no one in the army seriously disputes the need for reform, professionalization and merciless trimming of the bloated corps. Reforms - of the military, Russia's decrepit utilities, dilapidated infrastructure and housing, inflated and venal bureaucracy, corrupt judiciary and civil service, choking monopolies and pernicious banking sector - depend on the price of oil. Russia benefited mightily from the surge in the value of the "black gold". But the windfall has helped mask pressing problems and allowed timid legislators and officials to postpone much needed - and fiercely resisted - changes. Russia's "economic miracle" - oft-touted by the "experts" that brought you "shock therapy" and by egregiously self-interested, Moscow-based, investment bankers - is mostly prestidigitation. As the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) correctly noted in November, Russia's 20 percent growth in the last three years merely reflects enhanced usage of capacity idled by the ruination of 1998. Neutering the positive externality of rising oil prices, one is left with no increase in productivity since 1999. Industrial production - outside the oil sector - actually slumped. As metropolitan incomes rise, Russians revert to imports rather than consume shoddy and shabby local products.