And even those Russians who cling to a cold-war, sphere-of-influence approach to their neighbours would lose little from encouraging a less repressive regime there.
The deal reflected growing alarm in a range of countries that had been part of the Soviet sphere about a newly rich and powerful Russia's intentions in its former cold war sphere of power.
But the deal reflected growing alarm in countries like Poland, once a conquered Soviet client state, about a newly rich and powerful Russia's intentions in its former cold war sphere of power.
For Poland, meanwhile, the goal has been to anchor an American military presence in the country at a time of growing concern in former Communist countries about a newly rich and powerful Russia's intentions in its former cold war sphere of power.
But so did America in its Latin American "sphere of influence" during the cold war.
After postwar Greece ended up in the western sphere of influence, and the civil war ended in communist defeat in 1949, his father lost his job as a tax official in Athens and was jailed.
Other signs of overreaching, he thinks, were the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe (to deny Germany and Russia a sphere of influence there) and the war against Serbia (to reassert America's dominance in Europe and to keep the Russians out of the Balkans).
And with the rampant fiscal invasion of Chinese entities threatening France's traditionally dominant sphere of influence in Africa, the war in Mali helps reinvent French power in the region.
In both these spheres, and in newspapers too, British management of war reporting was corporate - unified and controlled in a sense which left less space for individual flair.
