No, it is a spin on manifest destiny. USA is built on the ideal of white supremacy, and never really came to face it, those guys europe were the only bad guys while Americans worked carefully not to give n*ggers any credit for quelling them and proceeded to treat them as subhuman after the far too.



Putin is an intelligence operative, it does not seems unlikely that a country headed by one for decades would do well clandestine operations and falter in war.
American oligarchs are also greedy, base and overall pretty stupid so I think you overestimate the challenge of manipulating them.