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I really can't imagine what could've been a better geopolitical victory for America short of Putin reading John Locke and deciding to go all out on pushing democracy and individual rights then retiring.
For the record, the RAND think tank recently released a report talking about how the Ukraine conflict, which they originally proposed in 2019 as an effort to "extend" Russia, is now having the opposite effect (i.e. extending the US). Rather than a US geopolitical victory, the US military is actually now talking about how they're going to have to pull back out of the Ukraine in order to avoid becoming overextended and hence unable to deal with China in other theatres.
[citation needed]
Which US military would be even pulling out of Ukraine?
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Aligning with Russia to counter Chinese expansion by pressuring Ukraine to abide by the Minsk II accords would have been a better "geopolitical victory." The current strategy will lead to short-term gains and long term weakening of the GAE generally, although the strategy does ensure deeper American control over its Euro feifs. GAE runs on the dollar economy and it extracts large control and rent from that system; the insanity of the economic sanctions and seizures GAE instituted have ensured dedollarization will accelerate.
What do you form your opinion of Putin and his politics on?
I personally don't trust Russia to ever act as a loyal ally, so I don't think aligning with Russia was a real possibility, short of something like my example of Putin randomly undergoing a big personality shift to choose to align with the US at the expense of his own personal power.
I don't know a ton about Putin, but my basic model of him is that he enjoys having lots of power and likes being respected/feared, and doesn't particularly care about who he has to hurt or helping others. As opposed to someone like e.g George Washington, who stepped down and refused continued presidency even when people were begging him to continue to rule.
Why?
There are current US allies which have done more to undermine the USA than Russia, a non-ally. Putin's entire history from 2000 to now is him establishing Russian sovereignty and attempting to align his interests with that of Europe and NATO even as NATO and the US has expanded ever closer to their borders. Repeatedly. The USA has repeatedly been against any Euro-Russia friendliness because they want to maintain dominance over their Euro satropies. I think this is bad in the long-term for NATO (and the US).
Based on what? Do you think you've ever listened to Putin or consumed pro (or even neutral) putin sources?
Putin did step down and came back after the Clinton state department embarrassed the person Putin picked to take his place (Medvedev) over the NATO Libyan war.
Is this the same as Washington stepping down? No. Putin maintained significantly more control than Washington did after Washington's presidency, but never-the-less, he did step back from his absolute dominance established after the Chechen war.
I think Putin values his personal power too much to make for a good ally. Maybe he could be a crappy ally like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, but pretty much the definition of being that sort of ally is just not complaining when the US puts their military bases near you I think. Which he doesn't seem willing to do given the whole Ukraine thing.
How so?
Nope, that's why I said I don't know a ton about him.
It doesn't count for much when he came back and continued to be an almost-dictator. I don't know much about the NATO Libyan war, but I doubt whatever happened really forced Putin to take power back, I think Russia would've been fine if he just retired.
floating joining NATO, resource agreements with Germans, among others
you don't wonder if your entire belief about Putin (and Russia generally) is based on NATO stooges feeding you what they want you to think?
some dork being quoted in the NYT from RAND isn't some objective source
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Putin attacking China over an island on the Amur instead?
Too much risk of escalation, environmental fall-out etc.
Even China supporting Ukraine would have created a potential conflict of loyalties for Ukraine, just as Soviet-Chinese funding enabled the Vietnamese to take Chinese aid and then turn on them once the US left.
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