The role of stupidity and incompetence and collective narcissistic delusion in human history is wildly underestimated.

Dr.Einat Wilf on the scale and scope of delusion demolition necessary to get Palestinian society to admit that 1948 is now a closed issue. She uses John Dower's Pulitzer winning "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of WWII" as an example of how to rip out root and branch a society's collective narcissist delusions of empire. Relevant to Russia as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1ku4cE_e4U&t=26s

The American collective delusion is that it's not an empire, the exact reverse of Russia's delusion that it's an empire that merits parity with the USA.