. As the Russian leadership has also attempted to make clear over the past few years, their quarrel is not with the average Frenchman, Dutchman, German, Briton, or American, it's with their ruling class. Having argued this, I then reminded my listeners (and now my readers) that covert operations, like coups d'etat, proxy wars, assassinations, drone strikes, color revolutions (think the Ukraine here) and so on are games that two can play.