Putin Forgot Islamic State Thinks He’s Part of the West

Three facts stand out as clear amid the lack of hard information about the perpetrators of Friday’s appalling terrorist attack on Russia, and all three shine a light on dangers inherent in the new multipolar world we now inhabit.

The first is that, before the attack, Vladimir Putin dismissed a US warning that it was coming, both in public and to his top security officers. He called the American intelligence that Islamists were planning an assault on a large Russian venue blackmail, aimed at destabilizing his country — a vague goal...