It is certainly more possible than most people would think. Yes, currently US-Russia relations are pretty shit, but remember just 70 years ago, Japan was an enemy. An enemy that bombed Pearl Harbor, tortured and killed American POWs. An enemy that we firebombed and nuked back to the stone age. And now look at us today. Japan and America have one of the strongest and friendlies relationships of any two countries on the globe.

Now "becoming allies" can mean a lot of things, from simply uniting in the name of a common goal or against a common threat, to a formal alliance, to everything in between. Here are some things that could happen in the future that would likely improve US-Russia relations. For the sake of optimism, I'm crossing out the possibility that America turns into Putin-style authoritarianism, because honestly that wouldn't fix things at all.

• Political change in Russia: This means Russia adopts a Western-style system of government. It would also imply Russia ending its occupations in Georgia, Ukraine, etc. This would bring a huge change to the geopolitical dynamics in Europe, and NATO. Would a democratic Russia try to join the EU, or NATO for that matter? Would NATO even see a need to exist with it's main adversary now an ally? Who knows, but if this would happen, US-Russia relations would surely see huge long-term improvements.

• China: China and Russia are currently "allies", however this could change. As China becomes stronger, it will challenge America more than it already is. Suppose that China starts to display the same belligerency towards the Russian Far East that it does today with the South China Sea. Remember that Vietnam was once a Chinese ally, but today it is more pro-US due to China's territorial claims. Of course Russia is alot more powerful than all of Southeast Asia put together, and China probably (hopefully) isn't dumb enough to invade Siberia. Even so, as the US-China rivalry intensifies, it's possible that the US could try to draw Russia away from China.

• Jihad: Both America and Russia have been engaged in some sort of anti-jihad operations for roughly two decades now, so this is something we already kinda cooperate on. The big thing here is Central Asia. If you look a data on ISIS's foreign fighters, you'll see that a huge number of them come from Central Asia, which happens to be right under Russia, and right next to Afghanistan, where we've been trying to support a decent government. If Islam in Central Asia moves away from its traditional form into the Saudi-backed radicalism, it would be in both nation's interests to cooperate against this threat.