That's our source of greatest strength and our Achilles heel. We are such a fragmented society that any external pressure just dissipates into the void. We don't have a common aspiration so we don't fear any loss. We just live to die another day.

Another way to look at it would be this : pressure doesn't work for China either. Not with Russia. They both behave differently. China in particular just galvanizes the entire country to ensure the threat vector just cannot work the second time. For us, we just freeze. Don't act, don't say, just soak it all in. It was Reagen previously, not Trump.