Why Russia?

There's a lot of debate in this world about what video games tell us about ourselves as a society and a culture. Having spent a great deal of time recently inside video games, I think they can tell us a great deal, mostly inadvertently, about the culture that created them.

But, having just finished Battlefield: Bad Company 2, that leaves me with a question regarding our realistic first-person shooters and real-time tactics/strategy games. What can America learn from our fixation with being invaded by the Russians? Why is that our most active, one of our most violent, and probably our most patriotic genre addicted to the idea of the United States being victimized by Russia? What does it mean to have an attachment to Russia so deep that in otherwise gritty, realistic games the US is always on the verge of falling to a country that, militarily, is probably now less threatening then France? Where are all the games where the US is getting their butts kicked by the French?

Probably this just says a great deal about the number of countries that we imagine form a potential threat to the United States who are not, also, potential markets for US video games. But at the same time one wonders if this says something about the US, about our need to cloak our violent aggression in the comforting mantle of being the aggrieved party. It may offer a glimpse into the vast contradiction by which America wants to hold on to its title of "the best" to the point of pathetically digging its fingernails in whenever it feels the title about to slip out of its grasp in any category, while at the same time desiring, so badly they can taste it, to be the scrappy underdog. It's a contradiction, a conundrum, a riddle without answer.

Well, Russia is better then, say, North Korea, but why a has-been like Russia? I would totally pay to see someone use the French instead.