Imagine sweeping through green fields, floating five feet above ground, sun on your face as you slide by on track to your destination, not a car in the world, as you simply lean back.

And before you know it, you're there.

This is how travel should feel, and on our trains, it does.

Avanti West Coast, feel good travel.

The rivalry between America and Russia defined the second half of the last century.

By the end, it had an element of force.

In September of 1994, Russia's president Boris Yeltsin visited Washington for his first summit with Bill Clinton.

It was to be one of the most shambolic state visits ever.

Yeltsin's boozing caused plenty of awkward public moments, but years later, the historian Taylor Branch revealed how things were even more serious in private.

Secret service agents discovered Yeltsin alone on Pennsylvania Avenue, dead drunk, clad in his underwear, yelling for a taxi.

Yeltsin yelled at the agents, too, slaring his speech. He wanted to go out for pizza.

The next night, Clinton told Branch, the Russian president again tried to sneak out of Blair House, the building across from the White House, where visiting dignitaries stay.

Yeltsin nearly got himself killed when protection officers mistook him for a drunken intruder.

Ever since Vladimir Putin took over the presidency, he's been focused on making this humiliating chapter of Russian history anomalous, and doing his best to make American presidents look foolish.

Can Joe Biden avoid the bear trap?

This is Chex and Balance.

I'm John Prado, the economist's US editor.

Each week, we take one big theme, shaping American politics and explore it in depth.

Today, how should President Biden deal with Russia?

Vladimir Putin is behaving like a gangster once again. Russia's main opposition leader is gravely ill in prison, and its military is amassing on the board with Ukraine.

Putin has outlasted four US presidents. The calibrated American diplomacy that ended the Cold War has been replaced by policies varying wildly between confrontation and appeasement.

Can the new president craft a more effective foreign policy?

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