It's not just backwards, it is an existential threat to the United States and the rest of the developed world. We are at a critical time when Russia is only getting bolder and bolder, despite economic hardships and sanctions, and we need to once again provide balance against their power. Unfortunately, the entire military industrial complex was rapidly retooled in the 90s and the defense/intelligence apparatus lost all expertise on dealing with Russia. This expertise is important because Russia has historically placed a lot of importance on human intelligence, espionage, and geopolitical manipulation with long term operations. Any sort of conflict (military or otherwise) with Russia will leave much of the US establishment with their pants down because they are used to manipulating small countries without strong leaders and bombing civilians, not fighting a proxy war against a major power with a comparable (human) intelligence apparatus.

So not only is the US bureaucracy entirely unprepared for such a confrontation, but the US electorate just chose a failed real estate mogul turned reality TV show star to go head to head against a former Cold War operative that trained and worked for the KGB/Stasi. And go head to head they will. You can bet Putin will exploit the Trump presidency for as much as he can and there's little we can do to stop it other than voting Trump out of office next time.