[vinay427]

The easy answer: "most of the Americans that I've talked to" vs. "anything said by an American"

I'll expand: In the country I live in, a country often touted as very highly developed, there are still a lot of people that have weirdly (uninformed) nationalistic views about certain topics probably due to some oddities of history. This is the case in every single country I've traveled to or lived in. No one is advocating for designing global policy on Russia based on the views of the average American. That has little to do with trusting Americans (or Britons, or any other nationality of a place with a violent history) on other specific issues.