Is Putin's Russia A Paper Tiger ?

  

Under President Vladimir Putin, Moscow has repeatedly demonstrated that it has the capacity to destabilize the international order, most recently with its brutal invasion of Ukraine. But for all its ability to upend power dynamics in places like the Middle East and now Europe, Moscow has so far not demonstrated the capacity to fill the vacuums it exploits—or creates.

Russia occupies an unusual position on the world stage. Under President Vladimir Putin, Moscow has repeatedly demonstrated that it has the capacity to destabilize the international order, most recently with its brutal invasion of Ukraine. But for all its ability to upend power dynamics in places like the Middle East and now Europe, Moscow has so far not demonstrated the capacity to fill the vacuums it exploits—or creates. That is most visibly on display in Ukraine, where the Russian military has proven operationally incompetent at anything but imposing punishing costs on the country’s civilian population, including alleged war crimes.

But while Russia has now proven that it lacks the military strength to challenge U.S. supremacy in Europe, let alone globally, no one—particularly not the NATO alliance—is ignoring its nuclear capabilities, as evidenced by the alliance’s refusal to intervene directly in the war in Ukraine. Moscow also uses arms sales and military engagements to build ties to countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and especially the Middle East. And its massive exports of fossil fuels to Europe—even now, after more than four months of war in Ukraine—offers Russia additional leverage.

 

Even as Moscow maintains an outsized influence on the global stage, Putin has had some setbacks on the home front. Though he has dominated the Russian political scene for more than two decades, his popularity had waned amid a slowing economy even before the war in Ukraine, particularly following a deeply unpopular pension reform effort in 2018. That didn’t stop him from engineering a way to hold onto power after his current presidential term ends in 2024, despite a constitutional term limit. But it has opened space for Putin’s long-suffering political opponents to call attention to the corruption and violence that have marked his tenure. The most prominent among them, Alexei Navalny, almost paid for his life for doing so, and is now paying with his freedom.

After a period of confusion and mixed messages during Donald Trump’s presidency, President Joe Biden’s administration announced sanctions in response to Russia’s cyber behavior in its early months in office, but also renewed the New START bilateral nuclear arms control treaty. Biden’s decision to hold a summit with Putin in June 2021 was seen as a further signal of his willingness to work constructively with Russia, particularly on issues like cyber crime. But Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made it clear that he sees no benefits in putting relations on a solid and stable footing. The sanctions the U.S. and the European Union imposed in response have now added to Putin’s domestic challenges.