It was quite a week for Vladimir Putin. The Russian autocrat won a constitutional referendum clearing the way for him to remain in power until 2036. And Putin once again caused a firestorm in Washington, this one ignited by reports that Russian military intelligence offered to pay Taliban fighters to kill American troops in Afghanistan.
If the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing America into ever-deeper competition with China, the challenge from Russia — the less mighty but more aggressive of the authoritarian powers — won’t be fading anytime soon.
But what exactly is that threat? Russia isn’t China, an economic powerhouse that could challenge the United States for global primacy. It isn’t the Cold War-era Soviet Union, a country with the military capability to overrun most of Europe and the ideological ambition to remake the world. Putin’s Russia uses its limited resources aggressively, to rebuild lost influence and tear down the structures of the American-led world. Putin can’t aspire to create a Russian-led international order. Yet he can give Russia a taste of geopolitical greatness while dragging the world back into a more disordered, predatory state.