Russia is both weak and strong - that's the problem.

It insists upon itself, Louis.

[The fall of Francis Gary Powers as seen in the Yekaterinburg metro. Photo by Mack Tubridy.]

Every few months someone asks an obvious question: why does Russia, a country with a GDP smaller than Italy, get to dominate geopolitics?

The answer points to some basic issues with how we think about power in international relations. The problem is not only that GDP is too narrow. It’s that we often imagine power as structural — how many resources a country has, the size of its military or the reach of its economy. But another element of power is what we might call agentic — a country’s willingness and ability to use those resources. This means power is not just GDP but intangible things that cannot be forced into regression tables, like the capacity to deploy force, to absorb pain, and to break rules that constrain others.

Last week I was on a panel on The Agenda, a Canadian public-affairs program, where the host asked me if Russia was the Joe Pesci of global politics — making up for its small economic stature by being extra aggressive in its conduct. In a way, this is true. Its economic weakness means Russia has to overcompensate by building armies, invading neighbors, and playing global spoiler. If you have no levers of influence left except force and subversion, that’s what you use to feel big. (Kathryn Stoner, another panelist, suggested the better analogy is Rodney Dangerfield, who also can’t get no respect.)

On the other hand, calling Russia Joe Pesci understates how much material power it really has. That includes things like a massive nuclear stockpile and a willingness to remind people about it. Also geographic leverage through sheer size, energy leverage (even if that has waned since 2022), and institutional power inherited via the UN. Combine those with the intangibles mentioned above — a willingness to break the rules, to use its army and to absorb costs that others would not — and you have your answer to why a country the “size” of Italy has become central to everything in international politics.

But another factor now inflating Russia’s power is Trump’s treatment of it. His affinity for Putin makes Trump equate Putin’s authoritarian strength with national strength, which leads him to overlook Russia’s structural weaknesses.¹ Besides, Trump’s view of Russia resonates with his base, who see it as a counterweight to woke globalism and therefore overstate its importance. Russia is thus seen as a “peer” great power, unlike Ukraine or Canada, and should therefore have some allowances in its region. This kid-gloved handling of Putin, coupled with American withdrawal from global leadership, mean a short-term boost in Russian power.²

You might think it’s absurd to speak of Russian power given the state of the war. Corruption, low morale, and inadequate training have hampered the army’s ability to execute battle operations effectively. All it can do is grind forward.

But it does grind forward. Recruitment efforts have sustained troop numbers, Russia does have an advantage in artillery, it’s shown resilience in the face of massive setbacks, and it’s also demonstrated an ability to adapt. This is again the strange hybrid nature of Russian power — weak in terms of conventional military execution but immensely high in its ability to absorb, adapt, and keep going.

And while the country as a whole is weaker than it was in 2022, Putin’s regime is stronger. He has tightened control over the oligarchs, the media, and society as a whole through propaganda and repressive laws. Even Prigozhin’s failed thunder run to Moscow ended in failure and ended up consolidating Putin’s rule. We talk about overestimating Russian power, but that’s one way in which we underestimate the regime. Many Western analysts predicted Putin’s downfall after major crises—the 2011 protests, or when the war began going poorly, or during Prigozhin’s mutiny. But each time, the regime tightened control and outlasted expectations.

There is a great book by Svetlana Alexievich, called Secondhand Time, in which she interviews a woman who longs for the Soviet days and says “I would rather live in a great power than a supermarket”. Without generalizing to the people as a whole, I think that does reflect a certain willingness by a part of Russian society to tolerate bad living conditions if it means their country plays a major role in the world. (One would think you could have both, but what do I know.)

You have to choose, supermarket or superpower.

If Russia is so overstretched militarily, why are Poland and the Baltics so concerned about future invasions? What resources would Russia even use for a war with NATO? Look at Syria, goes the argument. A decade of military and political investment, and the regime falls in days with Russia unable to intervene due to its focus on Ukraine. A hallmark of global power is the ability to manage multiple fronts simultaneously. Falling to imperial overstretch when you’ve barely cobbled together an empire — that’s not a great sign for Russian ambitions.

That’s fine but it’s also like saying: they’re not dumb enough to actually do it, are they? Would they really provoke NATO given everything else? And you know, that question — are they dumb enough to do it — was asked a lot before the 2022 invasion and a lot of people said no, yet here we are. Actions by Russian security forces have become so untethered from any idea of a “national interest” that I cannot say with confidence they would not try to expand the war — out of sheer hubris, stupidity, or accident. Stalin was absolutely convinced Hitler would never be dumb enough to start a two front war — that’s why he didn’t mobilize ahead of Barbarossa. Countries do stupid things, especially when their leaders are disconnected from the population, as Putin surely is.

Weakened US leadership means Russia can step in to disrupt more countries, undermine liberal parties around the world, and fill the vacuum left by American absence. But ultimately, Russia’s influence is capped by economic weakness and increasing reliance on China. We might be seeing a shift to a multipolar world — but where is Russia in that new global order? A junior partner to China, shunned from Europe, economically vulnerable, socially frayed. That’s not a happy vision for the country even in a world where American dominance is dead.

1. It’s remarkable how similar Trump and Putin are in their visions of the post-liberal order. Both prefer to see a world managed by a few great powers that divide the world into spheres of influence. Both are deeply skeptical of multilateral institutions like NATO or the UN. This is a major factor in explaining not only Trump’s treatment of Ukraine but also his approach to America’s own “sphere of influence” in Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal.

2. Even in terms of soft power, Russia has been a beneficiary of recent events. People usually dismiss Russian soft power in the sense that it exports no cultural products, no one wants to live there, and few want to emulate its regime. But think about this: during the Cold War, the left saw in Russia a utopian vision of social justice and were willing to ignore its many problems. Today, exactly the same thing is happening on the right, who see in Russia a utopian vision of unwoke illiberalism and are also willing to ignore its many problems. This is not to draw an equivalence, since the pro-Soviet left never held the political power of the pro-Russian right. Somehow, Russia has been very successful as a way for large segments of politically engaged Americans to project their deepest desires. To capture the mind of your ostensible adversary in that way — that is soft power.