Wednesday open thread: No, Putin isn't going to invade Ukraine

NOT Putin's house... yet

For the past few days, Russian tsar president Vladimir Putin has been moving troops to his western borders with Ukraine. This, of course, is worrisome. On top of this, he just signed a law which will allow him to remain president until the 2030s. Scary stuff, no?

Well, no.

The mistake too many of us have made is to interpret Putin's aggrandizing moves as a sign of his strength and vigor, as opposed to Western and American timidity and sclerosis. Now, of course, you have to always give a berth to an almost-failed state in possession of a cache of world-destroying nuclear weapons. But only to a certain extent.

The calculus in the relative power between Putin and the West hasn't changed since the Cold War. Russia is a Third World nation with nuclear weapons. That's it. Its economic outlook hasn't improved by much since 1989. It certainly hasn't improved enough to warrant Great Power status, or that permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Putin's great drive was to make Russia matter again. He's attempted this by engaging in foreign adventures, in Ukraine and Syria and the Caucasus. But in none of those regions has he been able to impose his will. Ukraine is still an independent state, now closely aligned with the US, and with a down-low security guarantee from NATO. Syria is a quagmire; his client Bashar al-Assad is no closer to destroying his enemies than when Russian troops and mercenaries first put boots on the ground. And if the best you can say is that you intervened in the interminable squabble between Armenia and Azerbaijan, well, bless your heart.

Putin's eyes are bigger than his stomach. He's fine for bullying weak neighbors. But he's not going to risk a real war against a real power like NATO over Ukraine, especially after President Joe Biden reaffirmed America's support for its territorial integrity. Russia simply has neither the wealth nor the infrastructure to support a major war, even one close to its borders.

Also, Putin's assumption of dictator-for-life is an indication of his weakness. Compare him to another ex-Soviet strongman, Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev. Nazarbayev was able to engineer a "democratic succession" to a handpicked candidate. He created a new position for himself wherein he held on to real power in the country; however, he felt secure enough to be able to relinquish his constitutional office. Putin is in the position where he needs to hold on to the presidency until age takes him in order to prevent a more immediate, and violent, exit. And when you have to do that, you're not actually guaranteeing yourself that you won't meet that final, sudden quietus.

As always, you need to keep an eye on autocrats. But Russia isn't China. Putin and his kleptocrats have done everything to prevent Russia from becoming a modern state. Russia is what it's always been: a country with a small minority of the rich and powerful stealing everything not bolted down, and the masses which are to be managed. Eventually, ordinary Russians will tire of this. If the oligarchs join them, Ukraine will be the least of Putin's problems.