Let's be clear: Russia was a johnny-come-lately backwater in world politics under the Tsars. They were the first imperial power handed their ass in the Pacific Rim by Japan. They had no involvement in WWI because they were busy setting their economy and agriculture back 100 years and their involvement in WWII was largely an existential struggle noteworthy for its self-cruelty and self-inflicted genocide. Its actions during the Cold War were staying actions against the domination of the United States (whose Marshall Plan funds it rejected to avoid US involvement in their economy) that eventually ran out of party fervor and money: the USSR collapsed under Gorbachev because he was the first Party apparatchik to attempt to run it via Communism rather than kleptocracy. Market reforms under Yeltsin led to a criminal economy and Putin's reforms have slowly crept back towards an authoritarian/criminal duopoly but it remains a former world power with delusions of grandeur. Russia is in an ugly spot. Oil is nowhere near where it needs to be for Russia to benefit. It faces embargoes and sanctions for military actions in the Crimea. Chechnya is still a thing and the Near Abroad of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have aligned with China while the Western republics have aligned with Europe. The only move it has, geopolitically, is to rattle sabers and prepare its citizenry for a siege mentality. Which is exactly what it's doing. "Aggressors?" The USSR went bankrupt and popped. During the fend-for-yourself period every country that didn't have active Russian troops in it went somewhere else. The Western world has been trying to buy its way out of Russian aggression ever since the Whites failed in 1922. This "power" and "prestige" of which you speak? That's nothing but the authoritarianism of a former Soviet KGB strongman remaking the country in his image.
And Global Climate Change is going to make some of the central steppes into a dustbowl the likes of which have never been seen. I'm more interested in how Russia is going to fare when the dribble of oil money is needed to feed their population to prevent riots.
NAILED IT. Russia annexed half of the Ukraine to solve ONE problem: A sea port that isn't locked up in ice for 7 months out of the year. And even then, ships have to pass within pistol-shot of Istanbul, all the Greek islands, Italy, several unstable North African countries, and Gibraltar before they even hit open water. The only thing that worries me about Russia, is they are like the mob boss at the dinner table: perfectly happy to kill a couple of the guests just to make a point. (See: Chechnya, Dagestan, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, etc, etc, etc.)
You've probably seen video of him walking. I agree with the analyses speculating that his asymmetric gate is due to handgun training. I think the aggression goes both ways, but the United States's actions in this relationship are slightly less repugnant to me. With the Russian GDP flatlining (even with China's support), things are going to get a bit more interesting. I wish they wouldn't. Russia just has so. many. nukes, man.a former Soviet KGB strongman remaking the country in his image
meh. I mean, George H Bush was the former head of the CIA. He outranked the shit out of Putin. I don't think either side is being particularly aggressive. The United States is attempting to curtail Russian entanglements in our necessary world fiefdoms and the Russians matter less than the Chinese and the Chinese barely matter. It was a useful fiction to invent "missile gaps" and bullshit like that but the fact of the matter is, the Soviet Union would have been taxed to fuck attempting to proxy battle the USA and neither empire was stupid enough to blow it all up. Russia, for its part, is attempting to restore its buffer states against the rest of the world, not just for strategic reasons but also for economic ones. It will never, ever be the Soviet Union ever again but every little victory it can make is worth it for domestic prestige. Putin knows that the US has him boxed in all the fuck over the place. The US knows that Putin has no designs on anything outside of a proscribed set of targets that used to be Soviet. Neither side is interested in rocking the boat; the US has effectively spilled the Middle East all over Europe and Asia, South America is busily tearing itself apart and the only real conflict is how much of the Pacific we're willing to cede to the Chinese in the interests of global trade and prestige. Nukes aren't weapons. They're rhetorical flourishes. By having more than the rest of the world combined the Russians can pretend they matter on the global stage. By pointing to the Russians the US gets to play stupid games like this one. And by playing stupid games like this one, the Russians get to recycle the R-36 and pretend that they've actually done something.
I think this is the central issue. America is gloriously insensitive to buffer states, having buffer oceans and a buffer hemisphere (for the most part). Buffer states have been an incredibly important part of the European balance of power for a long time but it's not a game we play sensitively or well.Russia, for its part, is attempting to restore its buffer states against the rest of the world, not just for strategic reasons but also for economic ones.