Against the United States, Putin's Russia has an advantage: the weakness

When Moscow flexed its muscles and invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Soviet influence did not increase. Instead, the intervention sparked a resisting coalition of mujahideen rebels, the United States, Osama bin Laden and his Arab volunteer fighters, Pakistan and China. This turned the adventure into an expensive quagmire – contributing to the collapse of the United States in 1991.

At the end of the Cold War, Moscow became dramatically weaker. The Soviet Union has abandoned its empire in Eastern Europe. When the United States disintegrated, Moscow lost half of its population, while the expansion of 19459004 and the EU brought the West directly into the Russian sphere. Today, Russia's GDP of 1.58 trillion dollars is about the same as that of the Greater New York area and less than one-twelfth of that of the United States. Russia is heavily dependent on energy exports and is facing declining birth rates. It is no wonder that Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century".

Paradoxically, the decreasing power of Russia opened new avenues of influence. The collapse of the Soviet Union was an existential crisis for the Western alliance. In 2003, the Belgian Prime Minister wrote: "As long as the Soviet divisions could reach the Rhine in a few hours, we obviously had a blood brotherhood with our cousins ​​abroad. But now that the cold war is over, we can express our differences of opinion more freely. During the 2011 Libya campaign, President Barack Obama criticized the "free riding" ally, and Trump described nato as "obsolete." "Meanwhile, Russia's weakness could have helped undermine the European Union and encourage Brexit.The disappearance of the Soviet Union has not only weakened the Western alliance it has also contributed to sowing divisions within the US While factors such as globalization, automation, and immigration have certainly contributed to increased polarization and partisanship. in American politics, without a common enemy, American politics soon became even more divided

barter.He has a weaker hand to play, but his opponents are more quarrelsome and divided.His strategy is to make a virtue The direct confrontation with powerful rivals like the US and the EU is off the table.Fortally, Russia benefits from divisions in the West – and the states United States – by making its way from his opponents, using psychological warfare, propaganda and cyberwar.

to do, is an art. Moscow seeks to bring just enough strength to burst its opponents, without much aggression that it triggers a brutal reaction. The hacking of e-mails from the Democratic Party in 2016 hit this sweet spot. Many Republicans have concluded that "they" have been hacked, not "us". If Russia were to perform Pearl Harbor's cyber equivalent against US institutions, it would likely unite the Americans into resistance.