How to Deal With the Unappeasable Putin

Walter Russell Mead: “The best way to think about Mr. Putin is as a gifted tac­ti­cian com­mit­ted to a strate­gic im­pos­si­bil­ity: for Rus­sia to re­gain the su­per­power sta­tus once held by the So­viet Union. Such lead­ers are un­ap­peasable be­cause their goals can never be reached. The rise of China, Rus­sia’s con­tin­u­ing de­mo­graphic de­cline, and its con­tin­u­ing in­abil­ity to cre­ate a mod­ern and dy­namic econ­omy will not end be­cause Russ­ian flags fly over the ru­ins of Kyiv.”

“There are two mistakes we can make about figures like Mr. Putin. One is to underestimate their talent for troublemaking if they don’t get what they want. The other is to believe that by giving in to their demands we can quiet them down. The West has made both mistakes with Mr. Putin in the past. We must try to do better now.”