How dangerous is Vladimir Putin?

The International Economy asked:

Western experts have offered various explanations for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in recent years. Some suggest Putin has been merely reacting to NATO and EU enlargement. Others suggest the Russian leader has succumbed to a bout of irrationality, spawned by a desire to return to the “good old days” of the Soviet Union. After all, according to historian Stephen Kotkin, traditional Soviet geopolitical thinking always assumed that Western capitalism would eventually disintegrate.

Princeton Professor Harold James suggests Putin’s actions are based on the rational assumption that in the wake of the global financial crisis and subsequent eurozone debt crisis, the West would lack the ability to take decisive action. This would provide Russia with a window to pursue a strategy of expanding its influence. Putin’s bet was that Western policymakers and politicians would stumble in the effort to repair their economic and financial systems in the wake of the crisis. By deliberately exacerbating geopolitical tensions, Putin reasoned, the preoccupied West would look even more indecisive and weak. Of course, the Russian leader’s actions have already risked a recession back home with the plummeting of the global price of oil, not to mention the economic bite of Western sanctions.

On a scale of one to ten—with one suggesting Putin is merely a delirious fool and ten a serious threat—how dangerous is Vladimir Putin to the West?

AEI’s Desmond Lachman answers:

I would give a nine to your question since I think that far from being a delirious fool, Putin is a major threat to the West.

In assessing Vladimir Putin’s recent foreign policy actions, it is important to distinguish between being irrational and making major policy miscalculations. Judging by Putin’s dramatic increase in popularity at home following his annexation of Crimea, his Ukrainian adventure must be judged to be rational. This is especially the case if Putin’s basic objective was to consolidate his autocratic
hold on power and to deflect Russian public attention away from blatant corruption and gross economic mismanagement at home.

In pursuing his objective of whipping up a nationalist frenzy, Putin appears to have made two basic miscalculations for which the Russian economy is now paying dearly. The first was to misjudge the West’s resolve in imposing effective financial sanctions on the Russian corporate sector. The second was to be totally flatfooted by the long-run fall-out of the U.S. shale oil revolution. That revolution has contributed to a 40 percent drop in international oil prices, which will be devastating for a country as dependent on energy export earnings as is Russia.

A real danger to the West has to be that a Russian economy in tatters will only increase the incentives for Putin to be even more adventurous abroad, especially if the West offers no credible threat of a military reaction. Sadly, this could be bad news for any early resolution of the Ukrainian crisis. Worse yet, as Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has recently warned, it could spell trouble for other countries such as Moldova and the Baltics, which Russia has long considered to be part of its near abroad. Another geopolitical shock would seem to be the last thing that an enfeebled European economy now needs.

(Read more responses to the question here).