The bear that talks like a man

The flashpoint after that will be the Baltics—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania—all former parts of the old Soviet Union, all members of NATO. Russia will attempt to neutralize them.

All of this will be not a sudden confrontation but an extended one. The tools the Russians will use will be covert (financing and energizing local Russian minorities), economic (cutting or threatening to cut the flow of natural gas) and military pressure (stationing troops near borders).

At first, Mr. Friedman wrote, the U.S. will underestimate Russia. Then it will be obsessed with Russia.

It will end, he says, with the collapse of Russia.

The extended confrontation will severely strain Russian military and economic power. Internal pressures, poor infrastructure, demographic shifts, and a government consumed by military considerations and distracted from potential domestic advances will have an impact. (Mr. Friedman does not go into this but since we’re speculating, one internal factor could be a grinding discord due to resistance to Putinism among educated Russians grown used to free speech.)