Today’s Russia is not the Soviet Union. Its economy is far more vulnerable to Western sanctions, and the United States and its allies, whatever their internal troubles, remain capable of doing considerably more economic damage. Russia cannot control information or exposure to the outside world the way the Soviet Union could — like much of the world, Russians now get most of their information from the internet, and they travel with relative freedom.
Mr. Putin’s Russia, moreover, lacks the ideological foundation the Soviet Union offered its leaders for their monopoly on power — he is compelled to cling to democratic norms even as he violates them in a charade most Russians can see through. And however much Russians may share Mr. Putin’s claim of a special fraternal bond with Ukraine, there is no telling how they would react to an overt military incursion into Ukraine.
But the West, too, must recognize that Russia’s threats and demands are not entirely empty, and that having ruled out a military response, it has limited leverage over Russia. Yet there are ways in which the United States could defuse tensions without accepting Russia’s impossible demands for a formal treaty recognizing a Russian sphere of influence over former Soviet territories.
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