Was there anything you meant specifically when you said you worry about long-term U.S.-Russia relations and how the two nuclear powers are dealing with each other?

Absolutely. American sanctions, together with those imposed by Europeans and other countries, have profound effects. What Putin has done is an economic catastrophe for Russia. He directly infringed on the stability and future of his regime. I’ve worked in this field now for quite some time and, for the first time, I’m really questioning the longevity of his regime. I think it’s the beginning of the end. And I’m equally worried about the implications. Aren’t you?

You’re implying that, if his regime is coming to an end, he’s potentially more dangerous?

We have to ask what asymmetric forms of retaliation he’s going to pursue in response to these sanctions against the United States and European countries, especially if the crisis worsens and the situation of Russia’s economy and domestic political situation worsen as well. How’s that going to color Putin’s thinking and his choices? These are important considerations.

One of the profound problems I’ve encountered in this field is that we often don’t do well with nuance. I spent years talking about how the Russian military wasn’t twelve feet tall, right? This war right now—Russia’s poor performance in the early part of the war—has interesting similarities, or at least some parallels, with the winter war of 1939-40, and the Soviet invasion of Finland and the Soviets’ rather poor performance back then. And one of the big concerns I have with additional impressions of the problematic Russian performance is, first, that it’s already clear to me that I’m going to spend the coming years talking about how the Russian military is not four feet tall, either, because the pendulum in terms of military assessments is going to swing very, very sharply to the other side. I hope we don’t take some of the wrong impressions that Germany, for example, took looking at the Soviets’ performance in that particular conflict.