The United States has long viewed Russia as a power in terminal decline. This assessment formed in the 1980s as the Soviet Union began showing clear signs of imperial overstretch, and it congealed after the collapse of first the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union itself. Washington went on to pursue a policy agenda, including NATO enlargement, that treated Russian power and interests as an afterthought, and the long-standing conflict over Ukraine turned dismissiveness into condescension. In March 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama called Russia “a regional power” that was “threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness.” President Donald Trump shows more fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin than his predecessors did, but most Russia-watchers in the West still dwell on Russia’s lagging technology; its failure to rescue allies in Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba; and what they see as its reduction to a vassal of mighty China.

This picture of Russia as feeble and fading may suit the biases of Putin’s many critics, but it is fundamentally at odds with reality: Moscow consistently punches above its weight in global affairs. Thirty-five years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia remains a nuclear superpower. As during the Cold War, NATO treats it as the benchmark threat around which the alliance plans its forces. An unprecedented wall of Western sanctions has failed to trigger the economic collapse its architects predicted or to erode political and social stability. The effort to isolate Moscow has faltered as well. The Kremlin has skillfully promoted non-Western bodies such as BRICS, a grouping of major emerging economies, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Eurasian political and security group. In so doing, it has extended its influence over the post-Western order now taking shape. And even though Russia’s economy is far smaller than China’s, the “no limits” partnership between Moscow and Beijing has produced a formidable coalition.

This bullish assessment comes with a caveat: it relies on the international conditions that prevail today. Moscow continues to punch above its weight because it is navigating a fragmented, unpredictable world that plays to its strengths. Volatility and instability, active conflicts and arms races across several regions, economic decoupling and the retreat of globalization, the worldwide rise of nationalism and populism, the discounting of soft power and fissures in the Western alliance—all these features of the existing international order work to Moscow’s advantage.

The downside risk for Russia is that today’s turmoil and uncertainty may not last. The pendulum is likely to swing back, with global disorder subsiding and the international system consolidating anew. That reversal could come when Trump leaves the White House, especially if his successor restores traditional U.S. support for the transatlantic alliance, multilateralism, and open trade. A planetary shock—accelerating climate change, an out-of-control AI system, or some other surprise—could likewise push states to set aside their current conflicts in favor of closer cooperation. When this change happens—and it will—Russia may find that its time-tested foreign policy and its once-reliable but rigid institutions no longer serve it well.

The centrifugal trends........

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