And that is just Syria. Today, tomorrow, and for quite a while—indeed, until Putin dies in office, is ousted, or is killed (having stepped on the Saddam Hussein/Muammar Qaddafi escalator from which there is no other exit)—the Russian president-for-life presents the West with the unprecedented challenge of a resurgent and perhaps messianically-minded dictatorship armed with 1,582 strategic nuclear warheads on 515 strategic launchers. In this context, Putin’s “weakness” becomes less of an operational descriptive than a comforting cliché justifying inaction.
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