Greene: Looking at what Putin does, one can see that his aim is simply to stay in power

(CEPA) Is Vladimir Putin bad, sad or mad? Is he a sinister and effective tyrant, cleverly taking advantage of the West’s weakness? Is he balancing precariously at the head of a failing state, desperate not to end up dead or in prison? Or is he delusional, like the villain in a bad Hollywood film?

The short answer is that we don’t really know. We don’t know how Putin thinks. We don’t know what information he gets. We don’t know whose advice he takes, if any. We don’t know what he really fears, or what he really wants. As Europe’s security rockets up the international agenda, Kremlinology, as we used to call it, is back. […]

Sam Greene, a veteran Russia-watcher now at Kings College London, is in the “sad” camp, and skeptical of attempts to seek a window into Putin’s mind:

We cannot possibly know what he’s thinking, but we do know what his incentives are. And if we stop deluding ourselves with ad hoc psychoanalysis, we might actually figure something out. How can Putin be anti-Western, Greene asks, when he has spent the past 15 years capitalizing on Russia’s ties with the West? And how can he be so good at understanding the West (and Merkel in particular), when he signally failed to spot that sanctions would result from the war in Ukraine? Greene argues that by simply looking at what Putin does, one can see that his aim is simply to stay in power, and all his foreign and domestic policy is directed towards that simple aim. “Lacking in institutional power and the benefits of economic growth, he must continually shore up his symbolic legitimacy,” while keeping everyone guessing about what the next move will be. That is a recipe for conflict and uncertainty—but within limits.