Vladmir Putin is running out of time with his crumbling economy and overstretched, faltering army trying to advance his ill-advised invasion of Ukraine, while attempting to suppress pro-democracy activists in several nations around his intended sphere of influence. Now, almost three years into his big invasion of Ukraine that was supposed to be won in three days, he has been counting on the return of Donald Trump to the White House to undermine allied support for Ukraine. It need not happen that way.
The next 50 days provide a historic opportunity for the assertion of national independence from Putin’s control in several Eastern European lands. In 1946, the revered U.S. diplomat George Kennan prophetically warned of a “Domino Theory” of nations around Russian falling into a larger Soviet Union. Now, we may be on the brink of seeing a reverse domino effect, as we did in the 1990s when nations broke away from Russia.
As the Syrian rebel force, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, swept through Aleppo and then Damascus in a matter of hours, toppling the 60-year reign of the Al-Assad family dynasty, cheers and chants are echoing throughout the streets of the capital celebrating the downfall of an authoritarian regime long-supported by Russia and Iran. Both countries have used Syria as a strategic regional outpost in service of their commercial and military interests.
However, the vast resources Russia and Iran once held have either been destroyed and committed to other failing conquests. In fact, it is the collapse of support from Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah that contributed to the surprise sweep of Syria as the demoralized military under President Bashar Al-Assad’s strict control reportedly did nothing to resist rebel forces. What happens in Syria next is unclear, but the U.S. should certainly be working with Turkey to stabilize the situation while closely coordinating with all parties in the anti-Assad coalition.
Some 700 miles to the north, the shouts of protesters and pops from their fireworks can be heard in the streets of Tbilisi, Georgia, where demonstrators continue their weeks-long call for an end to the pro-Russian ruling party in parliament and entry into the European Union. The exiled opposition leader from Belarus, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, has called on her comrades to ignore the farcical presidential “elections” in January — in peaceful protest — that will hand the Russian-backed President Alexander Lukashenko a seventh term.
The house of cards that Vladimir Putin has so carefully stacked over more than two decades is folding before our eyes. Not only are his satellite states rejecting Kremlin influence, but the Russian economy is crumbling, lurching towards severe stagflation.
Russian GDP estimates for 2025 range from the more optimistic forecasts, led by Russia’s central bank, of a paltry 0.5 – 1.0% to independent analyses suggesting recession has already set in. Inflation continues to rise, now surpassing 8% nationally but 22% for individual consumers, fueled by wide output gaps, record labor shortages, unsustainable subsidies, and expanding Western-led sanctions. The Russian Ruble has faced destabilizing fits of volatility in recent weeks, reaching levels unseen since the scare from the initial invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Moreover, defense spending has reached 8% of GDP, a post-Cold-War high, exacerbating Russia’s fiscal health. The National Wealth Fund, used as a “rainy day fund” to supplement heightened wartime expenses, will be depleted by early 2025. What happens once the reserves are spent remains a question, as current federal “borrowing doesn’t provide the funds needed to cover budget deficit,” according to a report by Vladimir Milo of the Free Russia Foundation.
The desperate situation has forced Elvira Nabiullina, governor of the Russian central bank, to hike interest rates up to an astounding 21%, with trader estimates expecting a rate of 25% by the year’s end. Such economic tumult has produced an unusual internal power struggle in Moscow over the direction of monetary policy. Russian oligarchs have begun to express their dissatisfaction with Nabiullina’s monetary tightening campaign. Most notably, in a rare public speech, Sergei Chemezov, CEO of Rostec and a close ally of Putin, complained to parliament, “All profits are eaten up by the interest that we have to pay…If we continue to work like this, most companies will go bankrupt.”
The combination of these domestic economic pressures and the international challenges in Syria, Georgia, and Belarus are reminiscent of another era all too familiar to those in the Kremlin. It was, after all, economic stagnation and military overextension that spurred the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The slow decline of USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev began in a similar manner to today, with satellite states revolting against Russian Communist rule. Lech Wałęsa led Poland on a path to oust their Communist president, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, and install a democratic system of government. Soon after, Hungary, East Germany, Romania, and other states declared their independence.
An unraveling of George Kennan’s Domino Theory — which rightly feared one country would fall after another into Communism in the aftermath of World War II — in the famed “Long Telegram” took effect. But it was the failure of Gorbachev’s perestroika, or economic restructuring, that led to his ultimate demise. We are, again, seeing the reverse domino effect with nations again breaking away from Russia rather than falling towards it as feared in the 1950s.
Now, as Putin’s modestly rebuilt union of misfits could very well face its demise, President-elect Trump and his team would be wise to remember these lessons from history. Representative Mike Waltz, Trump’s nominee for national security adviser, has outlined the incoming administration’s sentiment recently stating, “The question through this [presidential] transition and into [Trump’s] second term is, how do we drive [the Russia-Ukraine] deal?”
An end to Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine will only come via negotiations. When those negotiations begin and under what pretenses will shape the outcome. The path chosen will be the most important factor in determining not only Putin’s and Ukraine’s future but also the state of U.S. global leadership.
A sober approach starts by recognizing Putin’s aim remains full political control of Ukraine. Putin believes he can win this war by outwaiting the west. That strategy worked for him in 2008 with Georgia and in 2014 with his seizure of Crimea, and he is now encouraged to see growing impatience among western countries towards the cost of aid to Ukraine.
To have any chance of bringing Putin to the negotiating table, the U.S. and its allies must strengthen Ukraine’s position on the battlefield. If the new Trump Administration cuts aid to Ukraine, it must find other ways to keep U.S. weapons flowing. Finally convincing G7 partners that Ukraine can legally use the nearly $300 billion in frozen Russian state assets for defense and economic purposes is one option. Another option would see the U.S. provide Ukraine a loan secured by their vast deposits of rare earth and other valuable minerals.
Trump recognizes the logic of peace through strength. He should dismiss the timid policy of the outgoing administration and send more advanced weaponry to Ukraine, such as the Tomahawks that a then-President Trump used effectively against Syria. If Kyiv not only stops all Russian gains but also begins taking back territory, Putin would finally have an incentive to consider a real peace agreement, and not a temporary ceasefire.
An economic element also exists in pushing Putin to the negotiating table. Top of mind for the President-elect is to greatly increase U.S. production, and export, of oil and natural gas. The surge in supply would push the prices of Russia’s hydrocarbon exports — the chief source of funding Kremlin aggression — further down. Additionally, stronger enforcement of existing sanctions and the introduction of tariffs on Russian goods, in addition to the goods of its backers — weakening Putin’s grip on power and the Russian economy.
An alternative approach would be the simple wind down of U.S. engagement. This naïve notion, backed by some supporters of the incoming administration, would reduce U.S. involvement in the war to a minimum, forcing Europe to provide all remaining support, a near impossible feat. Sanctions would remain for symbolism but be more leniently enforced. Any new assistance to Ukraine would be inconsequential. As a result, Putin would be emboldened to press for more gains on the battlefield – with a high likelihood of success. However, the ramifications would be even broader. U.S. retreat would implicitly greenlight future aggression by Putin or other bad actors, such as Iran or North Korea. It is a defeatist policy.
Only a policy of peace through strength, recognizing that Putin considers the U.S. his principal adversary, will provide the U.S. and its allies the greatest leverage and minimize the chance of adverse outcomes, especially the use of nuclear weapons. While each choice brings with it considerable consequences — namely financial burdens, inventory drawdowns on critical weapons and munitions, escalation on and off the battlefield, and shifts in geopolitical power and influence — the current situations in Russia cannot be ignored. Ukraine may be strained, but Russia is edging the precipice of disaster.
Russia is at a classic “tipping point” in its long, admirable history, as Putin desperately hangs on in hope that Trump will wind down U.S. engagement and permit Russia to seize Ukraine in stages. Putin’s fate may very well be in the hands of Trump but so too are critical American interests as well as those of its allies and Ukraine. Putin’s hopes for Trump may well be disappointed. The president-elect has said Ukraine’s survival is important to the U.S. He, therefore, does not want to broker a peace deal that only imposes conditions on the victim and allows the aggressor to come back for the rest of Ukraine. Brokering an enduring peace is the road to a Nobel Prize. A weak ceasefire that enables Putin to take all of Ukraine would be a notably greater U.S. national security defeat, even greater than the disaster of Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal.
A U.S. exit imposing an appeasement plan would be the equivalent to Neville Chamberlain handing Hitler the Sudetenland — which, of course, only fueled that tyrant’s territorial ambitions. The good news for Ukraine is that Trump likes to negotiate a favorable deal, and Russia is growing weaker by the day.
In just a few days last week, the loose coalition of resistance fighters ended a cruel tyrannical dynastic rein in Syria as Russia and Iran were too distracted to bring air cover to their ally, the despotic President al-Assad. If Syrians could seize this moment, perhaps so too can Eastern Europeans as they themselves did in rapid succession during the 1990s.
