Russia’s military is numerically powerful and historically weak. The Russians have lost far more wars than they’ve won including against opponents like the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese war where they should have been able to easily triumph in terms of sheer technological prowess alone. World War II, the war that most people think of Russia winning, would not have been possible without massive amounts of assistance from the United States.

On the other hand, Putin’s military interventions have largely succeeded. Including in Georgia and previously in Ukraine. But those interventions were also more modestly scaled. The possibility of any kind of extended occupation, along with Western nations pouring in anti-tank missiles and military supplies fit for a guerilla war, would make for an even bigger mess.

Following the old Cold War strategy of invading a country and replacing its regime with a puppet government that answers to Moscow, without the benefit of Communist gatekeeping or a sizable military presence, is less likely to create a new Warsaw Pact and more of a dead end. Regime change through protesters versus regime change through an act of invasion complete with the bombing of cities leads to very different public perceptions. Even assuming an occupation that takes a year to remove every single political influencer opposed to Putin’s agenda, the results are less likely to lock in a pro-Russian government in a country under military occupation for any extent of the length of time. Nationalist authoritarian regimes, including Putin’s, can succeed as long as they rely on nationalist populism or cultural whether in Russia, Turkey, or Myanmar, but in Ukraine the only pathway would be to maintain an ethnic Russian minority government. And that would ultimately doom the project more than ever.

Assuming that Putin’s ambitions are less grandiose than that, he certainly has the leverage to extract any number of concessions. The simple act of invading a country on a large scale will certainly intimidate other nations, but that intimidation is likely to drive them into the arms of NATO. Assuming that NATO will have them. If Putin’s goal was to shrink NATO’s sphere of influence this has backfired badly. The best way to keep regional nations out of NATO would have been to show them that they had no need for NATO. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has done the exact opposite.

But, despite the propaganda, NATO was never anything more than a pretext for an invasion. Ukraine was not seriously up for NATO membership. And NATO represents no real threat to anyone or anything. NATO indeed is barely functional. Like most western institutions.

Whatever the outcome of the war, the one thing Putin has done is burn up the proceeds of the extensive influence campaign that Russia has waged for over a decade. After spending a fortune, building media outlets like RT and Sputnik and enlisting propagandists and influencers, many on the left who in the wake of the Iraq War somehow became convinced that Russia was actually opposed to imperialism and international wars, he cashed it all in in order to invade Ukraine. It doesn’t look like it was a very good investment. Whatever false flag operation the Russians may have been planning to justify the invasion, the whole thing looked exactly like what it was, a major power invading a smaller and weaker country, and few of the apologists that the Russians had been spending so much money cultivating, even former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, appeared willing to continue defending Russia.

Much like the pact between Hitler and Stalin and the invasion of Poland burned up so many of the Communist allies and front groups that had been cultivated in the West, Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine has made a bonfire of his influence campaign. The trade-off ultimately proved worth it to Stalin, it might likewise also prove worthwhile to Putin.