Right now Vladimir Putin is losing the battle for Ukraine.

His real goals were abandoned (for now), his troops around kyiv were retreating, his imperial dreams were denied.

there are goals more modest to return to, resources and territory it can hold, but a month of Ukrainian courage and support of the West will face a destructive blow to your ambitions.

However, Putin is not losing the battle for Russia.

From the beginning of the conflict, the Western response to its maximalist ambitions — not an official goal, but a hope that informs politics and scholars and escapes the remnants of Joe Biden in emotional moments — became a regime change in the Kremlin, a failed war that overthrew Putin and brought to power a more rational government.

It has always been a vague hope, but despite unprecedented military unrest and economic sanctions, now it seems weaker.

In both polls and anecdotes, Putin already appears stabilizes the support of the Russian public, who rallied a country as if he were describing it:

unfairly surrounded and besieged.

His approval ratings, according to Russia’s leading independent pollster, are similar to those George W Bush after 9/11.

His inner circle is always unlikely to break with him, for reasons outlined by Anatol Lieven in The Financial Times a few weeks ago:

its members often come from the same background, share the same geopolitical assumptions, and are more likely to “fight” mercilessly over a long period of time than to suddenly turn on their leader.

But even in the broader circle of Russia’s elites, the war so far has generated more anti-western solidarity what division

“Putin’s dream of uniting with the Russian elite has come true,” journalist Farida Rustamova reported about their recent talks.

“These people understand that their lives are now tied to Russia, and that’s where they’re going to have to build them.”

Of course, it makes sense to question the anecdote and the data of a system punishing dissent.

But these kinds of patterns shouldn’t be surprising.

Yes, failed wars sometimes overthrow authoritarian regimes, such as argentinian board after his misfortune in the Malvinas Islands.

But sanctions imposed from other countries, economic warfare, often result in the strengthening of the internal power of the target regime.

In a short time, they provide a outer goat, a clear enemy to blame for the sufferings rather than their own leaders.

In the long run, the academic literature suggests, they can make states more repressivemore likely to be democratic.

Just consider the list of bad countries that the United States has used sanctions against for a long time.

From Cuba to North Korea, from Iran to Venezuela, not to mention Iraq before our invasion in 2003, the pattern is predictable:

people are suffering, the regime suffers.

Our assumption should be, not a certainty, but a guiding premise, that the same thing will happen in a sanctioned and isolated Russia.

Even if support for Putin fades as the economic crisis intensifies, the forces empowering Russia’s suffering will not be liberal.

And any change in leadership is more likely to be identical Nicholas Maduro replaced Hugo Chávez than the 1989 revolutions.

This assumption has two implications.

The first is for the war itself: in the short term, whatever Ukraine withdraws, it will return to the battlefield, not by some deus ex Moscow bringing a more friendly Russian government to the negotiating table.

This does not imply that the United States should skyrocket in the military, dancing any closer to a nuclear conflict.

But this suggests that keep the support in the Ukrainian army is our most important policy, and sanctions play only a supporting role.

The second implication is long -term, when peace is established in some way.

Especially if that peace is a frozen conflict, in which Putin claims victory by holding on to some territory of Ukraine, there will be pressure to keep sanctions in place, to continue the war indefinitely by the other way around.

There will be an argument for doing that exactly, but we must be clear about the nature of the case:

That is, even in the absence of open war, Russia will remain a generation enemy of peace in Europe and a generation a threat to American interests, making policies that diminish Russia’s wealth and power as a way to make sense. in self -defense, both for the eastern borders of Europe and for the wider Pax Americana.

The argument will not be that sanctions are likely to free the Russian people from Putin’s rule, or that collective economic sanctions are likely to pay for the Russians themselves, in a hypothetical future revolution.

No. If we plan to wage an economic war against Russia for a generation, we must be clear in the calculation.

In the hope of making a dangerous great power as weak as possible, we will make that more likely putinism has ruled for decades and Russia remains our mortal enemy for as long as anyone can reasonably predict.

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