FINGERS CROSSED: Why Putin Won’t Invade Ukraine.

Risk aversion. Vladimir Putin undoubtedly would like to project an image similar to that of the brave bogatyrs who populate Slavic mythology, but his operating style more closely resembles the behavior of a different regional archetype: the cunning peasant who plays a weak hand well.

Putin has maintained power for two decades by standing up to the West without taking big chances. Invading a nation of 40 million where four out of five inhabitants are non-Russian would entail incalculable uncertainties—uncertainties that might ultimately endanger Putin’s hold on power. Taking such risks would be out of character.

You break it, you own it. That’s what Secretary of State Colin Powell warned President Bush before the U.S. invaded Iraq, a formulation that has come to be known as the Pottery Barn rule. An invasion of Ukraine would require Russia to occupy part or all of Europe’s poorest, most corrupt country.

Assuming that Moscow does not envision genocidal extermination of non-Russians, it would then have to subsidize a restive developing nation that is recovering from the effects of war. That burden would persist indefinitely, imposing big costs on the Russian state for returns that are likely to be quite modest.

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