Is Putin a weak leader?

The swift fall of Syria raises an uncomfortable question – has the Russian intelligence been asleep at the wheel as the protector of the Syrian state? Why hasn’t Russia reacted more strongly to push back the advances by the terrorists?

When Iran was attacked by Israel in the most recent exchange in October, Russia clearly also failed to provide Iran with adequate air defense or retaliatory strike capabilities despite their security partnership.

Similarly, why hasn’t Putin reacted more forcefully when Ukraine and the west crossed his red line of using long-range cruise missiles to attack Russia proper?

He did launch an experimental conventional hypersonic weapon, the Oreshnik. But he didn’t destroy any high profile targets or send a message that the west paid much attention to. In fact, the Ukrainians have launched more ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles into Russia in the wake of the Oreshnik strike.

This is the same passiveness that defined the beginning of the special military operation in Feb 2022. Too small a force was amassed (less than 190,000 men) and nothing like the American shock-and-awe strike on Iraq was launched. The whole thing felt like a half-hearted attempt to intimidate Ukraine to the negotiation table. The Russians clearly were not ready to fight a real war.

When the US destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline, the Russians were not even forceful enough to condemn it after Sy Hersh published his expose. Is the Russian GRU completely useless or too fearful to offend the US?

In his recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Lavrov, Putin’s foreign minister, went out of his way to say Russia is not at war with the US and the west when Putin himself said if the US allowed Ukraine to attack Russian territory with ATACMS, NATO would be at war with Russia. Why was Lavrov backing down now?

While I admire Putin for his cool demeanor and rational logical thinking, he is certainly not proactive or realistic about the world he lives in, and thus lacks the decisive leadership that the head of a threatened country needs.

He and Lavrov are overly legalistic in their interpretation of events around them and seem to want to win an argumentative victory in the world opinion court. However, even the lame duck octogenarian POTUS has had no hesitation to raise the stakes and unshackle the inner beast of the empire.

Disturbingly, Putin seems to fall short of standing up to the US and the west in the escalation cycle – this doesn’t bode well for the world as the US has shown repeatedly there is no red line it’s not willing to cross until there is real pushback.

Is Putin up to dealing with an existential threat? And Xi must learn from these lessons.