Revanchism

I find myself returning, more often than I’d like, to a particular intellectual discomfort. It surfaces whenever I read a thoughtful geopolitical analysis that explains Vladimir Putin so carefully, so contextually, so sympathetically, that by the end of it you almost forget what he actually did — and chose. Explanation is not exculpation. And understanding, at its best, should sharpen moral clarity rather than dissolve it. So let me try to do that here.

One of the recurring problems in Western analysis of Vladimir Putin is that explanation sometimes drifts into moral softening. Understanding why Russians felt humiliated in the 1990s is not the same as concluding that the world therefore owed Russia an imperial sphere of influence afterward.

History matters here

Countries like Poland, the Baltic states, parts of Eastern Europe, and many former Soviet republics did not experience Russian power as misunderstood greatness. They experienced it as domination, censorship, occupation, fear, deportations, secrecy, and imposed stagnation.

So when NATO expanded, many of those countries were not saying: Let us humiliate Russia. They were saying: We do not want to end up under Moscow ever again.

That distinction is crucial — and in Western commentary it is far too often collapsed.

A leader with genuine strategic vision might have interpreted the post-Soviet moment very differently. Someone with a longer civilizational perspective might have said: We lost an empire.

Fine

Let us build a prosperous, modern, scientifically advanced Russia that becomes indispensable through culture, trade, technology, and stability rather than fear.

That path existed

Russia had immense natural resources, an educated population, extraordinary scientific depth, a cultural tradition that rivals any in the world, geographic proximity to Europe, and nuclear deterrence already guaranteeing its sovereignty. In many ways, Russia did not need expansionism to remain a great power. It needed governance.

My criticism of Putin, then, is really this: he chose ressentiment over modernization. It is a serious critique, and many Russians themselves quietly share it.

Instead of transforming Russia into a confident post-imperial state, Putin increasingly anchored legitimacy around grievance, restoration myths, external enemies, and the emotional language of historical revenge.

This points toward something deeper — not that all Russians are angry or backward, obviously, but that Putin may reflect unresolved psychological currents running through Russian history: insecurity masked as strength, suspicion of openness, attraction to authority, wounded pride after collapse, and the belief that respect comes mainly through fear.

These are not uniquely Russian characteristics

But a genuinely transformative leader would have broken that cycle rather than exploited it.

Consider postwar Germany. After catastrophe — moral and material — German leadership eventually accepted limits, integration, economic rebuilding, and shared institutions. The result was stability and prosperity far greater than anything revanchism could have produced. That model was available. It required vision, not weakness.

Putin instead chose a neo-imperial narrative

And paradoxically, that choice may leave Russia weaker, poorer, more isolated, more dependent on China, and more internally fearful than it would otherwise have been.

That is the tragedy — not merely moral tragedy, but strategic tragedy. A civilization that had everything it needed to build something lasting, led by a man who chose the oldest and most seductive of political shortcuts: the permanent enemy, the sacred wound, the myth of restoration.

The moral, if there is one, is not about Russia alone. Ressentiment is not a Russian invention. It is a political technology — one that requires grievance to be kept fresh, openness to be treated as naivety, and strength to be performed rather than built.

It travels well

And the test of any leadership, anywhere, is whether it channels historical pain toward construction or toward theatre. Putin made his choice. The rest of us, watching, should at least be clear-eyed about what that choice was.