Putin's playbook - Sarah Paine

## The Jackal State Strategy: Putin's Doctrine of Sequential Conquest

Vladimir Putin operates from a coherent geopolitical playbook rooted in a specific theory of security. Rather than seeking stable alliances or mutual prosperity, his strategy treats neighboring states as sequential targets to be weakened, destabilized, and absorbed. The logic is cold: take on neighbors one at a time, set them up to fail, ingest the falling ones, and establish buffer zones. Better still, manufacture conflict between neighbors so they exhaust themselves while Russia waits to move in and claim the spoils—the role of the jackal state that feeds on kills made by others.

This isn't random aggression. It's a methodical approach to solving what Putin sees as Russia's core vulnerability: a hostile neighborhood with no reliable allies. The strategy includes deliberate destabilization through disinformation campaigns, turning neighbors against each other, and exploiting moments of weakness to expand territory and influence. Each conquest is meant to create a protective buffer, pushing potential enemies further away and tightening Russia's grip on its sphere.

## Rule One: Never Fight Two Wars at Once

The foundation of Putin's playbook rests on a simple but ruthless principle: avoid simultaneous conflicts with multiple powers. Russia's geography and military capacity make this constraint existential. Looking at a map of Russia's neighbors reveals the problem starkly—a ring of potentially hostile states. If they coordinated against Russia, the outcome would be catastrophic. This single constraint shapes everything: the sequential nature of aggression, the deliberate sowing of discord among neighbors, the cultivation of buffer zones.

The rule is not unique to Putin. Military strategists across history have recognized the nightmare of a two-front war. But Putin has built an entire foreign policy doctrine around ensuring it never happens. This means neighbors must never unite. They must be kept weak, divided, suspicious of each other, and, when possible, at each other's throats. In this framework, successful destabilization isn't a side effect—it's the entire point.

## The Great Power Neighbor Problem

Putin's doctrine rests on another principle: great power neighbors are inherent threats. Today's strategic partner becomes tomorrow's rival. This belief, grounded in Russia's own history of shifting alliances and betrayals, leads to a paradoxical security strategy. Rather than building lasting partnerships that could deter aggression, Putin assumes they're impossible. Stable alliances require trust; trust requires predictability; yet the strategy itself ensures unpredictability.

This assumption has self-fulfilling consequences. By treating neighbors as inevitable enemies, Russia pushes them toward the West, NATO, or other external powers for protection. Ukraine's movement toward Europe, for instance, wasn't predetermined—it became inevitable partly because Russia's own behavior confirmed that Russian promises of partnership couldn't be trusted. The doctrine creates the very encirclement it claims to prevent.

## The Fundamental Flaws in the Doctrine

For all its logical elegance, Putin's strategy contains fatal contradictions that history suggests are difficult to overcome.

**The Failing States Problem**: The doctrine requires surrounding yourself with weak, dysfunctional neighbors. Russia and China, pursuing similar strategies, have achieved precisely this—they're ringed by some of the world's most economically devastated and politically unstable regions. But failed states are liabilities, not assets. They generate refugee crises, disease, criminal networks, terrorism, and unpredictable collapses that can threaten the hegemon itself. The question Paine poses is cutting: are Russia and China simply unlucky, or are they complicit in creating the very instability they claim to fear?

**The Absence of Enduring Alliances**: Once neighbors understand the strategy, they have no incentive to cooperate. They see clearly that today's accommodation is tomorrow's pretext for invasion. This leaves the hegemonic power isolated, dependent on force rather than consent, and perpetually vulnerable to coalitions forming against it. Stability requires some neighbors to believe they're safe; the doctrine guarantees none of them will.

**No Exit Strategy**: The strategy offers no principled answer to a crucial question: how much territory is enough? How much expansion before overextension becomes choking? Without an internal constraint on ambition, the doctrine tends toward endless acquisition. This tendency shows up repeatedly in Russian and Chinese history—imperial overreach, followed by collapse and dynastic failure.

## Historical Patterns of Overextension

The historical record suggests that powers pursuing Putin's doctrine eventually hit a breaking point. Both Russian and Chinese empires have experienced spectacular collapses preceded by periods of aggressive expansion that seemed unstoppable at the time. The Soviet Union's overextension in Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe contributed to its eventual implosion. Imperial Russia's expansion into Central Asia and the Far East created vulnerabilities that rivals exploited.

The pattern isn't accidental. A doctrine built on sequential conquest and the maintenance of weak neighbors creates incentives for endless expansion. When is it safe to stop? When you're surrounded by functioning, stable, potentially hostile states, the answer is never. The only security comes from taking one more territory, establishing one more buffer zone, ensuring one more neighbor remains weak enough to resist. This logic leads inexorably toward overreach—the accumulation of territories that demand resources to control, populations that generate resistance, and alliances that turn into liabilities.

## Why the Strategy Persists Despite Its Flaws

Understanding Putin's playbook requires acknowledging that it's not irrational, even if it's ultimately self-defeating. It offers a coherent answer to a real problem: how does a continental power, surrounded by potential enemies, ensure its survival? In the absence of trust, in a world of zero-sum competition, the strategy has a brutal internal logic. From Putin's perspective, the flaws aren't bugs—they're features that keep the system dynamic and under his control.

But the doctrine's persistence also reflects a failure of imagination. It assumes that great power rivalry and zero-sum competition are inevitable, that alliances are temporary conveniences masking eternal enmity, that security comes only through dominance. History suggests alternatives exist—trading partners become reluctant to fight; shared institutions create incentives for cooperation; mutual prosperity can substitute for mutual fear. Russia under different leadership might have pursued integration with Europe rather than competition. The choice wasn't geographical destiny; it was strategic doctrine.

Putin's playbook is coherent, even ingenious as a theory of power. But it contains the seeds of its own failure: the creation of hostile neighbors, the inability to distinguish between today's allies and tomorrow's enemies, the lack of any principle for knowing when to stop. These aren't minor flaws. They're the reason empires built on this logic tend to end not in triumph, but in collapse.