Putin has little hope of outgunning the West as the center of global power in a symmetric face-off. Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s or Canada’s. And even with its outsized spending on war relative to that economy, its military budget is just over a tenth the size of America’s. Yet Russia sets off its IEDs—NotPetya, interference in the U.S. election, the attack on the Olympics—as cheap, asymmetrical tactics to destabilize a world order that’s long ago turned against it. “This is Russia: embattled, short on resources, reaching out and touching people,”
