Russia's Imperial Error From Stagnation to Decline

Paul Kennedy's classic The Rise and Fall of Great Powers states that the decline of great powers sets in when a gap emerges between a country's expenditures for internal and external security and its economic possibilities. The Soviet Union was one such case. Russia now runs the risk of repeating the Soviet Union's fate, given its internal and external militarisation, its alimentation of neighbours such as Belarus, its subsidisation of a growing number of non-viable separatist entities, and its costly annexation of the Crimea. Moscow once again runs the risk of "imperial overstretch".