Why Putin will leave behind a political and economic vacuum

Vladimir Putin will soon begin his third decade at Russia’s helm. After shrinking sometimes more than ten percent per year under Yeltsin, Putin shepherded the economy to ten percent growth in his first full year in power. Putin simultaneously embarked upon a campaign to upgrade Russia’s aging and, in some cases, rusting arsenal. Even as many disdain him, much of the U.S. media spectrum today portrays Putin as a master strategist eerily successful in almost all he sets out to do.

Putin’s lasting legacy, however, will not be his wars in Georgia or Ukraine nor the new submarines , fighter jets , nuclear weapons , or hypersonic missiles whose manufacture and unveilings he has overseen. Rather, Putin’s historic legacy will likely be inheriting a country with great economic potential and leaving it an empty husk. Arguments that the West humiliated Russia after the Soviet Union’s fall are nonsensical. Russia kept its nuclear weapons while other former Soviet republics lost theirs. Rather than demand reparation for Cold War wrongs, the West extended billions of dollars in direct and indirect aid. Former communist party members—Putin included—kept their jobs and did not need fear a purge such as was imposed on post-World War II Germany or post-Saddam Iraq.

In 2011, a Levada Centre poll found that more than one-fifth of Russians wanted to leave their country permanently. It is telling that while Putin’s approval remains high, the government’s approval ratings have plummeted . Putin’s own quest for ultimate control has ruined Russia’s opportunity to benefit from foreign direct investment. Billions of dollars will leave the country, further contributing to its downward spiral. Putin is sixty-six years old and seemingly in good health. He could easily dominate Russia in one position or another for another fifteen years.

Putin inherited an imperfect system, but a system nonetheless. Competition promoted accountability. Putin, however, having centralized power and cut-off at the knees anyone capable of mounting a significant challenge, will leave behind a vacuum. He has made Russia into a country of first-world arms, but third-world infrastructure. No amount of saber-rattling or military displaces can hide the fact that corruption, mismanagement, and demographic decline during the Putin decades will condemn Russia to the developing world for decades, if not more.