The Strategy of Overextending Russia – Real Outcomes
The 2019 RAND Corporation report on the strategy of overextending Russia established a framework for the U.S. strategy to weaken Russia through non-market measures in the economic, geopolitical, ideological, and military domains, exploiting weaknesses such as dependence on energy exports, demographic challenges, corruption, and fear of regime change. Inspired by Cold War tactics, this strategy aimed to overextend Russia without direct conflict, becoming particularly relevant after the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022.What are the results of the economic war strategy against Russia?
It has shown partial success and underestimated Russian resilience to economic challenges. The RAND report predicted that sanctions and brain drain would trigger Russia’s economic collapse. Sanctions since 2022 have reduced Russia’s GDP, caused inflation of 8–10%, and limited economic diversification (oil and gas account for 30–50% of the 2024 budget). The emigration of 1–2 million young and educated individuals since 2022 has led to a labor shortage (estimated at up to 5 million by 2025), slowing GDP growth by a few percentage points. However, Russia has demonstrated resilience by redirecting oil exports to China and India (a 40% increase from 2023–2025), stabilizing revenues through a war economy and a “shadow fleet” that bypasses the sanctions barrier. Other reports, such as those from CSIS, state that Russia’s economy under Western sanctions (2025) and its war economy are more resilient than anticipated or than advocates of sanctions, who promised unrealistic results, believed. Thus, these reports highlight the damage inflicted on the Russian economy but also note that the current level of sanctions allows Russia to continue waging war.
Moreover, these analyses suggest that maximalist, coordinated sanctions, meaning pressure on major buyers of Russian oil, would lead to far more serious consequences for the Russian economy in the medium term. However, this strategy of pressuring India led Prime Minister Modi to reject it, as it would be a suicidal move for his country, prompting him to pursue much closer ties with China and Russia. Trump himself commented on this, arguing that the U.S. and the West have lost India and that China is the strategic winner in this game against Russia. Thus, we have moved from rigid think-tank analyses to missteps in U.S. foreign policy.Western circles have shifted from the euphoria of having trapped Russia in Ukraine and hopes of a swift victory over the Russian state to a more realistic approach by U.S. President Trump, who seeks to capitalize and stabilize what has been achieved for America, which is no small feat. This includes, above all, the fact that Russia has been pushed out of Europe, the war is draining it, Ukraine is fully in American hands, and the EU and NATO are being disciplined and subordinated to the will of the Anglo-Saxon power axis. Is that not significant for a single war?Analyses now, of course, abandon the idea of a rapid collapse, if they were ever sincere in that regard, as sometimes reports are written to suit the interests of certain lobbies. If you are producing analyses for the war lobby, you are likely to influence decision-makers with exaggerated promises of a quick victory over the adversary, in this case, Russia.
However, what concerns Western strategists and analysts is not the pace of Russia’s weakening but the pace of China’s strengthening and its dominant position in the Moscow–Beijing relationship. Trump has often spoken about this, simply reiterating the fundamentals of Anglo-Saxon and Kissingerian strategy: the need to weaken the China–Russia relationship rather than push Moscow into Beijing’s arms, which is, in this phase, a consequence of America’s crude and arrogant policy toward Russia, China, and India.Several years before the war, RAND proposed geopolitical measures such as military and economic support for Ukraine, destabilization of Belarus, and reducing Russian influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia. As we can see, this has been the U.S. policy for the past five or six years, if not longer. The U.S. used the “time-out” from 2014 to 2022 to arm and transform the Ukrainian military, combining the organization and experience of the Soviet military with that of the American or Israeli military. Although these reports do not explicitly mention an intent to draw Russia into a long and exhausting war in Ukraine, everything points to that. The U.S. and Britain did everything in their power to pull Russia into a conflict with Ukraine, making the Ukrainian quagmire a “Russian Vietnam” or something worse.
RAND and similar analyses discuss the U.S. strategy of pushing Russia out of Europe and imposing long-term sanctions that aim not only to weaken the Russian economy and its ability to wage war but also to undermine support for the war and Putin within Russian society. They speak of “containment” or encircling and limiting Russia before the war, which became operationally feasible only with the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian war. By starting this war, Russia gave a significant strategic gift to America, burdened itself heavily, sealed Europe’s fate, and brought new opportunities and risks to China. The U.S. has long urged the EU and NATO to increase military spending, which translates to tens and hundreds of billions for the American defense industry. Strategically, this means Europe is arming itself at its own expense to fight Russia in a war that is not its own, meaning a war in which it cannot be the victor. Hence the “generous offers” from Washington for the EU to fill the gaps in case of a U.S. withdrawal or shift to the Pacific to confront China.
Analytical teams like RAND proposed campaigns against the Russian authorities, attacking the regime’s legitimacy with claims of “dictatorship,” “elimination of political and other rivals,” or “grand corruption,” to weaken its strength. Admittedly, only the naive believed this could lead to regime change, or those who had an interest in implementing such a strategy. However, attacks on the legitimacy of the Moscow authorities have not, of course, justified those exaggerated expectations, but the question remains to what extent certain results were achieved. In other words, to what extent has support for Putin declined since the start of the war, despite polls showing a high level of support for the Russian president?
The main dilemma for American strategists is whether it is possible to wage two conflicts simultaneously—against Russia through a proxy war in Ukraine and against China through an economic war. Trump was an advocate of the “one at a time” school of thought, but due to pressure from the military and financial lobbies, which sabotaged peace in Ukraine through their puppet Zelenskyy, as well as through London and NATO, it has come to the point where a geopolitical simultaneous game can be realized. Or, that a dual focus is not a problem if the intensity and type of conflict are more precisely balanced.
The strategy of overextending Russia by drawing it into a long and exhausting war, accompanied by sanctions and other forms of attacks on Russian national interests, has achieved certain successes. Russia has indeed been pushed out of Europe, the war has brought casualties and enormous costs with little gained, and economic sanctions have caused economic problems. Beyond this primary goal, collateral objectives have also been achieved—taking control of Ukraine and disciplining the EU, which has lost autonomy vis-à-vis London and Washington. If they realistically expected a rapid collapse of Russia and Putin’s fall from power, then we can say they were not successful in that regard, as well as due to the shadow of China looming over Russia (and India), which is a nightmare for Washington strategists.
