Putin the Strategist the West Lacks

Leadership is not the art of responding to every provocation. It is the discipline of knowing which provocations to ignore—and when ignoring them strengthens, rather than weakens, the path to victory.

Putin’s restrained response to the latest U.S. escalation—the seizure of a Russian-flagged tanker in international waters—has unsettled many observers, including some of his most ardent supporters. To them, restraint risks projecting weakness at a moment when reciprocity feels not only justified but necessary. Externally, that same restraint emboldens adversaries in the EU, the UK, and the United States who increasingly assume that Russia’s declared red lines will not ultimately be enforced.

Both readings miss the point.

What is unfolding is not hesitation, nor loss of nerve, but the behaviour of a strategist who has defined his objectives, structured his campaign accordingly, and refuses to be diverted by provocations that do not endanger the core mission. This distinction—between reacting to events and shaping them—is precisely what much of the West now lacks.

On the battlefield, Russia’s conduct reflects this same logic. Progress has been methodical rather than spectacular, offensive rather than reckless, and deliberately calibrated to minimise Russian losses while exhausting the adversary’s manpower, matériel, and political cohesion. This is not the tempo of a state seeking symbolic victories. It is the tempo of a leadership prioritising force preservation, sustainability, and end-state control.

The same strategic discipline governs Moscow’s response to external provocations. From maritime seizures to covert attacks and even incidents that directly threaten the Russian leadership, the pattern is consistent: absorb what does not materially affect the strategic objective; respond only where escalation advances, rather than distracts from, that objective.

This is where many critics—especially in the West, but increasingly among impatient observers elsewhere—make a critical error. They confuse restraint with incapacity.

In negotiation theory, this confusion is one of the most reliable paths to failure. When one side misreads self-imposed constraint as externally imposed weakness, it rationally recalibrates toward maximalist demands. The zone of possible agreement collapses—not because compromise is unavailable, but because misperception renders compromise politically irrational.

Thomas Schelling described this dynamic decades ago. Escalation dominance does not lie in constant retaliation, but in the ability to choose when, where, and at what level escalation occurs. Delayed response is often not the absence of power, but the conservation of it. By refusing to climb an adversary’s preferred escalation ladder, a strategist preserves the ability to build a different one altogether.

The Western error is to assume escalation is linear and symmetrical: that if retaliation does not come immediately or visibly, it cannot come decisively later. This assumption is false—and dangerous. Vertical dominance (strength at higher rungs) combined with horizontal selectivity (choice of theatre and timing) is precisely what allows a state to absorb tactical insults without surrendering strategic freedom.

Yet this misreading now drives Western behaviour. Asset seizures, sanctions enforcement beyond established legal boundaries, and tolerance of grey-zone operations all rest on the belief that Russia’s retaliation threshold is rising—or that it may not exist at all. Each unpunished provocation reinforces the conviction that pressure is cost-free.

Paradoxically, restraint—intended to preserve negotiation space—can undermine it. By denying adversaries immediate consequences, Moscow strengthens hardliners in Western capitals who argue that Russia can be coerced into accepting an outcome short of its stated objectives. Once that belief hardens, compromise becomes politically impossible for the coercing side, even when it is materially unsustainable.

This is the strategist’s dilemma: discipline is invisible to those who mistake noise for power.

Escalation dominance does not require constant demonstration. It requires credibility at decisive moments. But credibility is relational, not intrinsic. If restraint is consistently misread as weakness, adversaries will overreach—not because escalation is desired, but because they believe it will never be met.

The real danger, then, is no longer miscalculation on the battlefield, but misinterpretation at the strategic-cognitive level. Wars spiral not when red lines are enforced, but when they are tested under the false belief that they do not exist.

Leadership is not the art of responding to every provocation. It is the discipline of knowing which provocations to ignore—and when ignoring them strengthens, rather than weakens, the path to victory.

https://leonvermeulen.substack.com/p/putin-the-strategist-the-west-lacks