MAKING THEMSELVES USEFUL:

Russia's leader has imperial ambitions, but he does not have the economy to support them, especially as a decade of high oil prices recedes into the past. Aside from arms and vodka, Russia sells no competitive products internationally. The ruble now costs about three times less of what it was before the financial crisis of 2008, and it doesn't help that politically Russia is isolated. Even China and India-the two countries that traditionally take the side of Russia's foreign policy and whose economies are in much better shape-are unlikely to make any substantial contributions to Putin's mission in Syria, if they were to jeopardize their relations with the US and EU.

Meanwhile, the Russian people are already paying a very high price for the annexation of Crimea: 19th century-style land-grabs may stimulate nationalism but not the economy. The Northern Caucasus may also explode again, as the relative peace in Chechnya is contingent on massive sums of cash sent from the Kremlin to Grozny and on the personal allegiance of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov to Putin. As Leo Tolstoy persuasively showed in his novel Hadji Murat, this is the kind of allegiance that can change at any moment.

In this political and economic environment, only a madman in Putin's shoes would want to involve his country into another costly war. Even roads are still non-existent in Russia: almost a quarter of a century after the fall of the Soviet Union, there is no good highway connecting two major Russian cities: Moscow and St. Petersburg.

So perhaps it's wise to welcome Putin to the region.

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