Putin Is Taking a Huge Gamble

In 2002, at the height of the unipolar moment, as the United States prepared to invade Iraq, some of the country’s most prominent international-relations professors tried to solve a puzzle: Why were other major powers in the world that opposed U.S. foreign policy not doing anything about the invasion? Russia, China, France, and Germany made their views known at the United Nations, but they would not back Saddam Hussein. Nor were they building up their militaries or changing their alliances to oppose the United States.

When states push back against other states that they see as threatening or powerful, political scientists call this behavior “balancing.” In a collection of essays titled , some of these professors suggested that this basic act of geopolitical competition had been missing since the