Ross Douthat draws attention to how little Western governments have at stake in disputes like the one in Ukraine:

But at the same time, from the West’s perspective, the stakes in these disputes are relatively low. The struggle for influence is taking place on Russia’s very doorstep, and there’s no real possibility that a Putinist victory in Kiev or the Caucasus would inspire copycat right-wing movements to seize power in, say, Italy or France or Germany, the way Communist movements nearly did in the early 20th century.

This is true, and one reason for this is that there is no discernible ideology to be exported and no real attempt to export a “Putinist” system elsewhere. There is no potential for foreign imitations of Putinism, because it is a system designed solely for Russia, and it is one that has no need or ability to replicate itself in other countries. For all of Mead’s endless warnings about “revisionist” powers, the supposed revisionists haven’t been the ones seeking to change things very much over the last two decades. Moscow predictably acts as a status quo power, which is why it is frequently on the defensive and makes its policies in reaction to Western initiatives. Russia usually only “wins” when Western governments and publics aren’t willing to compete, and otherwise it can’t achieve very much because its own policy is almost always defined by blocking or preventing something that Western governments want to do. So Russia is credited with a “win” in Syria, but only because of the overwhelming opposition to Western intervention there among Westerners, but in most cases Russia can’t stop Western governments once they decide to do something and usually won’t even take the risk of trying.

Western policies in the former Soviet Union have been so poor and in some cases quite harmful because they are intended to reduce Russian influence in countries where Russia is bound to retain significant influence no matter what the U.S. or EU does. There is almost never any consideration given to how Russia will react to these policies because so few Westerners are willing to imagine how those policies might appear to us if the situations were reversed. That has needlessly subjected neighboring countries to the effects of great power rivalry, but it has also reminded everyone how little Western governments will risk for the sake of expanding their influence in this part of the world. Some of our politicians and pundits create the impression that these countries matter to us far more than they actually do, they lead these nations to expect support that was never going to be forthcoming, and then predictably leave them to suffer the consequences of our heedless overreaching.