Robert Kaplan, one of America's most influential geopolitical thinkers and author of 24 books, has warned that Russia after Putin could face a "low-calorie version of the former Yugoslavia." The reason, he argues, is that Russia has always been weakly institutionalized - and Putin governs through concentric circles of oligarchs, crime figures, and intelligence figures rather than functioning state institutions.
As "Hvylya" reports, Kaplan made the remarks in an interview with Ryan Murdock while discussing his latest book "Waste Land," in which he argues the modern world resembles one giant Weimar Republic - permanently lurching from crisis to crisis.
Kaplan drew a stark contrast with China, noting that Beijing "has strong institutions." If Xi Jinping were to fall ill tomorrow, he said, the country's standing committee would elect new leadership and govern. Russia offers no such safety net. "If Putin were to get deathly ill tomorrow, it is unclear what or who would replace him," Kaplan said, adding that Putin "has committed a great blunder in this war, but nobody could replace him, perhaps because nobody wants his job."
The roots of Russia's institutional weakness, Kaplan argued, trace back to 1917. Had Lenin and Trotsky failed in what he called "really a coup d'etat," the czars would have eventually become constitutional monarchs. Russia would have been "corrupt, a bit unstable," but tens of millions would not have been murdered. Instead, seventy years of communism did "tremendous damage to Russian political culture" - damage that persists under Putin, whose style of rule Kaplan described as still carrying the problems of communism.
Even the czars, Kaplan noted, "had very little control of what went on in the hinterlands." This pattern of weak central authority makes any post-Putin transition inherently dangerous - not because of who might seize power, but because the system itself may simply collapse once its central figure is gone. As the Munich Security Conference recently underscored, Russia remains the most significant and direct threat to European security - making the question of what follows Putin all the more urgent.