Iyad el-Baghdadi @iyadelbaghdadi
(He is a liberal Islamic political analysist based in Europe who looks at politics from a more non-western pov. This is in answer to a question posed by someone else)
I am not an IR scholar and I feel like a bit of a jerk even answering this, given it's addressed to people far more knowledgeable than me, but I'll bite (apologies in advance):
I used to think Russia is heading to be one of those "poles" of a multipolar world, a great power. Now I think that Russia has already lost "Cold War II", and that long-term it's heading towards either integrating with Europe, or becoming a Chinese vassal
I also used to think that Europe has a Russia problem. I don't think that's necessarily true, Europe has a Putin problem, but except for nukes, Russia is just no match for "the West", and Russia has no prospects on the horizon to reverse this or bridge the gap.
And I must admit, at some point my mind drifted towards the connection between leadership & grievance. Putin is weaponizing 30 years of grievance, throwing whatever power he has onto the battlefield. But ultimately (beyond military/gas/nukes) he has little power...
But China has 100+ years of grievance (it even calls it "the century of humiliation"), and it has a lot more power. So far, it hasn't chosen to throw all of its accumulated power onto a battlefield. But what if China finds its own Putin?
The meaning of power has diversified a lot over the past century. It used to mean gold, guns, and men. Now it's so much more. Russia has no Silicon Valley, it has no Hollywood, it has no Wall Street, it has no EU. But Putin still has a 19th century understanding of "power"...
Going off on a tangent (but also closing the thread): I'm immensely frustrated by people who do not understand this diversification of power and continue to think that power = weapons. Is weapons a form of power? Yes. Is it all of power? Not even close. Not even nearly close.