Abstract
With the annexation of the Crimea and the engagement in confrontation with the West, Russia has embarked on a course of making the military force into a useful instrument of policy. Moscow has effectively sacrificed the goals of modernization and development for the sake of geopolitical ambitions. The question about the price of Russia’s revisionist enterprise is relevant for many states that are not satisfied with the unfair and often discriminating rules of the world order, first of all China. Russia hopes to inspire other states dissatisfied with the “unipolar” world order to challenge the West more boldly, but the result of its assault on the principles of nonintervention and territorial integrity might work in the opposite way. The states of East Asia could take a good measure of the risk inherent to embarking on the course of projecting power at the expense of modernization and become even more committed than before to upholding their unique prosperity-producing peace. China has a vested interest in Russian internal stability and must be worried by the prospect of a post-Putin crisis.