I think so too. I think Putin is very naive, even gullible and frankly in some ways kind of stupid. I think even now he still believes that he can get along with the West if only more sensible people were to come to power. I just don't think he gets it. He is and remains a diehard liberal to his core.

I don't think he's playing 4D chess as some would like to believe. I think he only ever made the right decision once all other possibilities had been exhausted and all other avenues were closed to Russia by events and powers outside of his control. And i also think he got exceedingly lucky in having inherited - even crippled as it was by the catastrophe of the 1990s - a very strong industrial base and enough remnants of the institutional legacy of the Soviet Union in the state, educational and social apparatus of Russia to coast on far enough for Russia's enemies to blunder their way to self-inflicted defeat.

I can't even give him credit for betting on China because that too was done only once it was the last real option he still had. Only once it became painfully clear what the global trajectory was, whose power was on the rise and whose was declining. He just hitched his wagon to the winning horse.