Denunciation of the agreements signed in 2008 and 2009 with NATO and a ban on land and air transit through Russia could also be a possibility. This would make the United States and its allies hurriedly look for alternative routes in the Caucasus and Kazakhstan, which would be costlier and longer, while transit through Pakistan would be fraught with serious security risks.

Experts also mention Russia’s pressure on its Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) allies to curtail their cooperation with the United States and NATO on Afghanistan. This is possible in principle, but some of Moscow’s partners may sabotage this effort to avoid putting all their eggs in Russia’s basket. Uzbekistan, which has officially quit the CSTO and is not Russia’s ally, would be least reliable.

Another traditional area where Russia could make a U-turn and thus influence the United States is arms control and international nuclear security treaties, especially since practically all of them contain a clause allowing Russia to withdraw if its national security is endangered. In fact, when New START was under negotiation, some skeptical voices in Moscow questioned the need for new agreements with the United States. The treaty’s preamble, which links defensive and offensive strategic armaments, is interpreted in Russia as providing an indisputable right to repudiate all agreements if the United States proceeds with its missile defense plan. Since U.S. missile defense deployment is underway, it won’t be hard to find such justification in Russia.

In March of this year, rumors emerged that Russia would renege on the agreement giving American inspectors access to its nuclear arsenals. This hasn’t happened yet, but limiting transparency measures is a natural possibility as bilateral relations are increasingly characterized by militaristic rhetoric.

Some international treaties, particularly those signed by Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, were never popular in the Russian strategic community. The wisdom of continuing to honor the 1987 INF Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), to which Russia acceded in 1996, are most often questioned. In a confrontation with the United States, Moscow could abandon them, especially since the CTBT has not been ratified by the United States or China and the INF Treaty is already producing fierce disagreements between Russia and America.

Following through on Vladimir Putin’s recent indication that Russia could terminate the INF Treaty would quickly affect the course of events, most likely reviving Europe’s worries of the 1980s, when the Old World feared becoming a battlefield between the United States and the Soviet Union. At the time, Europe’s fears were two-fold: On one hand, Europeans urged America to strengthen Europe’s nuclear forces to deter the Soviets; On the other hand, there were strong anti-war protest movements in Europe directed against America, which left-wing activists and sympathetic leftist politicians said was ready to sacrifice Europe to further its own superpower ambitions. Now, of course, the situation is different: Russia is not the Soviet Union, nor can it mobilize the broad European public for its benefit. At the same time, however, America’s popularity in Europe has plunged, especially after a series of U.S. scandals and failures in the world, ranging from mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq to electronic surveillance and spying.

Another possibility that would annoy America would be Russia’s return to Cuba and restoration of the Russian radar station at Lourdes, which was closed by Vladimir Putin in 2001. This option was discussed in 2007, when Russia and the United States were at loggerheads over missile defense, but things did not go any further then. Today, this looks more probable, as Russia is generally bent on restoring relations with former Soviet allies. The closure of the radar station angered Cuba’s then-leader, Fidel Castro, and its present leadership will most likely welcome its reopening, especially since it will give the country an additional source of much needed revenue. After Putin’s visit to Cuba in July 2014, the Russian president publicly denounced rumors of a deal to reactivate the station and said that no agreement has been reached. Of course, this doesn’t exclude the possibility of reaching one later.

Russia can also make things harder for the United States in the Middle East. Moscow’s firm and unyielding position on Syria in 2011-2014 has partly restored the Kremlin’s authority in the region, which was lost after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Russia’s disinterest in the region during the 1990s. Many countries, including those historically relying on the United States but deeply disappointed by its ill-considered and inconsistent policies in the region, expect Russia to assume a more active position.

With Iraq falling apart and the Syrian-Iraqi region turning into a battlefield for religious war, Russia can step up its support for traditional partners such as Bashar al-Assad, Iran, and pro-Iranian Shiites in Iraq. Lifting sanctions on Tehran if its nuclear talks end successfully would allow Moscow to resume full-scale arms sales, energy trade, and peaceful nuclear cooperation with Iran.

However, frankly speaking, it’s hard to imagine what exciting and provocative steps Moscow could take now to create more problems for the United States in the Middle East, as the situation there is already highly chaotic – even by Middle Eastern standards.

Fenenko comes to the conclusion in his article that unlike the Soviet Union, Russia can, as a last resort, take drastic measures to destabilize the global situation. He thinks that, in the Soviet Union, the prevailing view was that global stability in itself is valuable, even at the cost of serious concessions. Now the situation has changed. Russia’s changed circumstances since the Soviet era is impelling Moscow to look at tougher retaliatory measures. The Soviet leadership felt more secure in its superpower status and could afford not to respond to provocation. The Russian leadership has no such safety margin.

However, it’s hard to agree with this conclusion. In fact, the Soviet Union did feel quite secure and never doubted its ability to control processes, since dramatic and dangerous confrontation always occurred within certain limits, written or unwritten. This enabled the Kremlin (and the White House) to do many things. For example, Moscow could afford to support and even foment regional conflicts, finance the “right” kind of extremist and terrorist organizations, test its strength in different parts of the world, and raise the degree of confrontation while firmly believing that de-escalation was quite possible, if necessary.

Today, the Russian leadership thinks differently. Vladimir Putin has spoken often about the dangers of a chaotic, unpredictable, and uncontrollable world, a world of unforeseen consequences. Uncertainty about the results is the main deterrent to geopolitical troublemaking. The Russian leadership believes that the United States pursues an adventurist and irresponsible policy by getting engaged in different foreign campaigns and endeavors with unfathomable results. The growing uncontrollability of the international environment is seriously worrying the Kremlin, which is well aware of Russia’s vulnerabilities to instability.

Thus the desire to improve Russia’s position by fishing in “murky waters” is not currently the underlying motive of the Russian leadership. Still, Russia views what is required for achieving stability differently than does the United States in some respects—as is obvious in Syria—and steps by Moscow to promote stability could instead look—in American eyes—like attempts to promote the opposite. Setting this aside, however, Russia’s actions are as a rule reactive and defensive in nature, even if they look offensive and aggressive. The incorporation of Crimea is not an exception to this, as it was driven primarily by the fear of having on its border either a completely uncontrolled and explosive state or an officially-avowed anti-Russian one. (Actually, both of these outcomes are still possible and an anti-Russian Ukraine seems increasingly likely.) Russia’s involvement, albeit quite reluctant, in the civil war in eastern Ukraine only bears out Moscow’s concerns that nothing can be predicted.

Besides, we should remember one of Putin’s personal features: Being generally quite suspicious of the West in general and having no positive feelings about the United States in particular, he is very fastidious about the promises he makes. This explains why Russia has so far not even considered terminating its cooperation with Washington and NATO on Afghanistan, even though this would be a logical step now that relations have chilled. It is notable that even the most consistent opponents of the United States in the State Duma mentioned this possibility for the first time only on July 17 of this year, after the Obama administration imposed fairly tough sanctions on selected Russian banks and energy companies.

Taking all of this into account, it would be hard to imagine Russia deliberately destabilizing the world order and becoming a global spoiler preoccupied with damaging the United States. However, Moscow can pursue a different strategy, one not destructive (destroying the existing world order) but instead constructive (building a new world order). The world may already be ripe for this, and Russia has some tools for doing this that it has not used yet. This brings us back to “martial arts” and Russia’s search for asymmetrical policy responses.

Russia’s Asymmetrical Option: Global Aikido