The evolution of Russia's National Security Strategy -- a document whose latest version was published on Dec. 31 -- provides valuable material for the study of the angst, paranoia and befuddlement now gripping the Kremlin.

It's well known that during his third presidential term, Putin has cultivated the image of a Western enemy out to destroy Russia. That this concept has found a way into the strategic document is not surprising or particularly important. The significance of the rewritten national security concept is that, for the first time in the 18 years since President Boris Yeltsin signed off on the first version, the Kremlin officially regrets opening up the country economically and culturally.

Yeltsin signed the first National Security Concept, as it was then known, in 1997. Even in the first post-Soviet years, when Russia did its best to integrate into the Western world, the document called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's eastward expansion a national security threat because military groupings near the Russian borders "are a potential military danger even in the absence of aggressive intentions toward Russia." It wasn't the drafters', or Yeltsin's, biggest worry, though. The economy was:

The economic crisis is the main reason for the emergence of national security threats to the Russian Federation. It is expressed as substantial production decline, drops in investment and innovation activity, the destruction of scientific and technological potential, stagnation in agriculture, disarray in the payment and monetary system, fiscal revenue shrinkage, increases in public debt.

David Fuller's view

Economic weakness makes any country less stable.  The only difference with Russia is its strong military and FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation – ex-KGB).  They protect Putin and he increases their power and influence, as we have seen.  It is a stable, totalitarian structure when the economy is strong but less predictable and potentially volatile when GDP weakens significantly.