Yes, there is much more the democracies can do to ensure Vladimir Putin’s defeat

It’s not impossible,” says Sir David Lidington, the former deputy prime minister and now chairman of the Royal United Services Institute. Russia has often surprised us. Western intelligence agencies didn’t anticipate the toppling of Nikita Krushchev in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis or the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev that triggered the collapse of the Soviet Union. We cannot entirely rule out the dethroning of Putin. But, as Sir David also says, nor should we be counting on it. It will be a major error to overinvest in scenarios that may turn out to be false.