A well-connected Russian newspaper is reporting that Vladimir Putin plans to unite his domestic security, foreign espionage, and counterintelligence agencies into one superagency, in effect recreating the old Soviet KGB. If true, it suggests Putin is seriously worried about his future — and that he dramatically misunderstands the risks in this maneuver.

The circumstantial evidence that this or a similar measure is in the works has been steadily growing. The Federal Security Service (FSB), the agency likely to dominate this new body, has been acting with unusual confidence, even arresting senior figures from other services. Russia’s chief investigator, Alexander Bastrykin, who has opposed this plan, is reportedly about to be sacked.

Besides, this fits a wider picture of a drift toward authoritarianism. The last time the creation of a security superagency was raised was in 2012, in parallel with the proposal to form a National Guard to control the streets.

At that time, Putin shelved both ideas. In April, though, he unexpectedly announced the formation of the National Guard, a force of 200,000 riot police and security troops and another 200,000 security guards, under one of his closest allies, Gen. Viktor Zolotov. It will be fully operational within a year and has units across the country, ready to respond to any signs of protest.

Now independent commentators and opposition figures alike are sure the changes to the security services are also happening — and even more tellingly, Putin’s spokesperson refused to rule out the idea when given the perfect opportunity to kill the story.

Putin has many reasons to want a “Ministry of State Security”

The plan purportedly under discussion would merge the FSB, the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the Federal Guard Service (FSO) — very broadly analogous to the FBI, CIA, and Secret Service, respectively — into a new Ministry of State Security (MGB). Only military intelligence would be spared assimilation into this ministry, which would essentially have the same breadth of powers and duties as the KGB.

Indeed, the MGB was also the name of one of the KGB’s predecessors, which functioned as Joseph Stalin’s murderous secret police agency between 1946 and 53.

The new ministry would handle everything from espionage abroad to suppressing opposition at home. What’s more, it would do so pretty much without any oversight, responsible only to the president.

From Putin’s point of view, that would be a win on multiple levels.

It brings all the security agencies under one man. In the past, Putin governed through a kind of royal court, with multiple organizations with overlapping responsibilities constantly in competition. Increasingly, though, he is now relying on a handful of his closest allies instead.

This is because he simply doesn’t seem to trust the elite as a whole and instead is elevating a handful of people he does trust. The MGB would also be a powerful tool to control them and head off any political coups or conspiracies. In particular, it would gain lead responsibility for investigating allegations of corruption and economic crimes, and these have become to main weapon the Kremlin uses to intimidate and eliminate its enemies these days.

Third, it would allow even more intensive and aggressive espionage overseas. At present the SVR and FSB both run spy networks, and they and the FSO all have their own electronic and cyber operations. Bringing them all into one agency could be a way to use them most effectively and avoid them working at cross-purposes. In the Democratic National Committee hacking case, for example, there were two parallel operations from different Russian agencies, neither apparently even aware of the other.

That should send alarm bells ringing across the West. Russia’s intelligence community is already as extensive and aggressive as it was at the height of the Cold War. It’s involved in everything from old-fashioned human intelligence (recruiting local agents such as the infamous “illegals” ring exposed in the US in 2010) to cutting edge cyber espionage that has stolen secrets from systems across the world, from NATO to the US State Department. It is also heavily engaged in so-called “active measures” such as supporting divisive political movements and assassinating Chechen rebel sympathizers.

The fact that sometimes the various intelligence agencies often operate at cross-purposes or duplicate the others’ efforts has been one of the few pieces of good news for the West. Creating the MGB will, Moscow must hope, help eliminate this edge.

But Putin might come to regret it

Putin has been trying to make the security apparatus more loyal and efficient, less prone to turf wars and corruption. The irony is that while creating the MGB might look like a step forward for him, it is likely actually to make things worse.

There will be even more scope for turf wars inside a superagency than before, as everything from budgets to responsibilities will be up for grabs. Meanwhile, it will be harder to control corruption. All the recent cases of corrupt security officials being caught have been the result of investigations from outside security agencies. Under this plan, there would be no outside security agencies.

The security agencies’ affairs divisions have tended to become nothing more than the protection racketeers’ protection racketeer, skimming their share from scams they uncover. For example, Mikhail Maximenko, head of internal affairs for the Investigations Committee — another security agency likely to lose its independence — was recently arrested by the FSB while arranging for a wanted gangster to walk free.  With no outside bodies able to investigate the MGB, the opportunities for embezzlement and shakedowns will be greater than ever.

Meanwhile, Putin will be creating an agency that could ultimately come to challenge his quasi-dictatorial rule.

Putin is clearly concerned about the possibility of a conspiracy within the elite to oust him: This is a perennial topic of discussion in Moscow. He appears to see agencies like the National Guard and MGB as the guarantors of his power. However, the old model did at least mean any coup would have to involve many different groups. Ironically, Putin might be creating for the first time a single agency with enough power to topple him.

While that is unlikely, there is another way this agency will limit Putin’s power. Already, the intelligence he receives is dangerously politicized, slanted in ways designed to please him. There is no Russian equivalent of congressional oversight, not even an independent national security adviser to warn him when he is being fed slanted and partial data.

At least when several different agencies are briefing him, he may get multiple perspectives. The more Putin depends on just one agency, the more he may find himself free to make decisions — but always based on what the MGB tells him. Being the power behind the throne, after all, is often just as good as being on the throne.

Mark Galeotti is an incoming senior research fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague, a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the director of Mayak Intelligence. He blogs at In Moscow’s Shadows and tweets as @MarkGaleotti.

There is currently a great deal of alarmist concern, triggered by a recent RAND report, about Russia’s supposed ability to conquer the Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, three former Soviet republics that are now part of NATO — and thus drive a wedge into NATO without the West being able to do anything to stop it.

But before we start to panic, it’s important to consider not just whether Moscow might ever actually want to do this, but also all the many ways in which the West could retaliate other than with military force. There are, after all, more ways to win wars than just with tanks and fighters.

The reality is that not only does Russia likely have zero ambitions to capture the Baltic states in the first place, but even if it did, the US and NATO could do a whole lot to punish it for doing so.

That’s because for all the talk of Russia’s brilliant use of “asymmetric” or “hybrid” warfare — that is, fighting not so much on the regular battlefield but by using all kinds of sneaky and unconventional approaches, from information and cyber warfare to political manipulation — the truth is that if anyone has an “asymmetric” or “hybrid” edge, it is actually the West.

The RAND report: Russia takes the Baltic states while NATO is caught napping

The present debate was sparked by a RAND report, released earlier this year, that was based on a series of war games whose goal was to evaluate “the shape and probable outcome of a near-term Russian invasion of the Baltic states.” The report concluded that “as presently postured, NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members,” essentially the Baltic states, which, it claimed, Russia could conquer in at most 60 hours.

There are serious questions over the RAND study’s numbers and assumptions, not least that the Russians would get pretty much everything right and NATO would be caught by surprise. Just because the Russians could take Crimea (against no opposition) and bomb rebels in Syria (who have no serious air defenses), that doesn’t make them 10 feet tall — and any invasion would be impossible to hide from the West, even under the guise of a “military exercise.” That might have worked two and a half years ago, but since Crimea we are on the lookout for such scams.

The study also fails to consider the most crucial question: intent. In other words, would Russia even want to take the Baltic states in the first place?

The Baltic states would just be a major headache for Putin

The answer, in short, is probably no. Vladimir Putin is, of course, currently engaged in an aggressive campaign to raise Russia’s international standing and undermine the West’s will to punish him for his actions in Crimea and Ukraine. However, he is neither a lunatic nor some kind of imperialist desperate to rebuild the old Soviet Union.

Conquering the Baltic states may be possible, but it would win him the overt enmity of the West, the worry of his other neighbors, and three territories full of disgruntled locals with a history of guerrilla warfare against Muscovite conquerors.

And for what? There are no resources of the sort Russia could readily use (their real assets are their people, who would hardly be enthusiastic about their new overlords). Rather than dividing NATO, it would probably unite and galvanize it and make Moscow look dangerously erratic. Even China would be alarmed to find its neighbor and quasi-ally suddenly flirting with global war.

The West has many ways to make Russia pay if it did take the Baltic states

Even if Russia did take the Baltic states, though, the West would have plenty of ways to punish Russia short of launching a full military counterattack.

The first is with financial means. If Russia relies on tanks for its attack, the West could turn to banks for its response.

An invasion of the Baltic states would be grounds for invoking NATO’s Article V, which treats an attack on one member as an attack on all members, thus making all NATO members at war with Russia. Member states could not only seize any Russian state assets within their jurisdictions but could — and should — extend this to Russian companies and the personal property of those Russians deemed to be significant players within the state.

Oligarchs and officials alike have gleefully taken advantage of Western financial openness and rule of law to stash their usually ill-gotten gains away from the Kremlin’s hands. That could be turned into a vulnerability, a chance to encourage dissent and division within an elite more interested in its own kleptocratic opportunism than in Putin’s historical vision.

Not only could the West close its markets to Russia — and likewise ban all exports there — but it could also use its political and economic muscle to try to isolate Russia from its other trading partners. Russia imports almost 40 percent of its food, and while countries such as Iran are unlikely to be willing to curtail exports to Russia, others without land borders with the country could be prevented from supplying the country’s needs.

The West could also in effect force Russia out of SWIFT, the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. This would severely limit Russian banks’ capacity to move money and engage in economic activity, and although it’s not the “nuclear option” some make it out to be — in part because there are some ways around it — it would still be a severe blow to the Russian economy.

Another way the West can hurt Russia is through cyberattacks. While Russian cyberattacks have been most evident, this is more because Moscow has been more willing to encourage its hackers to cause mischief in the West than because it has that much greater capacity. The West could strike back in kind once it was willing to take off the virtual gloves.

Putin may be willing to see ordinary Russians make sacrifices in the name of geopolitics, but with the ruble already having devalued by some 50 percent, and more than half of household budgets in Russia currently being spent on food, how long would they be willing and able to put up with that?

The old stereotypes of the fatalistic Russian peasant willing to endure any hardship for the motherland are long since out of date. Putin’s popularity at home depends on giving the appearance of easy wins, whether in Crimea or Syria.

What happens to that narrative when, for example, cyber attacks crash the cellphone networks on which Russians have come to rely? How does the country function when the software behind the railways and airports becomes compromised? How do Russians buy, sell, and work when banking systems are hit and ATMs closed down?

There are also “non-kinetic” military options that play to Western strengths and would have a disproportionate impact on Russia. NATO is worried about the threat of “A2/AD” — anti-access/area denial — as Russian missiles and submarines prevent NATO planes from flying in Central Europe and NATO ships from operating in the Baltic Sea.

But, conversely, NATO can close the Dardanelles to any Russian military or civilian shipping, locking it out of the Mediterranean, just as it can also deny Russia the Baltic, and maybe also the Barents and Okhotsk seas to the north and east. Beyond that, the West controls the global sea lanes and could impound Moscow’s ships and cargoes, or prevent third-country trade with Russia.

Of course, there are limits to such indirect ways of waging war. China can hardly be leaned on — although it is unlikely to be comfortable with a Kremlin that is willing to start such a pyrrhic and dangerous war — and none of this will be easy or cheap.

But this is war, and if the West wants to save the lives of its soldiers, it has to spend money instead.

To really deter Russia, the West needs to stop playing nice

The West can do it, though — and Moscow knows this. While we have been worrying about Moscow’s ability to wage so-called “hybrid warfare,” the truth is that this kind of warfare is actually a Western strength. Moscow is just hoping we don’t notice.

Russia has in the past often managed to punch above its weight because it has been able to assume that West will be moderate and well-mannered. It has kidnapped an Estonian security officer across the border, shielded the people who shot down a civilian airliner, buzzed US warships, and invaded a neighbor.

The day the West decides to be as ruthless as Russia will be a very black one for the Kremlin. However, it is vital not only that the West grow to realize this — because if we feel powerless, we become vulnerable to Putin’s mind games and power plays — but also that we practice and posture such that the Kremlin appreciates that this is a real threat.

Just as Moscow puts on an exercise simulating an attack on a Western country or talks about nuclear attacks when it wants to push our buttons, we can do the same. Wargaming closing the Mediterranean or openly discussing how economic warfare could cripple an unnamed but obvious enemy will spark furious denunciations from Moscow. But the very scale of the response will indicate just how seriously the Kremlin takes such a risk.

The fact is that Russian security discussions are dominated by an awareness of the country’s vulnerabilities to a stronger, richer, larger, more advanced West. Up to now, though, we have not let ourselves acknowledge our strengths.

The greatest risk for the West is, after all, not its weakness of means but a perception of its weakness of will, both at home and in Moscow. After all, deterrence only works when it is displayed, when the other side knows the misery and ruin it risks.

Mark Galeotti is a professor of global affairs at New York University, a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the director of Mayak Intelligence. He blogs at In Moscow’s Shadows and is on Twitter as @MarkGaleotti.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin went through one of his ritual Direct Line call-in shows: a three-hour, 40-minute marathon covering everything from the state of the roads in Omsk (they’re terrible) to whether he swears (yes, but only to himself). It was a pretty lackluster spectacle this time; Putin himself seeming bored.

But the event, however staged and predictable, performed a function common to his public appearances: furthering the myth — dominant in both in his own country and the West — that Putin is Russia, the unquestioned and solitary master of his realm.

But it’s not true. And when we buy into this idea, we give him more power than he deserves and make it harder to predict or even influence his next move.

Putin is indeed the “decider” who has the final word on every major policy issue. He can make or break any minister. He can start a war or end one. Yet for all that, if we think that he can and does control everything Russia does at home and abroad, we dramatically misunderstand how the country really works.

First of all, Putin reigns only so long as he can pacify, balance, and over-awe Russia’s sharp-toothed and unforgiving elite. But he can also only rule through the elite. This came up strongly during Direct Line. When asked about officials shaking down entrepreneurs, he condemned it, but admitted that “such is our mentality, especially when it comes to bureaucrats.”

That extends to Putin’s rule over parts of Russia itself. When asked about the violent threats Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov made against opposition figures, he shrugged it off, saying that “people in the Caucasus are hotheads. So it is not easy for these people to learn to serve as high-ranking government officials.”

Time and again during the performance, Putin was in effect confessing to his own political impotence.

He can intervene in specific cases, sure. The very first question was about the poor state of roads in Omsk, and before the show was over local officials had pledged to repair 21 of them by May 1. But Putin cannot fix his country himself, street by street, and the fact that he resorts to these sorts of case-by-case interventions shows his limits.

In the past, he has consolidated his legitimacy as the “good czar” through such individual cases. But after 16 years, and as life is getting harder for Russians, this is becoming an increasingly threadbare act and instead underscores the extent to which he is either not in command — or doesn’t really care unless embarrassed on national TV.

This dynamic even applies to foreign policy, traditionally the preserve of the head of state. In Ukraine’s Donbas region, for example, a recent spate of ceasefire violations is likely to have been initiated by local rebel militias rather than Moscow. Putin’s control is finite.

To be sure, Putin is a very powerful leader. It is not just that he is president in a hyper-presidential system, with a wide range of powers, a toothless and obedient legislature, no meaningful opposition, and sky-high personal approval ratings. Arguably he has hollowed out all Russia’s institutions. The fact that in 2008 he could hand over the presidency to his prime minister, Dmitri Medvedev, yet remain the power behind the scenes and take back the job in 2012 demonstrates the level of his personal power.

After all, Putin is not powerful because he is president; he is president because he is powerful.

But as he demonstrated in his call-in show, Putin doesn’t have all the answers — and the more he emphasizes his own role as the dominant leader, the more short-term and opportunistic his initiatives become.

This gets to something important: The Kremlin’s policymaking can be more shortsighted and arbitrary than the myth of Putin would have us believe. Russia is not always a rigidly centralized dictatorship but is at times a marketplace of ideas in which Russia’s oligarchs, officials, commentators, and interest groups are engaged in constant competition to pitch their ideas to Putin through the press, think tanks, reports, and personal contacts.

In theory this could be a form of pluralism, but in practice it is a system in which the policies that catch Putin’s eye and imagination have the best chance of success, regardless of their true merits. Given that the real discussions over policy tend to take place behind closed doors and within a very small circle of Putin’s closest cronies, it also means they rarely get careful and professional examination.

This month, for example, Putin suddenly announced the creation of a new security force, the National Guard, out of security units currently controlled by the interior ministry. He seems to have done so without consulting the minister or his experts, so they are now scratching their heads over practical implications that clearly had not been thought through. The police’s SWAT teams now work for the National Guard; if an officer is in danger, will they have to ask the Guard’s permission to get armed response units there, or even pay them for their services?

The more we buy into the notion of Putin the “bold strategist,” who is “acting like a grandmaster of chess while Obama stumbles at checkers,” the more we empower him and disempower ourselves.

We need to be honest and realistic. Putin has often played a weak hand very well. But that does not always mean he gets it right. His intervention into Ukraine has become a messy, expensive stalemate; he is lucky his Syrian adventure has not blown up in his face. But in foreign affairs in particular, image and reputation matter; we hand Putin a considerable advantage by accepting his own mythmaking.

We also miss out on the clues pointing toward future Russian policy and the opportunities to influence it.

We have no way of penetrating the small circle around Putin where decisions are ultimately made. However, by better understanding the haphazard means by which elites signal their desired policies to Putin, we can watch those more public channels and, perhaps, get advance warning of what is being discussed there.

A plan drawn up by people working for Kremlin-connected businessman Konstantin Malofeev in early 2014, for example, was essentially the blueprint for what became the war in Ukraine. Moscow’s rebuke of Bashar al-Assad in February for speaking of fighting to a full military victory in Syria was, in hindsight, a harbinger of Russia’s partial drawdown of Russian forces the next month.

Trying to make sense of all the little clues, of all the overt and covert attempts to lobby the Kremlin, is hard work. No wonder we tend instead to fixate on Putin, and the degree to which he presents himself as the sole master of Russian policy. But this leaves us prone to being wrong-footed every time.

Back in Soviet times, the West had armies of scholars and analysts practicing “Kremlinology,” the arcane arts of trying to predict shifts in Soviet policy and politics through clues from the order in which officials were seated at parades to reading between the lines of editorials in Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper. These days, the ranks of such skilled practitioners of such arts have been thinned, with no new generation to replace them. So instead we watch and marvel at the latest macho Putin photo op, and miss out on the chance to understand the politics behind the poses.

Mark Galeotti is a professor of global affairs at New York University and a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations. He blogs at In Moscow’s Shadows and is on Twitter as @MarkGaleotti.

How bizarre photos help Putin stay in power