BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians growth and was among the vanguard in embracing best to maximize the intimidating effect on other e-government and other innovations associated with neighbors. It conducted war games in which 33,000 a modern open society. Since the invasion of Ukraine troops rehearsed the invasion of Sweden, Norway, and the Russian military's menacing gestures along Finland, and Denmark.*® The Russian navy has held its border, Estonia has ramped up defense spending multiple, large-scale exercises in the Black Sea to defy and launched war games to increase preparedness. NATO, assert its control over Crimea, and threaten Indeed, all three Baltic countries announced major Georgia.'* Russian and Abkhaz separatist officials increases in military spending in 2016. have announced what amounts to a merger of troops from the two sides under the command of a Russian Conditions are even worse for states where Russia officer.'5 Russia's military is developing the capacity has instigated frozen conflicts. Russia maintains to simultaneously carry out several operations on the military bases in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both scale of the Ukraine conflict—limited, rapid offensives on the territory of Georgia, and in Transnistria. These involving elite troops, deception, and propaganda that enclaves, as well as the occupied portions of Ukraine, would leave opponents fumbling for an appropriate re- are impoverished, heavily militarized, and marked by sponse.!® The intervention in Syria has already demon- gangsterism and corruption. strated Russia's ability to project force unexpectedly in a new theater while maintaining its existing engage- Crimea is an instructive case for neighboring peoples ments in Ukraine and elsewhere. who live under the threat of Russian military interven- tion. Residents of the peninsula enjoyed a reasonable Russia's renewed embrace of cross-border aggres- array of civil liberties under the Ukra