The 2022 invasion of Ukraine marked only the peak of Russia’s long turn toward revisionism. Since the Cold War ended, Russia has sought to shape Europe’s security architecture and impose its will on smaller neighbors. The Kremlin has also clashed with the United States and Europe at the United Nations and in other multilateral bodies. Its leaders condemned the concept of a rules-based international order as a Western invention meant to cement U.S. hegemony. Styling itself as a vanguard promoting a more multipolar order, Russia sought to increase its own global clout, unencumbered by restraints and rules.

But now it finds itself in the curious position of watching the United States behave more like Russia. On the surface, this may seem a boon for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Instead of contending with a Washington that resists his land grabs and tussles with him in multilateral forums, he has a simpatico U.S. president who appears to ascribe to his might-makes-right worldview. Donald Trump has bashed international institutions in language reminiscent of Russian broadsides, withdrawing the United States from dozens of UN agencies and stripping them of funding while launching a rival conflict-settlement body, the Board of Peace. And he has asserted a right to coerce, even attack, smaller countries in the style of Russia’s bullying.

But in the long term, this turn of events may well be a loss for Russia. Putin’s strategy succeeded only insofar as the United States did not copy it—in other words, as long as Moscow unbound itself from rules while insisting that Washington remain shackled. And in truth, even as Russia decried legacy international institutions, it relied on them for leverage, using its veto power on the Security Council to wield influence. Trump’s actions now threaten to dilute that power. And tied up with the war on Ukraine, Putin has had to stand by and watch as Trump has eagerly used U.S. military force to throttle two key Russian partners, Iran and Venezuela.

The Kremlin is reaping some benefit from Trump’s bludgeoning approach to adversaries. The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has allowed Russia to rake in billions in extra oil revenues. And Russia may hope that Trump gets embroiled in one foreign policy disaster after another, ultimately weakening the United States’ global standing and helping Russia outlast the West in Ukraine. But it is far from certain that Putin can durably capitalize on Trump’s hit-and-run belligerence—and a mistake to imagine that if the United States begins to behave more like Russia, that will automatically benefit the Kremlin. The more likely outcome is that Russia will see its global power projection, already weakened by its war against Ukraine, erode further at the hands of the United States.

Russia has long channeled its resistance to U.S. primacy into disagreements with the United States and allied countries over international treaties and institutions. Putin memorably vented his frustrations in a 2007 speech in Munich, bemoaning the United States’ “disdain” for international law and the transformation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe into a “vulgar instrument designed to promote the foreign policy interests of one or a group of countries.” After the Obama administration and its allies responded to the 2014 annexation of Crimea by sanctioning and reducing their cooperation with Russia, Russian diplomats clashed with Western counterparts in multilateral bodies even more frequently. At meetings of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, for example, Russia faced disputes with the United States and its partners over efforts by Syria, a Russian ally, to retain and use chemical weapons. These spats allowed Moscow to build a narrative that Western states were merely using multilateral institutions as a cover........

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