This much we know: In the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has transformed itself from a one-party state into a one-pipeline state—a semiauthoritarian regime in democratic clothing. At the same time, Russia has grown increasingly independent and unpredictable on the international political scene. And now that Vladimir Putin has successfully installed his handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, he is nowhere near relinquishing his grip on power. Putin’s foreign policy is here to stay.

But there’s so much we can’t know about the direction Russia is heading. It is, at once, a regime that offers its citizens consumer rights but not political freedoms, state sovereignty but not individual autonomy, a market economy but not genuine democracy. It is both a rising global power and a weak state with corrupt and inefficient institutions. The Kremlin’s regime seems both rock solid and extremely vulnerable, simultaneously authoritarian and wildly popular. Although Russia’s economy has performed well in the past 10 years, it is more dependent on the production and export of natural resources today than it was during Soviet times. Its foreign policy is no less puzzling. Russia may be more democratic today, but it is less predictable and reliable as a world player than was the Soviet Union. The more capitalist and Westernized Russia becomes, the more anti-Western its policies seem. The more successful Russia’s foreign policy looks, the more unclear its goals appear.

Russia’s contradictory development has succeeded once again in capturing the world’s political imagination. Putin’s tenure has left most people confused about what role Russia now wants to play in the world. In recent years, for example, Moscow has...