Moscow may have opened a can of worms it wishes it hadn't. (As, I suspect, all of us eventually will.)
Putin's hybrid wars were paragon examples of threading the needle through the rules-based world order, using international legality against itself through a combination of obfuscation, ambiguation and chutzpah.
But if we're opening a new age of conquest, the Russians are screwed. Their war machine is generationally wounded. They're demographically weak and geographically boxed in by Europe, China and--across the Arctic--the United States. The Central Asian territories offer little in the way of rich conquest. Their best-case scenario is not losing de facto sovereignty (or Siberia) to Beijing.
The point is that when there is no shortage of money it is very hard to find people willing to go to war, both because they are more educated, are afraid to lose their lives and they (rightfully) think they can make a bigger impact in the world using their IQ to build stuff as opposed to destroying stuff.
Russia HDI is much lower compared to the US and yet the war in Ukraine is unpopular among the populace and they have to conscript people to go fight.
If anything what you have described could happen in places with HDI inferior to Russia (mainly Africa) as their necessity to conscript people and sending them to the front indicates that not even at levels of wealth and HDI of Russia people are willing to go fight voluntarily or with good spirit and high morale.
> when there is no shortage of money it is very hard to find people willing to go to war
This is not borne by history nor theory [1]. (Also, fundamentally, the notion of "no shortage of money" doesn't exist. There is always more.)
Petrostates, in particular, tend to increase their war mongering when they get rich [2][3].
> think they can make a bigger impact in the world using their IQ to build stuff as opposed to destroying stuff
Correct, "the economics of modern production means that quite a lot of countries will have absolutely nothing to gain from a war, even a successful one" [4]. But only if the political system incorporates the views of the median inhabitant [1]. (Also, plenty of invasions are pitched as bloodless.)
Putin's hybrid wars were paragon examples of threading the needle through the rules-based world order, using international legality against itself through a combination of obfuscation, ambiguation and chutzpah.
But if we're opening a new age of conquest, the Russians are screwed. Their war machine is generationally wounded. They're demographically weak and geographically boxed in by Europe, China and--across the Arctic--the United States. The Central Asian territories offer little in the way of rich conquest. Their best-case scenario is not losing de facto sovereignty (or Siberia) to Beijing.