What goes around comes around. Curses, like chickens, come home to roost. Such adages simultaneously admonish and comfort: Bad actors, whether you or those who wrong you, will eventually get their karmic comeuppance. In reality, however, bad actors often escape accountability for their behavior, sometimes owing to luck and sometimes as the outcome of a successful tactic to advance a strategic goal. President Vladimir Putin’s strategy for getting away with inflicting large-scale devastation on Ukraine and engaging in situational hybrid warfare across the West includes two Soviet-era tactics: enlisting “useful idiots” in the cause and employing “salami tactics” to achieve your ends.