Russia, the West and the Problem with Sanctions

Rome, 28 March 2014

 

I’ve written before that in confronting Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the West’s options aren’t much better than Austria and Prussia’s in 1771. Unwilling to fight, Frederick the Great and Maria-Theresa reasoned that Catherine’s Russia was too big and too important to the European system to be ignored, punished or excluded for long. The only other option, however ignoble, was to talk.


When it comes to talking today, however, the only thing the West seems willing to talk about is sanctions. It’s very unlikely that this will get us anywhere.

Sanctions, it’s worth remembering, are not so much a diplomatic as a coercive, not to say a punitive, instrument. It’s clear they won’t force Putin out of Crimea. Neither will they do anything to deter a Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine. The only thing they will certainly achieve is Russia’s humiliation and embitterment towards the West, confirming what Putin has of late been saying (that the West is out to oppose Russia) and uniting Russians behind him. Both outcomes will make real diplomacy, in the sense of a negotiated compromise, more difficult.

Today, we don’t know what will keep the Russian army out of eastern Ukraine but we cannot now be under any illusion about what will bring it in: any move by the West to guide Ukraine closer to its sphere of influence, in the form either of NATO or the EU. Both the United States and Europe must be very careful about giving the impression that either organization is preparing to offer Ukraine anything more than moral support.

Putin is sending the West an unequivocal message: either leave the rest of Ukraine alone as a buffer between Russia and NATO/EU, or partition it with him—peacefully or violently. He has hinted that the outcome he now wants is a federalized Ukraine that would allow each of its various regions to choose its own foreign and trade policies. And this morning, the Russian media is reporting that, in an address to the Ukrainian people, Yanukovich himself called for ‘a referendum to determine the status of every one of Ukraine’s regions’. Whether by the ballot box or the rolling of tanks across Ukraine’s eastern and southern plains, it seems Putin will have what he sees as that part of Ukraine necessary to Russia’s security.

The problem with the West’s current approach is that it fails to listen to what Russia wants: a guarantee that the United States and Europe won’t try to draw Ukraine any further into what it sees as a hostile Western camp. The more sanctions they apply, the stronger Western leaders speak out in support of Ukrainian revolution and its desire for ‘democracy’, the more loans and other aid they offer, the more in fact they alarm Russia—and the more likely they make an invasion.