Sanctions against Russia? The Worst Option

Charles Tannock is a British Conservative member of the European Parliament for London, who was named a 3rd grade Knight of the Order of Merit of Ukraine in 2006. In a recent press article — published in Spain by El País — Tannock asks just how far we can afford to get it wrong in proposing solutions to the Russian intervention in Crimea, which he considers “the most naked example of peacetime aggression that Europe has witnessed since Nazi Germany invaded the Sudetenland in 1938.”

Until Putin Is Defeated

The former psychiatrist proposes a number of measures to “tame” Vladimir Putin, among them that Turkey — backed by NATO’s collective security function — close the straits to Russia’s warships and merchant vessels bound for its Black Sea ports. Moreover, he wants Obama to apply similar economic sanctions to those imposed on Iran, attempt to convince China that it is not in its interests to support Moscow, and refuse, cancel visas to all Russian diplomats, and freeze the assets of business tycoons close to the Kremlin’s leader. For “only when the pain becomes intolerable, particularly for the elite, will Putin’s kampf be defeated.”

This myopic and belligerent view of the crisis, with its tea party overtones, is not unusual. Indeed, it reflects a current of opinion in the West that is mistrustful of the Russian bear and backed by the prevailing version presented in the media. It reduces the conflict to the alleged aggression of a Soviet nostalgist against a nation that cherishes its independence and is fond of the freedoms embodied in the European Union.

Cold War Dynamics

The most interesting aspect of Tannock’s article is not what he says, but what he omits: He never involves the EU in the adoption of the possible sanctions, leaving it all to Obama. Perhaps unintentionally, he re-opens the old wound and compares the crisis to the Cold War: a clash between the U.S. and the Soviet Union where the old continent is reduced to the role of a mere extra; the decisions affecting it are being made in Washington, not Brussels. The old, pre-Berlin Wall collapse mentality suggests the solution should come from Russian-U.S. dialogue, which a phone call between the two presidents has already initiated, and a meeting of the two foreign ministers has followed it up.

Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Kerry’s trip to Kiev to promise support to the new regime — one that has emerged out of the violent overthrow of a legitimately elected president, whose errors and abuses, according to democratic reasoning, should only have been purged via the ballot box — does nothing to help disregard such a reading of the situation. So, when we talk of the new Cold War, who is the guilty party? If indeed there is only one … And who has upset the status quo this time?

Putin considers the breakup of the Soviet Union the greatest geostrategic catastrophe of the 20th century, and is drawn to the idea of restoring the glorious Soviet empire. His worst nightmare is being humiliated by the West as Yeltsin was, and he has no desire to go down in history as the leader who allowed his country to fall into irrelevance. He pushed to include Ukraine as a crucial pivot in the Eurasian economic union and exerted pressure on Yanukovich to reject the EU association agreement.

Both of these were legitimate political options that should have been opposed using democratic methods, not through a violent revolt, which first defeated democracy, and has gone on to lead to rumblings of war. Putin did not provoke this conflict. He just took a gamble: He put a pile of money on the table, and he won the bet. If the contradiction-torn EU had not been so mean-fisted, had it made a generous counteroffer with full integration as a firm prospect, it too could have taken the prize.

‘Red Line’: No to NATO

Admittedly it is hard to imagine Putin standing down and accepting the defeat gracefully, but it is a hypothesis all the same. There might even have been a move toward the idea that rather than knocking down the chess pieces, the game could end in a tie — in a joint association made possible by Moscow’s vital European energy dependence and the existence of two clearly defined zones, one pro-European and another pro-Russian.

More probably, Putin would have insisted on the drawing of a “red line” with regard to the Baltic states and on Ukraine remaining outside NATO. This last would be a tricky proposition given that NATO membership seems to be the natural destiny of countries joining the EU.

Putin is unlikely to back down on the NATO membership issue. It is one thing to see the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the expansion of the Atlantic alliance to include former satellite nations and several former Soviet Union republics. It is quite another for the net to tighten with the defection of a neighboring, brother Slavic nation where the majority of Russians see their historical origins and whose inhabitants are considered compatriots.

Despite episodes like the 2008 occupation of South Ossetia in Georgia, the impression is that what Putin is actually doing is resisting an encirclement remotely controlled from Washington and trying to maintain his influence in the formerly Soviet space. Going back to the Cold War mentality, the U.S. would not tolerate a similar challenge in Mexico or Canada either. It had enough of that in Cuba more than half a century ago, and it has been making the Cubans pay a heavy price ever since.

Futile Sanctions

Sanctions against Russia? To sanction Russia would be to ignore that the revolutionary leaders in Kiev are as responsible as Moscow for the descent into conflict. The only likely result would be to inflame the situation and lose precious time needed to find a peaceful solution. Obama and several European leaders’ lukewarm threats, along with maximalist proposals from people like Tannock, are starting to look like artificial fire: shooting blanks for internal consumption. Measures like the suspension of military cooperation or the suspension of the G-8 summit in Sochi, even the exclusion of Russia from the group, would be just as damaging to the nation imposing them.

Russia is a bicontinental giant, possessed of a thousands-strong nuclear weapons arsenal, on which Europe is heavily dependent for its gas supply and exports. To make Russia a pariah state would be a highly irresponsible strategy. With the success of the Sochi Winter Olympics safely behind him, the Russian president will not be intimidated by the possibility of an international outcry. The overwhelming popular support enjoyed by Putin in his own country, the generalized conviction that he will resist any amount of external pressure, and the high-cost repercussions facing whomever makes the decision, are the key arguments against sanctions as a punishment.

Federalism versus Centralism

Putin is not trying to force the issue. He is maneuvering intelligently, with a skillful mix of carrot and stick. He boasts — with justification — that not a single shot has been fired (except a few in the air) and promises to avoid the use of violence at the same time as he defends the interests of the Russian population calling on him to intervene. He is building bridges to dialogue that could save faces on all sides — though he will not discuss the new power in Kiev, which he does not recognize. He not only dismisses talk of Crimea’s annexation, but he also refers to the Russian soldiers that control the peninsula as “self-defense forces.”

Ukraine is not a uniform nation. It is a country of borders, an imperfect fusion generated by conquests and various territorial redistributions, and that makes it possible, at least in theory, to negotiate the reform of what is currently a unitarian, centralist system that suits the interests of Kiev’s corrupt elites, but fails to cater to its ethnic composition and linguistic diversity: fertile ground for a federal solution, in which Crimea would demand a differentiated role with considerable powers.

These are the foundations of a possible agreement. Several strands need to be brought together in order to achieve it: Russian, European and American containment; a definition of the regime the Maidan revolt gave rise to and its legitimization — in relative terms — through free and fair elections, a consensus on the need for the “Finlandization” of Ukraine and its remaining outside NATO, foreign generosity to pull the country out of bankruptcy, and the forging of closer links with the EU without reneging on Russia. This is the way to avoid a fall into the abyss. Everybody wins, or at least, nobody loses too much.