Last Try in London

While there’s life, there’s hope. The U.S. still hasn’t given up on finding a diplomatic solution to the Crimean conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and therefore doesn’t need to be criticized for having given up its efforts too early.

The big question is what U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has in his bag to convince his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and subsequently President Vladimir Putin that backing down is worth it. As is commonly known, threats fall on deaf ears when it comes to dealing with a chief of state who has Soviet airs and graces.

Crimea is a case in point — on the day before the referendum on the peninsula in the Black Sea, there have been claims that Ukraine can no longer save itself, but who wants to wage a Crimean war? Putin has chillingly recognized this; the Russians can’t be expected to behave rationally in Crimea. It’s of little comfort that one day, in the not too distant future, they’ll regret their decision because they’ll recognize too late that a Russia that gives up on a budding democracy in favor of returning to an autocracy along the lines of a totalitarian state isn’t a good place to live.

But the continued existence of a united Ukraine would still be possible, assuming that the U.S. and Russia would return to a clandestine diplomacy whereby they could secretly reach an agreement not to allow Ukraine into NATO and not to keep getting in the face of Putin’s Russia. But it would have to happen in such a way that neither side loses face.

The main problem with the policy in Moscow isn’t that it wants to annex parts of Ukraine with lazy tricks and stupid arguments. The main problem is that Russia is challenging the fundamental agreement reached in Helsinki by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the modern Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, according to which European borders can’t be changed. That was the basis for the policy of détente between the East and the West. What Brezhnev considered holy probably doesn’t mean much to Putin.