Putin's Tough Dilemma

The message of the United States to the Kremlin is now clear: an integration in globalization or an imperial restoration with catastrophic isolation.

In both cases, the U.S. wins. If Russia loses Ukraine, and therefore the whole former USSR, it will be definitively abased to a medium power; if it wins part of Ukraine through a prolonged war of attrition, or the whole country through direct involvement, it will face sanctions that will render it a medium power through a painful process and become a bit less of a disturbance to Washington than Iran or Turkey.

In the given situation, Washington promotes its interests with nonexistent or negligible cost: There’s no risk of American military involvement, provided that the government of Kiev is recognized as legitimate and creditworthy to hold presidential elections on May 25 in the regions it controls. This is how we interpret Washington’s hard line, when it warns the Kremlin that every step beyond Crimea will be costly in terms of borrowing on international markets, in foreign investments, and in transferring Western technology and expertise that is necessary for the country’s productive reconstruction.

What the American perception underestimates is the option of running away when the opponent stands in the corner and estimates that to the extent of a delimited regional collision, all of his options are prohibitively costly.

In the corner, Putin will attempt to change and broaden the collision, raise the cost for the U.S. on other fronts by approaching Erdogan’s Turkey and taking advantage of the dissatisfaction of many countries in the region against Washington, from Saudi Arabia to Egypt.

Mutatis mutandis, the old Russia of 2014 is similar to Japan at the beginning of December 1941, when the barrage of sanctions and the U.S. oil embargo found Tokyo under the dilemma of surrendering without a fight or proceeding to attack Pearl Harbor.