Why Talking Tough to Putin Won't Work

Does anyone seriously think Vladimir Putin is going to back down just because we threaten him with more sanctions? Or supply a little more 'lethal aid' (in that weasel phrase) to Ukraine? Do we suppose that he hasn't anticipated all this, and already factored it into the equation? We're talking about a man who is playing chess, always working several moves ahead, and yet we seem to be playing checkers in response -- simply reacting to events as they happen. 

Putin knows, for example, the extent of what we can do. And he also knows the extent of what we can't, or won't be willing to do. On top of that, he knows that what he can do by way of retaliation will be far worse: as well as vital supplies of gas and oil, Russia supplies significant percentages of key raw materials for the high-tech industries -- titanium, palladium and rare-earth minerals. Cutting off those would really hurt the economies of Europe and America.

It would also cut off a huge source of Russian income, but here's the thing: Russia has built up huge reserves of gold and currency -- the fourth largest in the world -- and can afford to sit it out for several years, even without making new deals with China, which are already being fixed behind the scenes. Putin has seen this coming, and has laid plans. The sanctions are priced in. The question is not how long Russia can hold out, but how long the West can. It's going to be painful.

So what's he after? Well, we could start by listening to what he says he wants. Everything he's doing is consistent with that, after all. Although it's hard for 'us' to think of NATO as anything other than benign -- a purely defensive organisation designed to protect the civilised world from the threat of Soviet Russia after World War II -- to the Russians it looks very different. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR, there's really nothing much for NATO left to do -- and yet from the Russian perspective, it keeps spreading its tentacles, creeping ever closer to the motherland. 

They don't like that, and there's no reason why they should. The West didn't like it when Russia set up nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962 -- and the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO creates the potential for the West's nuclear capability to be right on Russia's border. So they've been asking, persistently, for a discussion about backing off -- just as we insisted Russia do in 1962. And yet the West has persistently refused to have that discussion. The right of Ukraine to join NATO if it pleases, and for NATO to put military equipment where it pleases, is 'non-negotiable'.

What do we expect Russia to do? In an ideal world, with a fully-functioning, veto-free UN, it could take its case to the international community, and the matter could be decided by a vote. It's not as if the current borders of nation states are natural boundaries, forever set in stone. Most of them are the result of bloody conflict, and many of the rest were decided by colonial fiat, straight lines drawn on the map. A referendum could be held under UN auspices in Eastern Ukraine for example, to see what the population really want. That would be a reasonable way to settle that dispute. 

But we do not live in an ideal world, nor do we have a veto-free UN. The reality is, Russia has nowhere to go to seek redress for its grievance. And in the absence of a jury of peers -- the only way that humanity has found to resolve conflict without violence -- that leaves them only one option: the old-fashioned use of force. So that is what they are doing, and why they are doing it. It's highly unlikely that Russia has any long-term designs on Ukraine itself, let alone the other former Soviet states -- or the will or the wherewithal to occupy it militarily. But it does have the will and the wherewithal to take what it needs, and wait out the eventual capitulation of the West when the sanctions we apply start to backfire. 

How much better to have negotiated in good faith. Because by taking this high-handed attitude, expecting Russia to back down unilaterally, we are making it impossible for Putin to do so. He will not. He cannot without facing humiliation, and he is not a man to be humiliated. Though it may well now be too late, unless we provide him with an 'off-ramp' in the form of concessions that address his concerns, he has no alternative but to press on. And we will all be the losers.