Make Putin Pay

By Kevin D. Williamson

Thursday, March 24, 2022

 

Washington is full of talk about how to minimize Vladimir Putin’s gains from the Ukraine war. We should be having a different conversation — one about maximizing Russia’s losses. That isn’t exactly the same thing.

 

If you had asked me a year or two ago what the United States should be doing about Russia, my answer would have been: not much. And I think that would have been the right answer. Vladimir Putin’s grotesque mafia-state was a problem for the United States, but it was much more urgently and immediately a problem for the Europeans — and most of the relevant Europeans were not very much interested in doing anything about it. It wasn’t just the energy-hungry Germans: The Italians, the French, the Spanish, and the European Union at large all took a mostly blasé view of Russia. It is difficult to succeed in helping allies solve their problems when the allies aren’t interested in doing much to solve them.

 

To the extent that Washington was actively engaged with Europe on Russia, the effort was mostly a stupid and clumsy one, focused on hectoring the Germans about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and trying to bully them into abandoning the project. The security conversation was clouded by the fact that there were both German and U.S. business interests in play, and, rather than be frank about that, we preached sermons when we should have been negotiating deals. The Germans need to buy a lot of fuel, and the United States has a lot to sell and is an entirely preferable business partner. There ought to be a way to make that work. There were very considerable logistical and economic issues to be dealt with — namely making gas on ships competitive with Russian gas in a pipe, which is no small thing — but if big, powerful central governments are not there to deal with precisely these kinds of cooperation questions, then what are they there for?

 

And so those conversations went nowhere — until Vladimir Putin handed Washington a tremendous gift.

 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a crime and a humanitarian catastrophe, and minimizing the death and destruction done to the Ukrainians must of course be our primary short-term consideration. But from the purely Machiavellian point of view (and why do we Americans still feel the need to cite that ancient Florentine when we have Henry Kissinger?) that cloud is not without a silver lining. If you will forgive the amoral calculation: Every dead Russian in Ukraine is a Russian not available for some other purpose, and the same is true for every Russian bullet fired there, every Russian rocket launched, every rapidly depreciating ruble spent. The invasion of Ukraine seems to have awakened Germany, which has considerable economic and military resources to bring to bear in the defense of Europe. Various epiphanies have struck in Paris and Brussels. The response of the free world has been mostly united and energetic, and many important private-sector actors have gone well beyond what is required of them under law. The Russian economy is in free fall, with Putin’s benighted subjects already waiting in Soviet-style lines for staples such as sugar and flour.

 

Putin’s invasion, meanwhile, is at a near-standstill. The Russian army has turned out to be if not a paper tiger then a mangy and limping cougar — dangerous, but not beyond being put down with a well-placed shot.

 

A year or two ago, “not much” would have been the right answer to what to do about Vladimir Putin. It is rare that a major enemy makes a mistake as enormous and disastrous as the one Russia has made. History has given us the closest thing there is to a layup, if we have the confidence and the courage to take it.

 

Rather than ask what is the minimum Ukraine can give Putin to stop the bombs, the question for Washington should be: What is the maximum we can force Russia to give up in exchange for not spending the next 20 years with the Western world’s big economic boot on its neck? It seems likely that the Ukrainians will want to sue for peace at some point and that they expect to make significant concessions. No one will blame Volodymyr Zelensky if he seeks a separate peace, but Washington should be more ambitious: Economic sanctions on Russia should remain in place — and should be steadily ratcheted up — irrespective of whether Moscow’s troops withdraw from Ukraine.

 

To what end?

 

Everything should be on the table — everything. Not only the phony Donbas republics but Crimea, too; not only cessation of hostilities but also heavy reparations; not only withdrawal but disarmament as well. If that sounds like pie in the sky, consider that it doesn’t have to be Vladimir Putin on the other side of the negotiating table — and, in the long run, it probably won’t be: Breadlines are going to be at least as hard on the Russian spleen as they are on the Russian stomach, and Putin has enemies. There are men who would like to succeed him, and none of them needs Washington to hand him a pistol.

 

Achieving our aims in Russia will require patience and perseverance — unfortunately, these are not the hallmarks of American political culture. It also will require being clear-eyed about the possibility that a drowning Vladimir Putin may very well take the whole of the Russian state down with him — and being clear-eyed about the fact that this would not be the worst possible outcome from the point of view of American interests.