By Jim Geraghty
Tuesday, February
22, 2022
One of the problems with using economic
sanctions as your primary tool of deterrence in foreign policy is that
eventually you’ll run into a hostile foe or force that does not care about
trading with the U.S. or even money at all. In fact, it is fair to wonder how
much money motivates any of America’s current foes.
The Taliban certainly don’t particularly
care about money; they think they’re on a mission from Allah. Iran has been hit with just about every sanction in the book,
and no doubt it’s had an impact on the Iranian economy, but the mullahs don’t
seem to care much. Kim Jong-un and the North Korean regime have been sanctioned
many, many times, and they just keep getting
better and better at evading them. The U.S. and China are too economically
intertwined to easily enact sanctions that are serious enough to alter the
decision-making in Beijing.
And then there’s Vladimir Putin’s Russia — a government that foresaw
the types of moves the West was likely to make, and prepared accordingly:
Russia has
drastically reduced its use of dollars, and therefore Washington’s leverage. It
has stockpiled enormous currency reserves, and trimmed its budgets, to keep its
economy and government services going even under isolation. It has reoriented
trade and sought to replace Western imports.
But even more than that, for a greedy
kleptocrat, Putin doesn’t seem primarily motivated by money or his country’s
economic prospects. Putin’s
address yesterday was a long stream of grievances, and it is clear that
what really enrages him is that Russia is not as powerful as it was when he was
a younger man and the Soviet Union existed:
It is now
that radicals and nationalists, including and primarily those in Ukraine, are
taking credit for having gained independence. As we can see, this is absolutely
wrong. The disintegration of our united country was brought about by the
historic, strategic mistakes on the part of the Bolshevik leaders and the CPSU
leadership, mistakes committed at different times in state-building and in
economic and ethnic policies. The collapse of the historical Russia known as
the USSR is on their conscience.
He characterized the post-Cold War era as
a time of “injustices, lies and outright pillage of Russia” and absurdly
claimed that, “Russia always worked with Ukraine in an open and honest manner
and, as I have already said, with respect for its interests.”
Joe Biden’s foreign policy, in a nutshell,
is an attempt to save, resuscitate, and restore the “rules-based international
order” and sought “a stable, predictable relationship” with Russia. But Putin
never liked the existing “rules-based international order” and was never
interested in “a stable, predictable relationship.” Putin wants to see the
rules-based international order fail and replaced with an international order
where he makes the rules, at least for his neighboring states.
The cover of this week’s Economist depicts
Putin painting himself into a corner, and argues that no matter the outcome of
the Ukraine conflict, Putin has already harmed his country. The editors point out that Russia exports a lot more gas to
Europe than China, and contend that, “Mr. Putin can either live with this
interdependency or turn further towards China. Yet that would condemn Russia to
being the junior partner of an unsentimental regime which sees it as a
diplomatic sidekick and a backward source of cheap commodities. That is a yoke
Mr. Putin would chafe under.”
I wish that were the case, but I’m not so
sure. From Moscow, China looks like the confident, rapidly rising power, and
the U.S. and Europe look like the internally divided, declining powers. By
partnering with China, Russia can rewrite the rules of the international order
in its favor and rub the West’s noses in it.
Yesterday, Putin spoke to his people and
the world and painted Ukraine as a dysfunctional, corrupt terrorist state on
territory that everyone has always known was part of Russia. He spoke of
Ukraine as a matter of Russian honor, something too big to put a price tag on:
Ukraine is
not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own
history, culture and spiritual space. These are our comrades, those dearest to
us — not only colleagues, friends and people who once served together, but also
relatives, people bound by blood, by family ties.
In Putin’s vision, he and the modern
Russian army are the forces of stability, order, and the restoration of
domestic tranquility to territories that he is utterly 100 percent convinced
are Russian. He sees Ukraine the way Abraham Lincoln saw the Confederate States
of America. In his own way, Putin thinks he, too, is on a mission from God — or
perhaps fate or destiny.
This weekend at the Munich Security
Conference, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “These are some of the
greatest sanctions, if not the strongest, that we’ve ever issued. As I
articulated yesterday, it is directed at institutions — in particular,
financial institutions — and individuals, and it will exact absolute harm for
the Russian economy and their government.”
In light of everything we’ve seen over the
past quarter-century, does Vladimir Putin seem like a man who can be deterred
by economic sanctions?
And if he does not, shouldn’t our focus be
on other forms of deterrence — such as arming the Ukrainians to the teeth and
communicating clearly that any invading Russian forces will face every form of
resistance imaginable, every step of the way?
Memories . . .
Last June, Chris Cillizza declared that
during the Biden–Putin summit — the first time Biden had talked to Putin in
person as president — Biden communicated to Putin that “the adults are back in charge.”
I was underwhelmed:
“Authoritarians
are malign” is a pretty good way of summarizing the entire 20th century in
three words. I’m not sure we needed a Biden-Putin
grip-and-grin to communicate that, and Biden choosing to call Putin “bright,” “tough,” and a “worthy
adversary” doesn’t really clarify the moral distinction all that well.
When a new administration spends its first
half-year in office crowing that the adults are back in charge, people expect
better results.
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