Last month, Russia’s envoy to NATO, Alexander Grushko, urged the alliance to demand that the government of Ukraine immediately cease its offensive against the separatist rebels in “the war raging near Russia’s border.”
The appeal proved Grushko has mastered the Soviet apparatchik’s facility with Orwellian double-think required again of diplomats in Vladimir Putin’s government. As most of the world realizes, the war was started by Russia, and is supplied and largely directed by Russia. It is Vladimir Putin’s war, which renders the Kremlin’s worries about Russia’s proximity to the violence illusionary.
Grushko also complained about “unprecedented NATO activity close to the Russian borders,” referring to the small numbers of NATO troops temporarily deployed to Poland and the Baltic countries that were understandably anxious in the wake of Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea. He suggested that NATO was “trying to use the crisis in Ukraine to its utmost in order to prove its relevance in the current security environment.” But most NATO members, judging by their reluctant and weak response to Russian aggression against Ukraine, would greatly prefer not to have to assert its relevance.
It is Vladimir Putin who has stirred the transatlantic alliance to life. It is the Russian-instigated war in Ukraine, culminating in the death of the 298 innocent souls aboard MH 17—for which Mr. Putin bears primary responsibility— that has alerted, at long last, the members of NATO to the enduring importance and responsibilities of their alliance. And it will be Putin’s continued recklessness that will eventually lead Washington and the capitals of Europe to do what they must to bring the Putin era to an unlamented end.
Although commerce-focused, Russian gas-dependent, defense budget-cutting Europe dreads the thought of it, the necessity of adopting a policy of containment against Moscow is becoming obvious even to the most complacent European ministers. The source of that dawning realization might be the recognition that the drunken thugs who denied access to the crash site, left bodies rotting in the fields, corrupted evidence, and looted the victims’ possessions, have a patron in the Kremlin, who is also a thug, even if an abstemious one.
That’s not to say that Putin is so evil he would countenance the deliberate destruction of a civilian airliner. But he’s callous enough to provide advanced weapons and a modicum of training on those weapons to imbeciles. By doing so, Putin placed Russia’s interests in the hands of men who have so little decency they don’t treat the innocent dead with dignity.
There is something of the short-tenured mafia don about Putin. He’s crafty, but too often his emotions make him impetuous and careless. He chooses associates for their toughness and loyalty, not their brains. He starts fights that are better avoided, takes unnecessary risks, and can’t stop himself from saying indiscreet things on wiretapped phone lines.
To be sure, most of Europe would prefer to be spared the costs of containing Putin. But Putin won’t let them off the hook. Even the French will eventually conclude they have no other recourse. On Tuesday, the foreign ministers of the E.U. announced another minimalist round of sanctions against Putin associates, but ordered a list be prepared of more efficient sanctions in the event Putin doesn’t end his aggression against Ukraine. They may hope they won’t have to impose them. But they will. Putin will leave them no choice.
The prudent statesman would seek to escape a situation that is making him an international pariah. But Putin will not end his support and direction of the Ukrainian rebellion. He will call for a cease-fire that leaves his associates in authority in a wide swath of eastern Ukraine. He will never pull his people from Ukraine, seal the border, deny the separatists any further support, and watch the Ukrainian government re-establish its authority throughout the whole of the country. He will keep the war going. Even now, mere days after the destruction of MH 17, U.S. intelligence reports that the weapons flow from Russia to Ukraine continues undisrupted.
The bare-chested machismo of Putin’s personality cult that once just seemed comical to Western eyes now suggests a personality plagued by insecurities that overrule caution and reason. As Putin’s government increasingly reflects the man -- untethered to international norms of behavior, ever more reckless in its interventions, and indifferent to fundamental values of the West -- Russia’s oil and gas reserves, and the lavish foreign investments of its oligarchs and corrupt politicians will not longer buy the West’s acquiescence.
The West will again, reluctantly and half-heartedly, no doubt, but unavoidably, muster the determination and means to contain Russia. And containment will in time cause Putin’s downfall. There’s really nothing else that can be done.
Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/07/24/reckless_putin_finally_pushes_the_west_too_far_123433.html#ixzz38PdhUWB8
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Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/07/24/reckless_putin_finally_pushes_the_west_too_far_123433.html#ixzz38PdWUhs8
Follow us: @RCP_Articles on Twitter
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