It is important at this stage of the confrontation in Ukraine to clarify that the issue is not simply “who owns Crimea.” There is a difficult question there, and as secession-minded people in Quebec, Scotland or Catalonia have shown, there are legitimate ways to raise it.
The real issue is the way President Vladimir Putin of Russia has thrown down the gauntlet: sending Russian forces to seize control of Crimea; concocting nonexistent “fascist” threats to the Russian population; refusing to recognize the interim government in Kiev; calling for a phony referendum in Crimea on Sunday and a vote in Russia on March 21 whose outcomes are foreordained.
Whether Mr. Putin ends up actually annexing Crimea to Russia or creating some other form of dependency is moot; his transparently phony preparations are based on presumptions of special Russian privileges in its former empire. The occupation of Crimea is illegal under international law, and it is time for Europe to join the United States in threatening the sort of costly sanctions that will leave Mr. Putin no doubt that they will not tolerate violations of Ukrainian territorial integrity.
Like many Russians, Mr. Putin earnestly believes that Russia has a special bond with Ukraine. What he and those in his administration cannot fathom is that Ukraine can forge economic and social ties with the West and still retain the indisputable historic and cultural kinship to Russia; to them, it is a zero-sum game, and Mr. Putin is prepared to be tough.
Mr. Putin seems to think the West is not willing to endure the high cost of sanctions — that the United States does not have enough trade with Russia to impose truly painful sanctions, and that Germany, which depends on Russian gas and has sizable exports to Russia, will not go along with sanctions that really bite, and especially not on behalf of a bankrupt and unstable Ukraine. But Russia is not immune to pressure, as its financial markets demonstrated when they panicked last week.
The Obama administration has already correctly concluded that Mr. Putin must be made to pay for what he has done, and threatened with greater sanctions should he go further. But it is critical that Europe get on board. Though Mr. Putin may be convinced, and rightly so, that NATO flights over Romania and Poland, or the American destroyer in the Black Sea, do not amount to a threat of military action, Russians are highly sensitive to anything that seems to threaten their security. Seizing the assets of some officials close to Mr. Putin would not go down well with Russia’s new class of international businessmen, and financial sanctions against banks would cut Russian corporations off from sorely needed foreign borrowing.
No doubt, Mr. Putin will retaliate if any harsh sanctions are imposed against him. But the sooner American and European leaders can demonstrate that they are prepared to impose serious penalties — and to accept the resulting sacrifices — the better the chance that those sanctions will not prove necessary.
