Why Ukraine matters so much, and why sanctions against Putin are not enough

The Russian regime has repudiated the post Cold War order. The West must draw a red line around the norms and rules essential to sustain an open international system

The choice facing the world during the next several decades lies between an era of great power rivalry in which the will of the strongest prevails, and an international system in which the raw distribution of power is tempered by nations’ allegiance to, if not shared values, then to a common set of rules of international behaviour.  

Beyond the terrible human cost, this why is Vladimir Putin’s threatened war against Ukraine matters so much, why the West, and above all European nations, cannot accede to Putin’s military blackmail and why economic sanctions offer insufficient response to the Russian regime’s open attack on the liberal democratic order. If Europe now falls to Hobbesian geopolitics, so too will the rest of the globe. Nato’s warning of severe sanctions sends a useful message to Moscow, but much more is needed to uphold a rules-based international system.  

The settlement that ended the Cold War was set out in the Charter of Paris in November 1990. The treaty, signed by the US, the Soviet Union and Canada as well as 30-odd European states is often overlooked. In Britain, it is mostly remembered as the occasion when Tory MPs voted to oust Margaret Thatcher as prime minister. But the charter set the essential terms of the post-communist peace: “The era of confrontation and division of Europe has ended….Henceforth our relations will be founded on respect and co-operation”. This was the promised Europe whole and free.

The foundations had been laid at Helsinki 15 years earlier when the then Soviet Union and the west agreed to respect the territorial status quo in Europe. Paris added to the Helsinki accords some upbeat language about a new era of “democracy, peace and unity”, but, at its core, lay the same commitment to national sovereignty and the inviolability of borders. In turn this set the template for the Budapest memorandum four years later, when the Kremlin pledged to uphold the territorial integrity of an independent Ukraine.

These were also the treaties Moscow violated when it invaded Georgia in 2008 and annexed Crimea in 2014 while seizing part of eastern Ukraine. The invasion now in preparation by the 150,000 or so Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s borders promises to tear them up entirely.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, put Russia’s present choice as well as anyone  in an interview this week with the Financial Times. Putin could “choose to make Russia a destabilising power . . . which could mean a permanent strategy of tension over the long term, or he can choose to become the actor, the partner, in a new security and stability order in Europe”, he told the FT. “It’s his choice. It is indeed him who has to decide.”  

Correct as it is in its own terms, the problem with this analysis is that the Russian leader has already made his choice. Even if he steps back at one minute to midnight from an immediate invasion, Putin has been explicit in his demands to the US and Nato. Moscow will not allow any of the former republics of the Soviet Union to exercise the sovereignty promised by the Paris Charter. 

Instead the Kremlin, as it made clear in this week’s ultimatum to Washington, wants the west to pay homage to Hobbes and Russian suzerainty in the former Soviet space. Moscow’s sphere of influence would extend also to a veto  over Nato’s military dispositions in former Warsaw pact states. So if Putin decides not to attack Ukraine during the few days - a reversal incidentally that would surprise his own military chiefs as much as intelligence agencies in the west - it will be no more than a pause in a sustained effort to reassert Russian power in the territories of the Soviet empire.

Stripped of a cacophony of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy that has often done as much to obscure as illuminate positions in western capitals, Nato’s response to Putin has two fixed points. One acknowledges it will not go to war with Russia in defence over Ukraine. The other says it will not jettison the principles that underpin the right of very nation to make its own choices about democracy and security. 

What’s left in terms of a western offer to Moscow are proposals for mutual military drawdowns near Russia’s borders - a resurrection of the arms control agreements that defused tensions in the last decades of the Cold War - and some constructive ambiguity about Ukraine’s membership of Nato. Kyiv would retain its right to join but, rather like Turkey and the European Union, the aspiration for membership would remain just that.

Putin’s latest rejection of all such suggestions says he is set on reducing Russia’s neighbours to vassal states. The west is left with sanctions. Such economic measures are vital. The pity is that Germany’s Social Democratic-led coalition has been so reluctant to commit to specifics - particularly the scrapping of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The sanctions, particularly in the energy and financial sectors, should be tougher than anything Moscow has imagined.

As severe as they might be, Putin’s systemic threat to the foundations of the European peace - and to any global rules-based order - demands a much broader and fundamental recalibration of the west’s ties with Russia - political, diplomatic, and military as well as economic. The present terms of the relationship are based on the assumption that Moscow still respects the treaties Putin has now jettisoned.

A new framework - imposing permanent restrictions on Russia’s presence in the west, its access to western markets and technology and trade and investment flows - would more closely resemble the conditions prevailing duringthe Cold War. Russian oligarchs could no longer expect to shelter their cash, make their homes, or raise capital in London and otherEuropean capitals. The Kremlin’s political, diplomatic and propaganda reach would be tightly constrained by travel and visa restrictions. Putin and his supporters would be obliged to repatriate their huge financial caches.

The purpose would not be confrontation, though European states clearly need to spend much more on defence to bolster its military presence in Eastern and Central Europe. Just as during the Cold War, the US and its allies would be ready to negotiate from strength arms control and other confidence-building measures.

But the west must prepare to do what it has failed to do during a decade of Russian aggression. It must draw a red line around the values and norms essential to sustain an international order anchored in the rule of law. Putin can always seek to stand outside that order. He cannot be allowed to wreck it,