There is nothing virtuous about the current economic sanctions on Russia either, any more than there is about the blackballing of Russian sportspeople and cultural icons. The sanctions are not intended to push Putin to the negotiating table. As US President Biden made clear in March, the West is planning for a long war and he wants to see Putin removed from power.
Rather, the goal has been to weaken his authority and - in some fantasy scenario - encourage his subordinates to turn on him. The West's game plan - if it can be dignified with that term - is to force Putin to over-extend Russian forces in Ukraine by flooding the battlefield with armaments, and then watch his government collapse under the weight of popular discontent at home.
But in practice, the reverse has been happening, just as it did through the 1990s when the West imposed sanctions on Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Putin's position has been bolstered, as it will continue to be whether Russia is triumphing or losing on the battlefield.
The West's economic sanctions against Russia have been doubly foolish. They have reinforced Putin's message that the West seeks to destroy Russia, just as it previously did Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen. A strongman is all that stands between an independent Russia and servitude, Putin can plausibly argue.
And at the same time, the sanctions have demonstrated to Russians how truly artful their leader is. Economic pressure from the West has largely backfired: sanctions have barely made an impression on the value of the rouble, while Europe looks to be heading into recession as Putin turns off the gas spigot.
It will doubtless not only be Russians quietly rejoicing at seeing the West get a dose of the medicine it so regularly force-feeds others.
Western conceitBut there is a more troubling dimension to the West's conceit. It was the same high-handed belief that the West would face no consequences for waging economic warfare on Russia, just as earlier assumed it would be pain-free for Nato to station missiles on Moscow's doorstep. (Presumably, the effect on Ukrainians was not factored into the calculations.)
The decision to recruit ever-more east European states into the Nato fold over the past two decades not only broke promises made to Soviet and Russian leaders, but flew in the face of advice from the West's most expert policy-makers.
Guided by the US, Nato countries closed the military noose around Russia year by year, all the while claiming that the noose was entirely defensive.
Nato flirted openly with Ukraine, suggesting that it too might be admitted to their anti-Russia alliance.
The US had a hand in the 2014 protests that overthrew Ukraine's government, one elected to keep channels open with Moscow.
With a new government installed, the Ukrainian army incorporated ultra-nationalist, anti-Russia militias that engaged in a devastating civil war with Russian communities in the country's east.
And all the while, Nato secretly cooperated with and trained that same Ukrainian army.
At no point in the eight long years of Ukraine's civil war did Europe or the US care to imagine how all these events unfolding in Russia's backyard might look to ordinary Russians. Might they not fear the West just as much as western publics have been encouraged by their media to fear Moscow? Putin did not need to invent their concern. The West achieved that all by itself.
The encirclement of Russia by Nato was not a one-off error. Western meddling in the coup and support for a nationalist Ukrainian army increasingly hostile to Russia were not one-offs either. Nato's decision to flood Ukraine with weapons rather than concentrate on diplomacy is no aberration. Nor is the decision to impose economic sanctions on ordinary Russians.
These are all of a piece, a pattern of pathological behaviour by the West towards Russia - and any other resource-rich state that does not utterly submit to western control. If the West were an individual, the patient would be diagnosed as suffering from a severe personality disorder, one with a strong impulse for self-destruction.
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