Tuesday, March 8, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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In raining down artillery and bombs on military personnel and innocent civilians alike in Ukraine, Russia has descended to a new level of barbarity with its attack on its independent neighbor. This demands that the United States respond by adopting a new approach to sanctioning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s murderous regime.
Americans have come to expect U.S. sanctions against aggressive nations to be lifted once those countries stop their bad behavior, but we can no longer use that mindset against Russia. It’s time for us to start viewing sanctions as a long-term matter to curb Russian aggression, not simply a temporary punishment for its atrocities in Ukraine and wherever else the Russians may strike.
Until Putin is out of power, or until there is a meaningful and sustained change in Russian behavior, voters in the U.S. should both expect and demand that strong sanctions remain in place.
The reason: Long-lasting sanctions will isolate Russia and keep it weak, which means the U.S. is less likely to get into a war with Russia going forward.
In good part, the current aggression by Putin is because the West has let him off the hook in short order for two decades. Putin counts on the West being weak, and sustained isolation is necessary to reinforce to Putin and his fellow war criminals that we mean business. In addition, to paraphrase former Vice President Mike Pence, Americans should reject any apologists for this monster’s behavior such as Putin’s lapdog Donald Trump and the Neville Chamberlains in the making at Fox News.
Harsh penalties, along with increased defensive arming of our NATO allies in Eastern Europe — particularly Poland, Latvia and Lithuania — would cost Americans slight pain, no doubt. But these actions would help us avoid the longer-term pain of Putin’s megalomania and imperial goals.
Putin means to destroy the West and end freedom around the world. Believe him. And oppose him at every turn.
A short-term play won’t work against the Russian tyrant. He’s counting on the West to ease or lift its sanctions as citizens of the U.S. and its allies start feeling the economic effects of those penalties.
We must not blink. Perhaps some sanctions can be lightened as an incentive for Russia to halt its insanity, but we need to make it clear that the punishment won’t be dialed down significantly or soon. That would play directly into Putin’s hands, and encourage him to lash out against other independent nations.
Among the sanctions that should remain in place are the freeze on assets of Russia’s central bank, bans on individuals and businesses doing business with the Russian bank and the nation’s finance ministry, seizures of property from Russian oligarchs, bans on Russian flights to the U.S. and other NATO nations, and curbs on trade with Russia. Putin is already trying to back the West off of these punishments: He said they constituted a “declaration of war,” implying that they would trigger a larger conflict unless relaxed.
But the only party who’s declared war is Putin, who has only himself to blame for the hardships the sanctions will cause the Russian people. Therefore, the West shouldn’t back down.
What’s more clear than ever is there simply is no rehabilitating Putin — ever. He has crossed the line into becoming one of the darkest villains of the past 100 years, as demonstrated over these past two weeks via a stream of images of civilians being targeted, refugees desperately cramming themselves into train stations and onto highways, and relentless explosions day and night in Ukrainian cities.
Meanwhile, the entire world deals with the threat that the conflict could grow beyond Ukraine as Russia wages the most savage conflict in Europe since World War II.
It’s stone-cold obvious by now that the standard approach to sanctions doesn’t faze Putin. It didn’t stop him from invading and annexing Crimea, didn’t stop him from killing Syrians and obviously didn’t deter him from attacking Ukraine. As one Syrian stated to Al Jazeera after watching footage of the siege, “He is going to go full Aleppo on Ukraine now, isn’t he? It’s crazy that what we experienced a few years ago is being replayed almost frame by frame in Ukraine.”
Putin has come to expect that he can wait out any sanctions and go back to doing his deadly business. Today he’s doing it in Ukraine, tomorrow it may be in another nation.
He’s playing a long game, and the West must react in kind.
No one should ever be deluded into thinking Russia will change while Putin is in power. Thus sanctions are a way of conditioning Russian behavior and sending a message that the only way Putin’s nation will be truly free of the penalties is when Russia changes materially and joins the civilized world.
Only Russia’s citizens can force that transformation, and the sooner they do it, the better.
