Sanctions supporters insist that Russia more fully comply with the Minsk peace process and end support for the separatist campaign in Ukraine’s east. “Today Russia faces a choice between the continuation of economically damaging sanctions and fully meeting its obligations under Minsk,” contended Secretary of State John Kerry.
Yet the armed conflict has ebbed, political crisis fills Kiev, and some Ukrainians aren’t sure they want the separatists back. Indeed, Oksana Syroyid, Deputy Speaker of Ukraine’s Rada, has blocked passage of a constitutional amendment providing autonomy for the Donbas region, required by Minsk, explaining: “We need to stop thinking of how to counter Putin, or how to please all our partners.” Brussels faces the unpleasant possibility of Russia fulfilling its responsibilities while Ukraine breaks the deal. “Both sides need to perform,” complained Germany Foreign Minister Frank‐Walter Steinmeier.
Sanctions have hurt the Russian public without turning them against their government. Moreover, Western penalties have discouraged, even reversed, liberalization of the Russian economy, as businesses have grown even more dependent on government support. Targeted measures have obvious appeal, hitting named individuals and concerns considered to be evil or consorting with evil. However, there is little evidence that they are more effective than broader penalties.In both cases people in allied states have suffered from lost markets due to Western sanctions and Russian retaliation.
Which means the Europeans, in particular, have spent much to achieve nothing. The belief that imposing sanctions a little longer will force Moscow to capitulate reflects the triumph of hope over experience. The U.S. and EU are reinforcing failed policies, hoping that doing more of the same eventually will yield different results.
Rather than reflexively continue sanctions, the Western states should rethink their policy toward Russia. Vladimir Putin isn’t a nice guy, but that hardly sets him apart. Russian democracy may be an oxymoron, but then, lack of civil and political rights never stopped Washington from backing Egypt, aiding Pakistan, or embracing Saudi Arabia. The Europeans have been similarly pragmatic.
Geopolitically Ukraine matters far more to Moscow than to Europe or America: that’s a practical fact, not a moral judgment. Russia always will spend and risk more to protect its perceived security interests next door. And the West did much to challenge Moscow: encourage a “color revolution” in Kiev, pledge to include Ukraine in NATO, press Ukrainians to choose West over East economically, and encourage a street revolt against a democratically elected president. That still didn’t justify Russia’s brutal actions to dismember its neighbor, but Putin acted predictably and rationally. He is neither Hitler nor Stalin reincarnated, but a traditional Tsar.
Indeed, Moscow acted like a pre‐1914 great power, taking limited forceful steps to assert its interests and secure its borders. Russia’s treatment of Ukraine holds few implications for Europe. Putin has never demonstrated a desire to swallow non‐Russian peoples, which explains why he did not move on the rest of Ukraine, as predicted by some alarmists. He prefers Kiev independent, though weak and harmless, rather than part of Russia, convulsed by violent opposition to annexation. Moscow isn’t going to invade the already harmless Baltic States or highly independent Poland, let alone leading European nations further west. Why would he choose war for territories which would cause his government indigestion?
Thus, the allies should negotiate their way out of the sanctions box in which they are stuck. They could drop economic war, promise to stop expanding NATO along Russia’s border (most importantly, to Ukraine), reduce military support for Kiev, and encourage Ukraine to look both ways economically. Moscow could drop support for Ukrainian separatists, cooperate with restructuring Kiev’s unsustainable debts, accept Ukrainian economic ties with the EU, hold an internationally monitored status referendum in Crimea, and accept whatever outcomes emerge from the messy Ukrainian political system.
Kiev would have to recognize that it won’t be part of the Western bloc. Of course, Ukraine is independent and free to decide its own future. But it is in a bad neighborhood—where it always has been, part of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union for most of its history. The Ukrainian people should choose their own course while fully aware that no one in the West is prepared to initiate all‐out economic war, let along military conflict, with nuclear‐armed Russia over Kiev’s status.
An appropriate model might be Moscow’s neighbor Finland during the Cold War. The Finns maintained a prosperous democracy but avoided foreign alignments and got along with the Soviet Union, which could have swallowed the country in the aftermath of World War II. So‐called “Finlandization” wasn’t the best outcome. But it was the best achievable result.
Now that President Obama has nominated an unassuming “moderate” with a sterling resumé, should Senate Republicans abandon their position—which I endorsed in these webpages right after Justice Scalia’s passing—of not considering any nominee until after the election? In a word, no.
For one thing—the most important thing—the #NoHearingsNoVotes strategy has always been about the Supreme Court as an institution, not any particular nominee. We live in a polarized political world, with the most turbulent election campaign of my lifetime. President Obama was reelected in 2012, but the Tea Party response to crony capitalism and ever‐growing government solidified the opposition in the House and brought the Senate to the GOP in 2014. (And I would argue that the only reason Obama was reelected was that the Republicans managed to nominate the one person who couldn’t credibly run against the ever‐unpopular Obamacare.)
The Senate is fully within its rights, given the unique nature of this judicial vacancy, to fulfill its “advice and consent” function by telling the president that we should let this fall’s election determine the Supreme Court’s direction.
I can’t emphasize enough how unprecedented this event is in our legal and political history. The last time that the Senate confirmed a Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year to a vacancy arising earlier that year was 1932, when Benjamin Cardozo replaced Oliver Wendell Holmes. The last time it did so after presidential‐election voting had begun was 1916—which was also the first time there were confirmation hearings, coming about largely due to anti‐Semitic opposition to Louis Brandeis. The last time that a Senate of the opposing party confirmed someone to fill such a vacancy was 1888, when a handful of Republicans joined the minority Democrats to approve Grover Cleveland’s appointment of Chief Justice Melville Fuller.
You’ll recall that this was the time of tall hats and bushy sideburns, when the federal government satisfied Grover Norquist’s test of being small enough to drown in a bathtub. It was a different world.
More importantly, it was a different Supreme Court, one not known for ideological divisions and that did not loom large in the nation’s political debates, annually deciding cases that roil our culture and economy. Because this isn’t simply an argument from (mostly irrelevant) precedent.