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There’s a flurry of commentary this morning arguing that new economic sanctions introduced by the EU, European states individually and perhaps soon the United States in response to yesterday’s events are too weak and show NATO and the EU are somehow going soft. I’d suggest some skepticism with these arguments and a bit more patience. History doesn’t have many one and done moments. Thinking every moment is Munich and Neville Chamberlain mostly makes people dumb. The U.S./EU/NATO powers here need to find a balance between having a response to yesterday’s events while yet keeping some deterrent in reserve for further escalation.
Yesterday’s recognition of the eastern puppet statelets and the dispatch of Russian “peacekeepers” is both an invasion of Ukrainian territory and also not all that different from what’s happened for the last eight years. Those regions have been outside the central government’s control since 2014/15 and Russian army formations have operated there, just not as openly. I’m not saying these are the right decisions necessarily or what happens tomorrow or next week or anything else.
Just … like I said, history has very few one and done moments. The big threatened invasion hasn’t happened yet. The real goal is still to prevent that. Russia’s approach here can fairly be regarded as a kind of Zeno’s Aggression, keep taking incremental steps which split the difference or fall just a bit short of what merits a full threatened response. Rinse and repeat. It’s complicated. But like I said, I wouldn’t jump to conclusions or be cranking up any appeasement moral dramas just yet.
