From the moment the United States declared that it would resort to sanctions and not to armed confrontation, Putin knew he had nothing more to fear. Sanctions ? For the Russians, all the sanctions in the world are not worth a square foot of the territory of Holy and Great Russia: invaded in the east by the Tatars in the XIIIand century, in the north by the Swedes at the beginning of the XVIIIand century, in the west by the French in 1812 and by the Germans in 1941, the Russians never ceased to extend their cadastral domain towards Siberia, the Baltic, the Black Sea and the Caucasus in order to create a glacis defensive against invaders. Especially since the sanctions would give Putin the pretext to reinforce his power and to impute to his adversaries all the misfortunes of his country!
In the current crisis, Putin is not mad enough to invade all of Ukraine: he doesn’t care, he is only interested in the territories he can control without the risk of guerrillas or military intervention. the West. In this logic, two scenarios are possible. The first is the status quo, we look at each other from side to side, things are stalling, the Russian militias continue to agitate in the Donbass, creating an abscess of fixation there and perpetuating the Russian influence there, and Russian sovereignty over Crimea (as a reminder, Crimea has been part of Russia for longer than California has been part of the United States), Abkhasia and South Ossetia is recorded de facto. Putin wins, without pain or penalties. The second scenario sees Russia invading the Donbass and repeating the annexation of Crimea in 2014: sanctions rain down, but Putin expands his territory, to the delight of the Russian people and to the greater glory of Vladimir. And, in both cases, Ukraine will not be part of NATO (moreover, Germany and France oppose Ukraine’s entry into the Atlantic organization).
The inconsistencies of the West
The validity of a diplomacy depends on the constancy of its objectives, the adaptation of its means to the realities and, above all, on the awareness of its limits. The Putin-Lavrov tandem masters the game of international relations not only in Eastern Europe, but also in the Middle East and in Asia: Russia has managed the feat of having good relations with Israel and with the enemies of the latter, namely Iran and Turkey; it flirts with China, negotiates its old dispute with Japan over the Kuril Islands; it continues to deal in diplomacy and trade with the countries of Western Europe. It does not lecture anyone about rights and freedoms, it does not sanction any State on the pretext that its institutions do not please it: this is what is called classic diplomacy of Westphalian inspiration (treaties of Westphalia of 1648, which put an end to the Thirty Years’ War).
On the other hand, the United States, since the beginning of the century, wanted to do diplomacy in the manner of the wars waged against the Sioux: assaults from the 1D cavalry, crushing victory, unconditional capitulation and humiliating truncheons. Results: complete failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by shameful stampedes! Would Americans one day be able to be strong without being arrogant and flexible without being soft? On the other hand, while Putin and Lavrov have ensured the continuity of Russian diplomacy since 2004, the United States has gone from Bush Junior who does the opposite of Bush Senior, to Obama who does the opposite of Bush Junior, to Trump who does the opposite of Obama, to Biden, finally, who seems to like being between the zist and the zest.
Russia, the sorrow of Europe
Because of the Iron Curtain which separated the two halves of the continent, the West has forgotten that Russia is, since the XVIIIand century, a great European power and that each time Europe shuns Russia, the latter “goes Asian”. At the end of the Cold War, there was a unique opportunity to secure Russia to the European continent by signing a collective security pact linking NATO and the former Eastern bloc: Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin (the German Chancellor Kohl too) were in favor of it, provided that their country did not lag behind NATO. But G. W. Bush’s neoconservatives did not see it that way: they had won the Cold War and dreamed of uncontested hegemony over the world. They should have thought twice when they saw the continental Germany-France-Russia axis clashing with the Atlantic axis over the war in Iraq: but Donald Rumsfeld waved it aside (“ that’s old Europe”) and Condoleezza Rice pontificated (“We must ignore Germany, forgive Russia and punish France”). Bistro-lover diplomacy! Since then, relations between Russia and the West have been conflictual or, at best, strained.
As for Canada, we wish Mr.me Mélanie Joly, our apprentice diplomat minister, who inherits a seriously battered ministry since Stephen Harper and who must carry out a diplomacy of which no one knows the ins and outs!