Russia Triumphant, West Apoplectic

“They cheated us again and again, made decisions behind our back, presenting us with completed facts. That’s the way it was with the expansion of NATO in the East, with the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders. They always told us the same thing: ‘Well, this does not involve you.’ ”

President Vladimir Putin                                                          

Address on the Treaty of Accession with Crimea and Sevastopol

St. George's Hall, Kremlin                                                        

The orgy of Russophobia on display today in the Gray Lady is remarkable. One story after another is chock full of acidic disdain and an ignorance of the basic facts of recent history. Case in point is Steven Erlanger's think piece on NATO, "Russia’s Aggression in Crimea Brings NATO Into Renewed Focus." Nowhere mentioned is the fundamental betrayal of the verbal agreement between Bush I and Gorbachev, that German reunification would be allowed to proceed as long as the former Warsaw Pact countries would not be gobbled up by NATO. Clinton promptly broke the agreement and expanded NATO. This is what Putin refers to in the quote above.

Putin's speech was refreshing to behold, in stark contrast to Joe Biden's tired, obviously mendacious statement in Warsaw where he makes more stale threats. At what point does the U.S. foreign policy elite realize that they are losing and just, please, you know, stop talking, stop blustering?

A perfect example is White House Press Secretary Jay Carney yesterday trying to take credit for punishing the Russian economy on a day when the markets responded positively to Putin's Crimea address. Here is how Peter Baker describes it in the best piece to be found in today's paper, "Obama’s Test: Can Penalties Change Russia’s Course?":

Mr. Carney said the United States would also expand its sanctions, and noted that the geopolitical uncertainty had already taken a toll on Russia’s currency and markets. “I wouldn’t if I were you invest in Russian equities right now unless you’re going short,” he said. 

And yet world markets rose on Tuesday after Mr. Putin’s speech and action, either shrugging off the crisis or interpreting his reassurance that he did not want to split Ukraine as a signal that he would be satisfied after taking Crimea. The ruble, bolstered by Russia’s central bank, backed off the record lows it had fallen to in recent days.

Either way, Mr. Obama was left on the defensive against critics who said he was not being strong enough. Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger in the 2012 election, said Tuesday that Mr. Obama and his team waited too long to project strength and prepare possible punishments before Mr. Putin sent troops into Crimea. “Part of their failure, I submit, is due to their failure to act when action was possible, and needed,” Mr. Romney wrote in The Wall Street Journal. 

Mr. Carney said it was “preposterous” and “provably wrong” to suggest, as other critics have, that the president sent a signal of weakness that emboldened Mr. Putin after failing to follow through on threats to retaliate against Syria last year for a chemical weapons attack on civilians. Mr. Carney went on to note that Mr. Bush’s willingness to invade Iraq “didn’t seem to affect Russia’s calculations when it came to its actions in Georgia” in 2008. 

Mr. Obama has given himself more tools to use against Russia, if he chooses to do so. An executive order he signed on Monday authorizes sanctions against not just Russian government officials but also the Russian arms industry and Russian oligarchs who support Mr. Putin’s rule. 

One Russian who has been on some lists of possible targets circulated in Washington and Brussels is Igor Sechin, a longtime Putin adviser who is now the president of Rosneft, the state oil company. 

Rosneft is deeply entwined in a variety of projects with ExxonMobil, including a joint venture signed in December to develop oil reserves in Siberia. If Mr. Sechin is barred from traveling to the United States and has his personal assets frozen, current and former government officials said that could put the partnership between the oil companies in real jeopardy. 

Republicans in Washington are also pushing Mr. Obama to be more assertive to break Russia’s energy grip over Ukraine and Europe. “If we are serious about challenging Putin’s aggression,” said Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “the U.S. and our European allies should make an all-out effort to break that grip.”

That is a marker of the seriousness of Western talk of sanctions: Does the Russian energy sector get targeted? In order to go after Rosneft or Gazprom you would have to guarantee that Europe and the United States march together in lockstep, otherwise one country's loss would just be another's gain. Europe has already declared that the energy sector is off-limits. The result? Serious economic sanctions are as probable as a thermonuclear war between East and West.