Putin Is Cracking The Whip On The West
Updated: 10:29am UK, Monday 03 March 2014
By Sam Kiley, Foreign Affairs Editor
He's done it again.
With the swashbuckling approach to international affairs that fits his popular bare-chested public persona, Vladimir Putin has outmanoeuvred his Western rivals and local challengers.
Barack Obama, the leader of the world's greatest superpower, has been left looking like a salmon gasping on a river bank.
John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, unwittingly put his finger on why.
"You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext," he harrumphed.
Well, if you're Mr Putin, you do.
You destabilise regions where you have cultural linguistic ties, like Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, and then if you feel the time is right you invade them like a 19th-century Tsar and take charge in the name of protecting your natural subjects.
There is nothing surprising about what happened in the Crimea. Only that the Western powers, nests of super-expensive spy agencies and cyber surveillance, were left entirely gormless and thunderstruck when Russian commandos, posing as "gunmen", quietly took over airport and government buildings.
But one did not need MI6, the CIA, European spooks and cyber nerds to guess that Mr Putin meant business when he identified the new government in Kiev as being the products of a fascist revolution and mobilised 150,000 troops on Ukraine's borders. You just had to keep your head out of the sand.
But that is where Western powers have been shoving it throughout the recent Putin years.
They did this because they are powerless to stop him. They don't have his dash or his amoral lack of concern for anything other than what he perceives to be Russia's interests.
He has not been wringing his hands over Syria - a country he has repeatedly said should be left to make its own sovereign way (unlike Ukraine).
He has behaved with the total hypocrisy and certainty of purpose that made nations great in the 19th century.
Empires were built, the biggest by the Brits, on perfidy, dash, ruthlessness and clarity.
He has backed Bashar al Assad. He has backed Iran.
As a result he has the most influence in the Syria nightmare.
He also has the most influence in determining or at least shaping Iran's nuclear future - and if Tehran gets the bomb, then making sure that he's on the right side of its leadership.
As in Ukraine, the West is enjoying baying at the Russian bear from the moral high ground.
But it has no levers that it is serious about pulling, either in the Middle East or in Crimea.
Threats of snubbing the G8 pow-wow in Sochi in June, even of economic sanctions, hardly matter to the Kremlin.
Moscow can cause economic mayhem in Europe just by turning off the gas taps.
Mr Kerry told the CBS programme Face The Nation that there would be "very serious repercussions" for Moscow and said G8 nations and some other countries are "prepared to go to the hilt to isolate Russia" with an array of options.
"They're prepared to put sanctions in place, they're prepared to isolate Russia economically, the rouble is already going down. Russia has major economic challenges," he said.
That may be true.
But Mr Putin has the whip in his hand, and he's already doing the cracking.
:: Watch Sky News live on television, on Sky channel 501, Virgin Media channel 602, Freeview channel 82 and Freesat channel 202.
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