Former RFE/RL President Jeffrey Gedmin has written an interesitng commentary piece for the Atlantic Council on the West's approach to Putin. Here's a taster:
Imagine Winston Churchill saying: "We've got to send Nazi Germany a clear signal. At the same time we have to recognize that the Germans do need their lebensraum." It's unthinkable.
But that's what the West keeps saying to Vladimir Putin's Russia. The most recent example is United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond telling the BBC: "We've got to send a clear signal to Russia that we will not allow them to transgress our red lines. At the same time we have to recognize that the Russians do have a sense of being surrounded and under attack, and we don't want to make unnecessary provocations."
Well. We refused Georgia and Ukraine NATO's Membership Action Plan (MAP) in 2008 so Moscow would not feel "under attack." We cancelled missile defense in the Czech Republic and Poland 2009 to calm Kremlin fears of "feeling surrounded." Back in 2002, we established a NATO-Russia Council, designed so that Russia and Alliance members could "work as equal partners on a wide spectrum of security issues of common interest."
What did this get us?
Ukraine is at war, Georgian territory is occupied, the Baltic nations are feeling threatened, the Visegrad nations are wobbly and divided, and NATO's southern flank is in disarray.
It's time we realize that western weakness is provocative. It's also time for a reset in our approach to the continent. This means that we set an agenda that advances our interests and values—rather than merely reacting to an agenda set by Putin.
Read the entire article here