Soberingly important article from the FT about the dangers of isolating Russia: www.ft.com/content/5e357d9e-6717-4091-a7db-fe43bdbdab1d
Excerpt:
There are myriad moral reasons why Russia should be ghettoised as a geopolitical Chernobyl. But treating Russia as a collective Putin will be a strategic blunder. Here is why.
First, this notion will primarily benefit the Russian leader. It unwittingly gives him the legitimacy to speak on behalf of the Russian people. Worse, it justifies his twisted narrative that the only Russia the west can tolerate is a weak or defeated one. If Russia is a geopolitical Chernobyl, the only reasonable strategy for any freedom-loving Russian is to bolt for the exits.
Second, an isolation strategy is probably self-defeating because it closes off interest in what is happening in Russia. It predicts that Russians’ failure to speak against the war means that the country will never change its attitude towards it. It will miss the fact that more than a few Russians support the war not because they support the regime but because they irrationally hope that the war will change the regime.
Opposition-minded people hope that a defeat for the Russian army in Ukraine will bring Putin down. Many of his supporters relish the destruction of the despised, Putin-enabled offshore elite. In the words of a famous rock singer, after the west seized the property of the oligarchs, Russians finally became “equal like in 1917”.
Third, to bet on a world without Russia is ultimately futile because the non-western world, which may not favour the Kremlin’s war, is hardly eager to isolate Russia. Many see the current barbarism as disgusting but not exceptional. They practice value-free realism. Many of the states that US president Joe Biden invited to his Summit for Democracy have not placed sanctions on Russia.
Russia’s military offensive in the Donbas only intensifies the clash between those who view the country as morally irreparable and those who see it as an unavoidable reality in global politics. The offensive will force European public opinion to choose between “the peace party” (those who insist that the west’s priority should be to stop hostilities as soon as possible, even at the cost of major concessions from Ukraine) and “the justice party” (those who insist the priority should be to expel Russian troops from Ukrainian territory even at the cost of prolonged war).
Peace and justice do not rhyme in European history. Whether you call the invasion of Ukraine Putin’s war or Russians’ war is not a matter of taste but a strategic choice. It signals the west’s expectations about its relations with post-Putin Russia, whenever that arrives.