The international effort to punish Vladimir Putin for the March 4 attempt to assassinate Sergei Skripal and his daughter is an enormously encouraging sign that free nations are at last turning against the Kremlin and its dictator. Britain has expelled 23 Russian diplomats from their posts in the U.K., to which Russia responded by expelling 23 British diplomats. The U.S. expelled 60 Russian diplomats; the Russians responded reciprocally. And on March 30 Russia released video of the test launch of a new intercontinental missile, charmingly called Satan II—a calculated show of defiance toward NATO.
Some western media outlets interpret these “tit-for-tat” moves as troubling signals of souring relations between Russia and the west. They are that, certainly. But it’s better that relations should sour than that anybody should persist in the delusion that Putin’s regime is something other than an international menace.
As encouraging as the worldwide effort to curtail or cut off diplomatic relations with Russia may be, it’s only a sign. Withdrawing diplomats won’t hurt Putin, and indeed he can be counted on to use the diplomatic fiasco occasioned by his recklessness as an argument for greater bellicosity. See how the world is always against Russia? he will argue. Russia must fight back.
Withdrawing diplomats is warranted, but the point of our strategy isn’t simply to exhibit our disapproval of Putin or to engage in international virtue-signaling. The point of our strategy is, or should be, to isolate him from the oligarchs and elites who make his rule possible and so, perhaps, shorten his reign. To achieve that aim, a far more aggressive approach is necessary.
The U.S. administration, as this magazine explained in our April 2 issue, has been substantively tough but rhetorically sycophantic toward Putin. The treasury department has imposed stiff sanctions on Putin associates even as the president fawns on the Russian dictator for a winning a sham election. The rhetorical weakness will likely continue, but we hope the administration keep finding ways to trouble and isolate Putin. We urged the White House to impose more and tougher sanctions on Russian oligarchs who facilitate Russian aid to rogue states—Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba—and who further the aims of the Russian state’s propaganda arm. The U.S. might even try having the World Cup matches moved from Russia to another state—and indeed on Sunday the spokesman for Russia’s foreign ministry accused the U.S. and Britain of conspiring to have the tournament moved elsewhere.
An idea that deserves more discussion: placing Russia on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. North Korea was added (or rather re-added) to that list in November of last year. Sudan has been on the list since 1993; Iran since 1984; Syria since 1979.
That Russia deserves to be on that list is difficult to deny. For several years, as a U.N. report recently revealed in harrowing detail, the Kremlin has funded militias to terrorize the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Russia is all but openly backing Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria—a regime that has repeatedly and wantonly used chemical weapons against civilian populations. Russian relations with Iran are murkier, but the two states grow closer by the month, making Russia almost certainly a de facto if not de jure abetter of Middle East terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah. It’s widely known that the Russians send money and military aid to Cuba and Venezuela, both of which rule their peoples in party by terrorizing them. And the U.S., including President Trump personally, has long accused Russia of illegally aiding the world’s worst terrorist regime, North Korea.
Placing Russia on the list with North Korea, Iran, and Syria would bring a host of economic and diplomatic sanctions against the Kremlin and so help to make life more difficult for the oligarchs that prostitute their wealth and influence for Putin’s goals. For a variety of complicated reasons, both the American left and the American right now favor taking a far tougher line against the Putin autocracy. Now is the time to call Russia what it has become under Putin: a friend of terrorism.
