In one classic episode of the British comedy Yes Minister, a senior civil servant detailed the four phases of Foreign Office advice during an international crisis:
Nothing is happening.
Something is happening, but we don’t know what it is.
We know what it is, but there’s nothing we can do about it.
Maybe there was something we could have done—but it’s too late now.
This analysis produced the recommended response: all aid short of help.
In Ukraine, Western governments are now shifting from Phase 2 to Phase 3. We certainly know what is happening: the boldest Russian attempt in a quarter-century to reverse the outcome of the Cold War. Russia has already defied norms of behavior in place since 1945—and threatens to do worse if it doesn’t get more of its own way. Russia’s annexation of Crimea does not compare to the murderous violence that occurred in recent decades in places like Chechnya or the former Yugoslavia. Nor is it the first time Russia has used force to redraw a boundary in its favor: that occurred in Georgia in 2008.
Yet the attack on Ukraine is different from those previous events in deeply ominous ways. Moscow’s military intervention was triggered by an act of self-determination: peaceful protest against Russia’s attempt to dictate Ukraine’s economic future. Those protests were met with deadly violence at the hands of what almost has to be called a Russian colonial government. Escalating protests drove that colonial government out of power. The seizure of Crimea—now followed by military maneuvers on the eastern borders of mainland Ukraine—is punishment for Ukraine’s exercise of independence.
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