Snubbing Putin at Sochi Did Not Help Ukraine

Russia is a country acutely sensitive to "lack of respect", and the West seems to have got into the habit of almost routinely neglecting such respect. Even before the Sochi scuttle there was Condi Rice's condescending willingness to "forgive Russia" after the disagreements over the 2003 Iraq war; the appointment in 2009 of a US ambassador with a long history of published academic works strongly critical of Russia; the glib way all Western governments instantly (and erroneously) blamed Russia for the start of hostilities with Georgia in 2008; and the casual and public way President Obama cancelled his planned summit with Putin in 2013 because there was "nothing to talk about". Russia of course faces its own charge sheet-attacks on Western business and NGOs, Litvinenko, Edward Snowden-but it is hard not to feel that, for many Western politicians, Russia has become a country to profile themselves against rather than try seriously to work with.

For a long time there was not much Russia could do about all this. It was too weak, and too distracted by internal problems. But the humiliation did play into Yeltsin's search in 1999 for a successor who would stand up to the West. He found Vladimir Putin. 

Ironically, Putin, like Yeltsin, started out with hopes of good relations. He (fruitlessly) reopened the question of Russian membership of Nato and gave the US important (if unacknowledged) support in the aftermath of 9/11. But, spooked in particular by alleged Western involvement in the 2003-04 "colour revolutions" in Georgia and Ukraine, as well as by Western sympathy for Chechen separatism, he, too, swiftly came to see the West as a threat.

 

Russia's rapid economic recovery after 2001 revived its international self-assertiveness. It found a key ally in China. The two countries see eye to eye in their shared aversion to US "unipolarity" and to Western activism on democracy and human rights issues (an agenda with obvious implications for their own internal governance). China has also worked harder than the West at the political aspects of its relationship with Russia (Xi Jinping's first overseas trip for example was to Moscow). In the UN Security Council Russia and China repeatedly blocked Western proposals for action on Zimbabwe, Sudan, Iran and, most recently, Syria. Russia has firmly backed China's approach to Tibet, as China has Russia's to Chechnya and the Caucasus. Meanwhile, Putin, in a famous speech in 2007, castigated the West for edging towards "a new Cold War", suspended a key European arms control treaty, and has threatened to site nuclear weapons on the borders of Nato in response to US plans to base new missiles in Europe.