In his speech
to the Duma earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin turned directly
to the people of Ukraine, who perhaps he had heard were feeling jittery. “Do
not,” he said, “believe those who want you to fear Russia, shouting that other
regions will follow Crimea. We do not want to divide Ukraine; we do not need
that.” One imagines that Putin would not offer such an explicit pledge if he
planned to violate it. On the other hand, he also noted that, after the
Revolution, the Bolsheviks — “may God judge them” — transferred historically
Russian territory which now constitutes “the southeast of Ukraine.”

Logic would dictate that Putin digest the chunk of Ukraine
he’s bitten off before opening his jaws again. But the smell of fresh blood may
simply whet his appetite. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen just
told Foreign Policy that he worries that Putin’s “next
goal will be the eastern provinces of Ukraine” — the ones that the
Bolsheviks inexcusably surrendered. Ukraine can live perfectly well without
Crimea, but not without its own industrial heartland. The great question facing
the West over the next few weeks is thus not punishment for past misdeeds, but
deterrence of future ones.

Before going to the question of
whether and by what means Putin is deterrable, we should ask ourselves by what
right, exactly, the West is being called upon to punish and prevent. Realists
implore us to come down off our high horse. The Ukraine crisis is not about
territorial aggression, FP‘s Gordon Adams admonishes
us, but rather “the realities of the interstate system.” George Friedman, the
Metternich of Stratfor, notes that since “Russia has historically protected
itself with its depth…. The loss of Ukraine as a buffer to the West leaves
Russia without that depth and hostage to the intentions and capabilities of
Europe and the United States.”

The reminder that Putin is
defending Russia’s national interests as he has defined them, and as all great
powers defined them in centuries past, is a useful caution against the hysterical
moralism which turns Crimea into Munich. But it matters that the West no
longer casually annexes neighbors, as the United States did with Texas 150
years ago. States whose definition of national interest posits a zero-sum
contest among hostile powers pose a threat to an international order which no
longer accepts the logic of balance of power — and not just a strategic
threat, but a moral one as well. You don’t have to mistake Putin for Hitler to
believe that he must be stopped from seizing Donetsk.

But how? The United States and
the European Union have imposed sanctions on a range of individuals surrounding
Putin. President Barack Obama has announced a second
set of sanctions targeting Putin’s closest allies and financiers. But this may
be the kind of pain — against others — which Putin welcomes rather than
fears. Obama has, however, signed another executive order which authorizes the
Treasury Secretary to exact punishments against Russian companies in energy,
banking, metals and mining, and other key industrial sectors. Prohibiting
Russian oil and gas companies from doing business with American banks and
energy firms could do real damage to the Russian economy.

For all the abuse coming his way
from the Putin-is-Hitler crowd, Obama has reacted firmly, tightening the screws
in response to each new provocation. Unfortunately, Washington cannot, by
itself, threaten sufficient harm to deter Putin if he really wants to reverse
Lenin’s mistake. Since Putin knows full well that NATO would not respond with
force to any violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, the only weapon he needs to
fear is an economic one. And here Obama can only go just so far. He has been
able to cripple the Iranian economy through sanctions imposed by the U.N.
Security Council, forcing Tehran to negotiate over its nuclear program; but of
course Russia would veto any such effort. And the United States is not, itself,
an important market for Russian products.

The key is Europe, which spends
$100 billion a year importing Russian gas. (The oil bill is even higher, but
Russia could sell its oil elsewhere more easily than its gas.) Nothing would
deter Putin so effectively as the prospect of losing that market, which would
wreak havoc on Russia’s economy. The idea of a “gas boycott” has been the talk
of European capitals. But so far, it’s been just talk. I asked Stefan Meister,
a Russia expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, what
form such a boycott would take, and he said, “There’s been no concrete
discussion. In Brussels, nobody knows what it would be like.”

The reason the discussion has
remained so vague is because the prospect is so frightening. While Germany
depends on Russia for only 36 percent of its gas — and has stored up a surplus
— Italy, Poland, and Bulgaria, among others, are more dependent and have
little or no storage capacity. Meister points out that Poland could switch to
coal — save that it now imports coal from Russia. While oil producers like
Saudi Arabia have surplus capacity which can be tapped in a crunch, the gas
market is tight; Qatar, the world’s largest source of gas, has no additional
capacity. Japan and China buy up whatever is available.

The good news is that, as Jason
Bordoff, a former White House advisor on energy and climate, points out, “in
four or five years there will be a lot more supply,” thanks to the growing use
of fracking technology in Europe as well as increased supplies of liquefied natural
gas from the United States and elsewhere. The crisis with Russia has already
begun to concentrate European minds on the issue of energy independence.

The bad news, however, is that
Putin isn’t thinking about five years from now; if he were, he wouldn’t have
invaded Crimea in the first place. If anything, the prospect of long-term
economic decline may prompt him to seize eastern Ukraine’s economic assets
right now — while he has an opening. He might hesitate if the cost were
crippling Gazprom, the most formidable weapon he has. But Putin knows that
Europe can’t afford to stop buying Russian gas for the next several years. If the
cost for eastern Ukraine is burning his bridges to the West and having his own
and all his cronies’ assets frozen, Putin just may consider that a price worth
paying.

I could not find an energy
expert who believes that Europe could do without Russian gas in the short term.
Meister points out that even as the rhetoric of German Chancellor Angela Merkel
grows harsher, she remains studiously vague on sanctions. When I observed that
the situation sounded hopeless, he turned glum: “Yes, this is what I was
discussing with my colleagues in Warsaw yesterday. We started drinking vodka.”
First Russian, he said, then Ukrainian.

In short, the only force that
can keep Russian troops from drinking vodka in Donetsk is Vladimir Putin
himself. Putin has so many lower-cost options available to him that a
large-scale invasion — even one limited to border areas — still seems
unlikely. Putin may calculate that he can destabilize Ukraine, and thus turn
its dalliance with the West into a failure, by using Russia’s immense economic
power to squeeze Ukraine, by blanketing the east with propaganda from Russian
media and by sending agents provocateurs
to whip up popular discontent. Putin doesn’t “need,” as he put it, to divide
Ukraine by force; he just needs to keep it out of the Western orbit.

It is a very, very unsettling
thought that Ukraine’s fate now depends on Putin’s calculations of
self-interest, or even his whims. The ringmaster of Sochi seems still to be
glorying in the vast powers at his disposal. We can only hope that the vapors
start to disperse in the harsh light of day.

ALEXEY DRUZHININ/AFP/Getty Images