How to End a War: Putin’s War and the World’s Responses

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is an attack on human rights and world stability. However, the United States will not put “boots on the ground” in Ukraine. No one ever expected that it was a serious option. Direct U.S. military involvement risks an escalation involving two nuclear powers (Beauchamp, 2022). The Biden Administration employed an aggressive intelligence leaking operation to deter, or at least delay, the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Barnes & Sanger, 2022). Turning from words and weapons, the United States issued sanctions “imposes[ing] devastating costs on Russia” (The White House, 2022).

However, Vladimir Putin seems to feel justified in his belligerence. In an early psychological profile of Vladimir Putin’s governing philosophy and worldview, Dyson (2001) noted the contradictory views of Putin: Putin considers himself to be a ‘dictator of the law’, but views “his opponents as outside the norms and rules of normal political life, and hence liable to be dealt with violently” (p.336). As early as 2006, Putin was interfering in Ukraine (Feklyunina, 2008 p.606). Like Dyson (2001), Feklyunina (2008) also noted Putin’s hypocrisies; he severed “gas supplies to Ukraine in early 2006, despite Russia’s interest in projecting an image of

itself as a reliable business partner” (p.606). To his self-righteous or delusional propaganda of de-Natzifying Ukraine and ending the fictitious genocide of ethnic Russians limited the likelihood that the Russian invasion could have been averted.

In response to Russia’s violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum (Wall Street Journal, 2022), the West resorted to the issuance of broad sanctions (White House, 2022), ignoring the decades of documentation that have noted the ineffectiveness of economic sanctions. “Economic Sanctions” are buzz words in democratic diplomacy and a replacement for action to avoid military casualties (Keefe, 2006). Worse the historical application of sanctions often hurts the general population of the targeted nation-state allowing the leaders of the nation-state to blame the sanctioning bodies for economic woes (Haaretz, 2015).

And Joe Biden knows this. As U.S. Senator, Biden served with U.S. Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN) for 31 years and, when Biden was the senior Democrat on the committee, his counterpart was Dick Lugar (Murphy, 2019). Lugar was noted for his skepticism of sanctions, saying “sanctions rarely ever work as intended, but they always have consequences” (Haass, 1993, p.224). Biden knows Lugar’s work on sanctions; after all, he eulogized Lugar by saying “Dick Lugar was among the most decent men I have ever known. Kind, loyal, dedicated beyond measure to the service of the American people. Dick Lugar was my dear friend” (Biden, 2019). Unfortunately, sanctioning nation-states as a mechanism to curb behavior or promote regime change are often considered the go-to alternative to military action.

Yet, the binary argument regarding sanctions and war is a false dichotomy. Cortright and Lopez (2002) pointed out that “smart sanctions” are more effective and ethical. Wadhams (2022) wrote even Biden’s own aides did not think the threat of sanctions against Russia would stop the invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, the Biden Administration is holding back on the very tools that have the most effect. And, regardless of what Segers (2022) and others believe, the most powerful tool against Putin is not kicking Russia out of SWIFT. Even later, on February 26, 2022, when “limited” Russian banks were barred from SWIFT, the Western allies neglected to use the full strength of this purported most powerful tool (Collins, Mattingly, Liptak, & Judd, 2022). The Allied response ought to immediately use smart sanctions to target Putin and his inner circle, not the broad sanctions against the government businesses, and people of Russia.

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has hidden billions of dollars outside of Russia (Harding, 2016). The United States should be targeting Putin’s financial assets as strongly as Putin is targeting the people of Ukraine. When asked directly about sanctioning Putin directly, Biden said it remains “on the table” (Leptak, 2022; The White House, 2022). Putin should not be immune to consequences for the destruction of lives and property he has caused. There is no Westphalian sovereign immunity protecting Putin. The world community eliminated sovereign immunity and created new precedent in international law in the Slobodan Milošević and Charles Taylor trials.

In addition to aggressively targeting Putin and his inner circle with smart sanctions, the United States must be prepared to support a possible Ukrainian government-in-exile both financially and militarily. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland supported several governments-in-exile during World War II. Support for those governments maintained a sense of legitimacy as well as a beacon of hope for the people under occupation. The Government of Ukraine and the Volodymyr Zelenskyy Administration must be preserved.

After all, It is not Ukraine or the United States that is alone, it is Vladimir Putin. Thousands of Russian civilians have been arrested for demonstrations opposing the invasion of Ukraine (Knutson, 2022). Russian athlete Daniil Medvedev, the top-ranked men’s tennis player in the world, is using his social position to oppose the war (Asmelash, 2022). So are his fellow Russians, Andrey Rublev, the seventh-ranked men’s tennis player, and renowned Russian soccer player Fyodor Smolov (Asmelash, 2022). The United States can support the Russian resistance to Putin’s war by supporting and using information strategies like was done with the dissemination of the covert intelligence reports. Attention by Western governments and media on Shirin Ebadi (Iran), Liu Xiaobo (People’s Republic of China), and Andrea Sakharov (U.S.S.R.) helped keep the dissidents kept both the dissidents alive as well as their pro-humanity messages as well.

The United States must also recognize and support non-state actors. The refusal of the Polish and Swedish national soccer teams to play Russia in the World Cup qualification playoffs (Morse, 2022) is an example of the democratization of resistance. The Government of Poland and the Kingdom of Sweden did not bar the athletic competition, non-state actors decided to deny Putin the platform of hosting the games as well as the revenue from the competition. Dichter (2020) discussed the use of “soccer diplomacy” by governments, but these non-state actors are utilizing similar measures strengthened by the power of social media.

Whether ideologically motivated or opportunistic, there are also likely Russian state-actors unenthusiastic of the war as well. In his classic 1969 article, Graham Allison discusses Model III: Bureaucratic Politics and wrote that “the leaders who sit on top of organizations are not a monolithic group. Rather, each is, in his own right, a player in a central, competitive game. The name of the game is bureaucratic politics: bargaining along regularized channels among players positioned hierarchically within the government” (p.707). From Brutus to Claus von Stauffenberg, history is rife with examples of regimes brought down from within. And, while Putin has been in power since 1999 (Heilman, 2022), Omar al-Bashir ruled Sudan for over 30 years and was brought down by his own military when his military leaders concluded that he was a liability to their power because of the civil protests by Alaa Salah and the “Women in White” (Osman & Bearak, 2019; Sadek, 2019).

Whether Allison’s Model III: Bureaucratic Politics, civil protests, non-state actors, or military support for Ukrainian resistance, there are numerous strategies to resist Vladimir Putin’s belligerence. But the United States must not wield sanctions as a cudgel. Historically, broad sanctions are not successful and rarely work as intended and often both hurt unintended people and businesses, while inoculating rogue leaders by creating a sense of national persecution (Keefe, 2006). Smart sanctions work with the non-state actors of Russia instead of unintended consequences or inoculating rogue leaders from criticism. In order to protect Ukraine and reestablish Pax Europa, the United States must target Putin and his cronies with smart sanctions immediately and without reservation.