Numerous voices, including those of two former German chancellors, have recently expressed their understanding for Russia’s annexation of Crimea by force. According to this logic, Putin’s “fear of being surrounded” has been first and foremost a reaction to inappropriate behavior on the part of the West, starting with NATO’s eastward expansion. While some warn against the wisdom of wagging fingers at Putin, others seem incapable of recognizing that a breach of international law has indeed taken place. Putin has in fact managed to persuade many Germans to have some sympathy for an autocratic ruler who is using the threat of military force to bring a portion of a neighboring country “heim ins Reich” — back home to the Reich. Who would have thought that this was possible after 1945?
The “rhetoric of understanding” completely fails to take into account the disastrous consequences the crisis in Crimea will bring for international relations.
In the Crimea crisis, the cause of international nuclear nonproliferation is the first to lose. The Budapest Memorandum was signed in 1994 by Ukraine, Russia, the US, and Great Britain. In exchange for Ukraine’s renunciation of Soviet nuclear weapons stationed within its borders, the US, Great Britain, and Russia pledged their readiness to respect the country’s political and economic independence. Now, after the annexation of Crimea, what nation will be prepared to declare its readiness to give up its atomic weapons or abandon programs for developing them? Twenty years later, the contractually established security guarantees seem to be worth no more than the paper they are printed on.
Rule of law, already much strained in the past years, is taking a very hard hit as well. Disregarding the question of whether Crimea was Russian for the past two hundred years or whether Nikita Khrushchev gave it away on a whim, this fact remains: with the end of the Soviet Union, the former Soviet republics formally consented to mutually respect their borders and territorial integrity as well as to recognize as international those borders that had previously been internal. Three years later, the Budapest Memorandum explicitly confirmed Ukraine’s borders. Even if the referendum over Crimea had not taken place under violent, coerced circumstances, territorial changes must be regulated consensually under international treaties, as is clear in the UN charter – and as President Putin himself has always been quick to stress when the subject was Kosovo or Chechnya.
There is no doubt that Russia’s annexation of Crimea presents a clear violation of the rule of law – and brings an entirely new dimension to it for that matter. By incorporating Crimea, Russia is the first European state since 1945 to use force take over a portion of another state with revisionist intent and to deploy its military strength to achieve its political objectives. The violation of this rule cannot become a precedent. For if it does, this spells the end of peace in Europe. The effects of the Crimea conflict on border disputes in Central Asia, in the Caucasus, and in the Western Balkans are in no way yet foreseeable. It is therefore grossly negligent to apologize for the apparent naturalness with which Putin ignores standards of international law by pointing to the West’s own (real and alleged) violations of international law. Calculating wrong against wrong still doesn’t add up to right. Whoever in Europe starts to reconsider historical territorial claims and to enforce them with military force must be condemned in the starkest terms and made to face diplomatic and economic sanctions, so that international affairs can once again be governed by rules – rules that remain valid. To do this, Europeans must overcome their concerns about their own economic vulnerabilities and stick to the course they set: imposing sanctions on Russia.
Last but not least, the Crimea crisis has stymied all hope of soon finding a settlement to the civil war in Syria. For a short time it seemed that Russia and the West had discovered a common interest: destroying Syrian chemical weapons. Now, however, in his “blood and soil” speech to the Russian people after capturing Crimea, Putin has made it all too clear that he is not interested (any longer) in pursuing a constructive partnership with the West. Those who believe that accepting the annexation of Crimea can somehow change this – those who wish to follow a policy of de-escalation at all costs – have already proven themselves susceptible to blackmail. And whoever believes that it is not worth compromising good relations with Russia over Ukraine does not understand that this matter already involves far, far more than the future of German-Russian relations. As before, it remains true that security in Europe is only possible with Russia – but Russia ought to refrain from attacking its neighbors.
