Why is Putin surpassing the West?

As Western leaders struggle to react to Vladimir Putin’s dramatic surprise challenge to the post-Cold War order in Europe, the record so far is contradictory. The West has assembled something of a unified stance on the limits of the concessions it is prepared to make and on the nature of the sanctions it is willing to impose if Putin chooses to go to war. painting. Neither the hyperactive growth in Paris nor the brutal passivity of Berlin has prevented the emergence of a common Western position. This is an achievement for which the Biden administration deserves credit.

However, this is a defensive achievement, not a decisive one. As Mr. Putin demonstrated in his speech on Monday, the Russian President is still in the driver’s seat and it is his decisions, not ours, that will shape the next phase of the confrontation. Russia, a power that Western leaders mocked and mocked for decades (“a gas station masquerading as a country,” as Senator John McCain once put it), seized the initiative. diplomatic and military in Europe, and the West, so far, powerless to do anything about it. We waved our hands at Mr. Putin and hoped that our careful description of the sanctions we were about to impose would change his mind.