Putin's motivation

So I guess Putin has changed a lot since he wrote that NYT op-ed. pic.twitter.com/W9Wwng6wpu — Alison G Vingiano (@alivingiano) March 1, 2014

It's now obvious that Putin doesn't fear retaliation from the West. That may be a function of personality: At The New Republic, Julia Ioffe lays out Putin's calculus simply: "Why is Putin doing this? Because he can. That's it, that's all you need to know." BuzzFeed's Miriam Elder makes the not-uncommon argument that "Putin sees the collapse of the Soviet empire as a disaster," and the expansion of Russia's influence as a reversion to form. According to the Times, German chancellor Angela Merkel offered a much more simple analysis. During a phone call with Obama, she reportedly said that "after speaking with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with reality, people briefed on the call said. 'In another world,' she said."

At Politico, author Ben Judah indirectly responds to an Obama administration critique that Putin had to act militarily because he lacks the "soft power" to otherwise control Ukraine. Judah writes that "Putin’s inner circle no longer fear the European establishment," because they "have seen firsthand how obsequious Western aristocrats and corporate tycoons suddenly turn when their billions come into play." Russia's ruling billionaires carry a lot of weight in the rest of the world.

As Ioffe notes, the 2008 Russian war with Georgia showed that "nobody wants to start a war with nuclear-armed Russia, and rightly so." The Times points out that "[n]o significant political leaders in Washington urged a military response" to the current situation for precisely that reason. It's the flip side to the toughness argument: the United States and NATO can no more threaten Putin militarily now than they could before the annexation. Elder reports that at least one Russian government official referred to Obama's "red line" comment on Syria, as a tacit reminder that Obama's hands were tied. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker made the same point. "Ever since the administration threw themselves into the arms of Russia in Syria to keep from carrying out what they said they would carry out," the senator said, "I think, [Putin] saw weakness." But war is not an option for many reasons. Among them, as Politico notes, a Pew poll published in December that showed "the most lopsided balance in favor of the U.S. 'minding its own business' in the nearly 50-year history of the measure."

The possible responses

Instead, Corker has developed a package of what the Times calls "a forceful response," in part leveraging those oligarchs' billions. ThinkProgress collected a few others, bringing the list to something like this: