While Russian President Vladimir Putin's chief spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, is upset about U.S. sanctions announced Tuesday, his government only has itself to blame.

These sanctions are only now being imposed due to Russia's failure to assure that it will no longer use chemical weapons. The Trump administration had given Moscow time to clarify its position on chemical weapons. Of course, this is no small issue. Motivated by Russia's attempted assassination of a former intelligence officer-turned-British-agent, Sergei Skripal, earlier this year, the sanctions are designed to enforce international norms against the use of highly toxic weapons. That norm matters greatly in the same way that deterring Syrian President Bashar Assad's use of chemical weapons mattered greatly: in educating despots to the risk of crossing internationally vested red lines.

Still, had Russia decided to grant the international community's wishes and clarify that it wouldn't use chemical weapons again, these sanctions might not have been imposed. But Russia won't make that commitment because to do so would be to undercut its blackmail-threat strategy against its enemies. Russia wants the world to fear that it will use chemical weapons again.

Fair enough. But in turn, it's only right that Putin reap the new sanctions whirlwind.