While you can talk about Ukraine until the cows come home, this story is 95 percent about Vladimir Putin and how he has chosen to define Russia’s interests. The truth is, Russia and its neighbors need a different definition of Russia’s interests. That, however, raises a series of questions: Can Moscow ever define its interests differently under Putin? If not, how do we deter him without also weakening Russia to the point of instability? And if we do induce such instability over time with sanctions, do we know what comes next and will we be better off?

I think America and the European Union have done exactly the right thing in ratcheting up sanctions on Putin, to try to stop him from destabilizing Ukraine further and preventing the presidential elections there on May 25 from producing a legitimate government. But we’d also better be ready for the consequences of success.

When we lived in a world of walls — during the Cold War era — weakening Russia was a strategy that seemed to have only upsides. But in a world of webs, a world that is not only more interconnected but interdependent, the steps we take to make Russia weaker can also come back to haunt us. When the world gets this tightly interwoven, not only can your friends kill you as quickly as your rivals (see Greece), but your rivals crumbling can be as dangerous as your rivals rising (see Russia or China).

Russia still has thousands of nuclear warheads that need to be controlled, and hundreds of nuclear bomb-designers. We need Russia’s help to control mafia crime, drug trafficking and cybercrime. And we need a stable Russia to serve as a counterbalance to China, to be a global energy supplier and to provide a social safety net for all its elderly.