Greetings, Professor Putin. How about a nice game of chess?

A quick thought about the recent “tit-for-tat” of US and Russian sanctions over Crimea.  For one, they aren’t “tit-for-tat.”  Everyone on the Right loves to make comments semi-praising Putin and outright-dissing Obama by claiming that on most topics “Putin is playing chess and Obama is playing checkers.”  (Note: Many on the Left have extensively, and I think correctly, discussed Senator McCain’s apparently man-crush on Putin.  The hate-lust is palpable.  And sometimes I wonder if these old weirdos recognize the fact that they continue to demand that a US president act more like a Russian quasi-strongman/despot.)  Well here is one area in which they emphatically are not.  Obama has imposed real and painful economic sanctions against some of the highest advisors and “cronies” in the Kremlin, on top of a major Russian bank many of the oligarchs use for their personal piggy banks.  He has even left open the possibility of directly sanctioning their major industries, and I think is a fair bet that Obama will end up following through on those threats.      

Russia has made it harder for seven Americans to get visas.

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This is emphatically chess and checkers.  It could be said, charitably, that Putin has no interest in actually trying to respond to the US sanctions since he is more interested in consolidating his control in Eastern Ukraine.  He will convince his sanctioned countrymen to just “wait it out” till the next thaw.  Maybe.  I think a more likely explanation is twofold.  (1) The token economic advisors remaining in the Kremlin have explained to Putin that any attempt to impose a penalty will also have the effect of imposing a cost on Russia as well (as all sanctions do in a free trade environment) and the last thing Russia needs is further damage to their markets and a dive in investor confidence in the event of a trade war.  Perhaps nosedive is a better word for it.  (2) Russia understands that any sanctions they impose on the US would have little or no effect on a sluggish but growing US economy.  The thud of sanctions failing to have any impact is much louder than imposing tooth-less sanctions and calling it a day.  The weak trading relationship between the US and Russia makes sanctions a tricky proposition.  The main reason the US has teeth in this is the usual reasoning of the US as an investors haven and the dollar’s control over international finance. 

Putin called an emergency meeting of his economic advisors in Sochi back in April 2013, almost exactly a year ago.  (Note: what a perfect backdrop for an economic emergency meeting, then the scene of the 2014 Winter Olympics.  They could have looked out the window and seen the ongoing orgy of government waste, corruption, Pyongyang-level hubris, and overall fiscal irresponsibility as they get berated by Putin about why his toxic policies aren’t growing the economy.)  From that meeting, Putin made stopping and reversing the economic slowdown in Russia a top priority.  It hasn’t gone well.  This won’t help.