The crisis in Ukraine has stirred ancient suspicions of Russia in the west, and barely rational cold war passions on both sides. Western policy has become a mere knee-jerk escalation of sanctions. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, seems equally bereft of ideas.
Both sides need something more active, more imaginative, that tackles the central issue: how is Ukraine’s unity, prosperity, security, its openness to the outside world, to be combined with what Russia insists are its essential interests? The answers lie not in force, but in the despised arts of diplomacy: the patient search for an outcome that gives everyone what they need, if not everything they want.
The crisis has deep roots. But Mr Putin is immediately responsible for the present mess. He did not have to annex Crimea or fan the flames of protest in eastern Ukraine. A Malaysian airliner was downed on his watch. However. he has not yet achieved his objective: a neutral Ukraine that takes proper account of Russia’s wishes. And he has conjured up a storm of indignant opposition, ruining his chances of commanding the international respect to which he once aspired.