More to the point, if Putin had been looking for some way out of this mess, he certainly wouldn’t be looking any longer, because de-escalating now would make it seem that he was backing down under Western pressure. Obama has had two long phone conversations with Putin in recent days, but as long as he insists on preconditions for renewed diplomacy (Putin must return his troops to their base, he must sit down with Ukrainian officials), Putin has no reason to comply. Russia has deeper interests in Ukraine than the West does—and more localized sources of pressure to make those interests felt.

That being the case, Putin can sit and wait. He has the upper hand in this game—and the more the West plays on his terms, the stronger his hand will seem. Sanctions won’t change his behavior, except to stiffen it—and once that becomes clear, Putin will seem stronger, the West will seem weaker, and a solution to the Ukraine crisis will recede in the distance…

Sanctions do have a place in this sort of confrontation, but Obama got the sequencing wrong. The “costs” and “consequences” of Russia’s actions should have been laid out on the table as measures that he would take if Russia didn’t take steps to wind down the crisis. If possible (and maybe it isn’t anymore), this warning could have been conveyed in private, and in any case there should have been no public demands on precisely what winding-down steps the Russians must take. Whatever leverage we might have had is lost, once the chips are already spent—and are shown to have no value.