Russia is the second-largest exporter of petroleum products to the United States, and the administration appears to have little taste for paring back that reliance. If the West intends to comprehensively sanction the Russian regime, it will need to target its most lucrative export—energy—and Russia will retaliate.

Goldman Sachs estimates that disruptions in Russia’s energy exports could push the price of Brent crude up to or above historic records. That could in turn push U.S. inflation rates well above 10 percent, further reducing Americans’ purchasing power and increasing political pressure on this first-term presidential administration to relieve that hardship. Europe, which is far more reliant than the U.S. on Russian energy, will be even more acutely affected by such a sanctions regime. Keeping the Atlantic Alliance on the same page will be a full-time job. But this is the only serious course left to the West. Sanctions that average Russians feel only in the form of “higher prices for food and clothing” or even devalued “pensions and savings accounts” won’t destabilize the Russian regime, and it won’t send a single Russian soldier back to permanent bases inside the Federation.

If Biden is serious, he needs to level with the American public. We are witnessing in real-time the death of a geopolitical order that has well served both Americans and the world. This must be resisted with all the force that prudence allows. Resistance won’t come without sacrifice, but it is a sacrifice we all must be asked to make if we are to preserve the world our parents and grandparents struggled to bequeath to us.