Vladimir Putin has started a war with Ukraine. Despite commanding the largest military force in Europe, this will hasten his downfall and further diminish the Russian Federation’s standing in the world. His attempts to reassert Russia’s regional hegemony, first fantasised on his return to the presidency in 2012, will leave only a legacy of war, humanitarian catastrophe, and economic ruin.

Putin’s appeals to the glories of 18th century Russian empire (and the terrors of Stalin’s Soviet Union) can only end with the same tragic misery for his people.

Over the last decade Putin has stamped out all of the democratic institutions that had evolved within Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. He has murdered, imprisoned, and exiled political opposition, non-compliant media, and truculent oligarchs. Economic growth has been stagnant over this period.

Fossil fuels account for 60% of exports, and 30% of GDP. In the next few years, Russia will be overtaken by South Korea as the world’s 12th largest economy. The population is falling. This is not a sustainable position for any country.

Faced with weakness, Putin acts out

To counter this systematic decline, Putin has fomented unhappy mischief abroad. Russia is responsible for 58% of global state-sponsored cybersecurity warfare. His incursions in Syria have propped up the despotic Assad regime in Syria, including the commission of war crimes by Russian forces. He approved the use of chemical weapons against dissidents abroad. He has sent mercenaries to civil wars in Libya, and Central and sub-Saharan Africa.

He has bought off Viktor Orban in Hungary, encouraged separatist movements in the European Union, undermined democracy in the EU, and interfered with US and UK elections, and supported autocratic states around the world.

His disinformation campaign has hampered the global response to the pandemic. It has also backfired. Over 700,000 Russians have died from Covid.

The West has found it hard to respond but is now galvanised

Europe has struggled to defend itself against a decade-long assault on its values. The EU’s 28 members have diminished by one, and individual European states have experienced a toxic mix of democratic backsliding, and increasing political polarisation fueled by nationalism and populism. Likewise, the same polarisation that propelled Donald Trump to the presidency in the United States was cheerled by Russia. Trump, a long-time Putin apologist, frequently threatened to withdraw from NATO.

Political polarisation and culture wars are luxuries of sophisticated democracies. But they are also vulnerabilities that can be exploited by bad-faith actors. We have the right to argue with each other vehemently and vote for eccentric, incompetent, or even destructive political candidates. We can yell and scream at each other in the grounds of Parliament, and shut down a city for weeks.

But Putin’s actions have brought those trivial luxuries into perspective. When faced with the existential threat to Europe’s values, the EU has united. The US is a leading partner in confronting Russia’s aggression. Finland and Sweden, who have remained out of NATO since its inception, will now almost certainly join the alliance.

Putin’s actions against Ukraine have not just recommitted Europe to its founding principles. They have also strengthened Ukraine’s national ambitions to join Europe. Putin has shortened the runway for Ukraine’s European integration.

Russia has bitten off a lot. Can it chew it all?

Russia has overwhelming military superiority. Yet they will still suffer devastating losses. Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine has doubled its army, and modernised its equipment. Ukraine has 250,000 armed personnel, and 7 million men of fighting age.

Russia has captured the port of Odessa to block Ukraine’s access to shipping. It is now carrying out shock-and-awe air-strikes on Ukrainian cities with relative impunity.

But to force the removal of the government in Kiev and install a puppet regime, Russia needs to engage in urban warfare and land troops on the ground in the capital. As Russian forces descend on Kiev from multiple fronts, there are already signs that they are making less progress than they had planned. Russia’s losses are mounting.

Ukrainian losses will be martyrs in defence of the motherland. Russian casualties will diminish morale. The ground invasion of a country with a land mass almost twice the size of Germany will only lead to bloodshed that will eclipse all other conflicts in Europe in the last eight decades. And the blood will flow for years.

What goodwill Russia had left has been thrown away

Putin’s threats of nuclear war, and his chilling justification of “denazification” of Ukraine, provide theatre for his domestic audience. But Europe must take those threats seriously. He does not care what the rest of the world thinks. In the history of the United Nations, no Secretary-General has made such an appeal to a permanent member of the Security Council. Antonio Gutteres was on the brink of tears as he called on Putin to withdraw.

Putin is counting on either the Ukrainian government to break quickly, or force an exodus of refugees to flood into Poland and Romania. His intention is to capture Kiev, and then conduct the same forces build-up around Lithuania.

This is not the behaviour of a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council that is bound to uphold the United Nations Charter. This is not the behaviour of a country that is aligned to New Zealand’s values. It is the behaviour of a pariah state that actively seeks to harm our values.

Make no mistake, the sanctions will bite hard

The first round of economic sanctions has already been announced by the West. Germany has suspended the Nordstream 2 project. Boris Johnson, now on a war footing, is indistinguishable from other European leaders, just five years after he championed leaving Europe. The United States has announced limited consequences to those closest to Putin’s regime. In our region, Japan and Australia have made early moves. But they are still modest.

What will now follow is a concerted set of economic consequences that are intended to severely damage Russia’s economy. Whole industry and trade sectors banning the importation of Russian fossil fuels. Sanctions against all Russian banks. Delisting all Russian companies from national stock exchanges, and banning domestic banks from transacting with Russian and Russian-connected entities. Freezing Russian-connected assets. Removal of visa rights for Russian nationals. Cutting off Russian trading in key international currencies.

How far these countries will go to shut down Russia’s trade is still a moving feast. They will inevitably have seriously injurious effects on the global economy, at a time when economies are reemerging from the pandemic. Those sacrifices by Europe, the UK, and the US will be politically hard. Europe has nine months to secure alternative sources of gas before the next winter. But it will be more expensive, and European consumers will foot the bill.

At the diplomatic level, diplomats will be expelled and embassies will be withdrawn.

Putin brushed off the limited economic sanctions levelled against him following his invasion of Crimea in 2014. He will likely do so again. The Russian people are used to paying the high price of Putin’s grandiosity. There is no substantial political opposition to capitalise on it.

The challenge is going to be building a consensus beyond the West

More difficult still will be building a wider coalition of sanctioning states. Turkey’s President Erdogan has been progressively expanding Turkish-Russian economic relations. Russia depends on the Bosphorus Strait for much of its international trade. Erdogan has however condemned Russian aggression in Ukraine. Getting this reluctant NATO member to enforce an embargo on Russian shipping through the Bosphorus will be a long shot, but NATO must press him to deliver on it.

To date, India has voiced platitudes at the Security Council about opposing war and wishing to reinstate the Minsk agreements, but have taken no steps to criticise Russian aggression. Although the world’s largest democracy, India has a deep and complex economic and political relationship with Russia, and previously, the Soviet Union. Putting pressure on Narendra Modi to draw a line against Russia needs to be a European and American imperative.

Russia will respond with tit-for-tat sanctions against sanctioning countries. They may go as far as disrupting the exports of key Russian rare metals that are key to international supply chains which are not the direct targets of Western import restrictions.

Although China has appeared flat-footed and subdued at the Security Council, they are Russia’s most significant economic, political, and security ally. China has not overtly defended Russia’s actions. But they will have done their own calculations of the costs of a prolonged war in Ukraine. An economically crumpled large neighbour is not desirable. Neither, when your domestic security is dependent on delivering prosperity, is a recessionary global economy in China’s interests. If sanctions against Russia spur a global recession, China will be one of the biggest losers.

Getting serious about defending liberal values

Liberal democracies need to act swiftly to cut off the Russian propaganda machine. In the last fortnight, Germany has deregistered the RT television network. Various political figures in the UK are calling for the same. While the US could do likewise, a more confronting issue will be to shut down Putin’s stooges. It is one thing to regulate US social media conglomerates to limit Russian-generated propaganda. How though, where freedom of speech is sacrosanct, do you confront domestic pumpers of Putin’s bile and misinformation?

Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder now rivals Prince Andrew for his poor choice of friends. Schröder’s craven allegiance to Putin is problematic in a country that now must ask whether, had they taken a firmer approach on Russia sooner, ballistic missiles would be landing in Ukrainian cities today.

Human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law and human rights are not just the values enshrined in the Treaty of Lisbon. Proliferating these values also needs to be a new collective global mission for modern democracies. While China, Russia, and other creeping autocracies have sought to redefine democracy to justify the subjugation of their populations, this collective mission needs to actively promote these values. This mission also needs to actively confront the pernicious moral depravity of authoritarianism.

Ultimately, the threat to Putin is not Ukraine’s Westward-looking aspirations for trade and security. It is the risk of a prosperous, free and democratic Slavic-speaking neighbour going viral in his own country.

We must not shirk our role in this

In February 2014, New Zealand Trade Minister Tim Groser was in Moscow. He had reached agreement with his Russian counterparts on a ground-breaking free trade agreement between New Zealand and the Eurasian Economic Union, including Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. New Zealand would have been the first non-former Soviet state to reach a fair trade agreement with the customs union. In the middle of his last night in Moscow, Groser received a phone call from John Key to tell him that the negotiations had to be called off, as Russia had invaded Crimea overnight.

Russia was not happy.

Consequently, there were no further visits to Moscow by New Zealand Ministers under John Key’s or Bill English’s governments. As long as Russia continued to occupy Crimea, the New Zealand Government intended to limit engagement with Russia.

Two years before Russia’s occupation of Crimea, Foreign Minister Murray McCully confirmed that autonomous sanctions were now being considered by the Government. This was a significant change from previous government policy, which until then had been to confine our sanctions regime to those imposed by the United Nations Security Council. Sanctioning Russia was not yet on the political radar.

It was also resisted by multilateral purists in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. They considered that the ability to impose sanctions outside the United Nations system would be seen as undermining the UN. They also argued that an autonomous regime would put pressure on New Zealand to liberally apply sanctions for low-level disputes at the behest of local pressure groups or international partners and allies.

What can be done, should be done

There are of course diplomatic measures that New Zealand can take unilaterally. We don’t have to go to the UN to get permission to call in the Russian ambassador to speak to officials, as Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta demonstrated this week. We can recall our Ambassador for consultations, recall our Ambassador permanently, or expel Russian diplomats. We can even write letters on imposing letterhead. We can impose travel bans on some of the people most closely connected to the Russian regime. Sadly, none of these actions are likely to cause Putin to cease carpet-bombing Chernivtsi.

National dragged its feet on legislating for the sanctions regime. It took five years for it to be crafted. New foreign minister Gerry Brownlee introduced the Bill in May 2017. It was similar to the Australian regime, which was in turn based on the US Magnitsky Act. The European Union has autonomous sanctions, as does the UK, and Japan.

One of the more cryptic inclusions in New Zealand First’s coalition agreement with the Labour Party in 2017 was a commitment to pursue closer economic relations with Russia by resurrecting the FTA. Jacinda Ardern initially supported him. Finally, she vetoed it when advised by officials that FTA negotiations with Russia would be considered dimly by the European Union, with whom New Zealand was pursuing separate FTA negotiations.

Gerry Brownlee’s Bill languished on the order paper throughout Peters’ term as Foreign Minister. He was not willing to advance it, fearing that there would be calls to use autonomous sanctions against Russia. This came into sharp focus when he had to be dragged into condemning Russia for the Salisbury attack five days after the fact. But he also refused to dump it. That was left to Mahuta, who cancelled it within days of being appointed Foreign Minister.

New Zealand’s two-way trade with Russia is modest. It is composed primarily of crude petroleum from Russia, and butter from New Zealand. Investment is limited. There is not a mass of Russian investment in New Zealand, or vice versa. Over the last two years there has been no tourism, and little other in services.

Time for some of that famous independent foreign policy

But New Zealand is now an outlier among modern liberal democracies in not having an autonomous sanctions regime. When our closest like-minded friends are prepared to make such huge personal sacrifices to stand up for Ukraine’s sovereignty–in the case of much of Europe, this means literally going cold in winter; then it is no longer tenable to rely on travel bans or an antiquated commitment to a compromised UN system to send a message to Ukraine.

It is hand-wringing weakness to opine that New Zealand wants reform of the permanent membership veto on the Security Council. That reform will not happen. We need autonomous sanctions to take action against the most egregious violations of international law.

Although foreign affairs is occasionally a balance between our values and our interests, in the case of Russia, New Zealand needs to allow our values to prevail. We must align ourselves with Europe, the UK, the US, Japan and others on Russia. We need to be prepared to cut off trade with Russia, cease dealings with all Russian financial institutions, and freeze all Russian assets. We need to expel all of Russia’s diplomats and close our embassy in Moscow.

We need to make it clear to Russia that as long as they attempt to tear up the United Nations Charter, attack other sovereign states, and undermine our values, we can have no relationship with them.

We must commit to defeating Russia’s information war against our values, and play our part in advancing the cause of democracy and human rights, and combating authoritarianism. Some of those discussions will be hard.

We have to start taking action now,

The reputational risk to New Zealand is not simply whether we stand up with like-minded countries for the values that we have extolled in New York, Geneva and Vienna over nearly eight decades. The doors are closing on Russian finance. But finance is mobile. Even if there is agreement to lock Russia out of the SWIFT transaction system, New Zealand is still vulnerable. We have the tenth most-traded currency in the world. Our investment and business regime is among the most liberal. Two years into a comprehensive Western embargo on Russian finance, we will become an outcast if we have become an easy safe-haven for it.

Brownlee has attempted to table his Bill again this week. Mahuta responded loftily that the Bill is not “fit for purpose”. Yet they have made no attempt to replace it. The events in the last 24 hours have now made autonomous sanctions an urgent priority for New Zealand foreign policy. Brownlee’s legislation may not be perfect, but the critical need is to provide a mechanism to sanction Russia immediately. National leader Chris Luxon has offered National’s support to fast-track such a regime.

Ardern is due to travel to Europe shortly to press New Zealand’s case for the long-awaited FTA with the EU. When she visits European leaders, she will claim that we are like-minded modern liberal democracies with shared values. Each of them will then ask her what New Zealand is doing to show our commitment to those values. If all we have done is berated a Russian Ambassador and imposed a travel ban on Vladimir Putin, then they will laugh her out of the room.

Hamish Price is a former political adviser to the Minister of Trade in the last National Government. These are his personal views