The West is yet again at a critical juncture.  Unrelenting Russian bombardment of Ukraine calls Kiev’s allies to question whether to amp up the volume of economic warfare against Moscow or not.

Apart from ethics, this dilemma is far from trivial.

On the one hand, the strongest possible response is needed to wreck Putin’s war machine or at least deprive the resources that fund it.  The logic here is simple.  Absent an effective pushback from the West, Ukraine will be conquered and Russia emboldened to resurrect a lost empire.

If history is any indication, the failure to stop Hitler in 1938 makes a strong case against Putin now.

On the other, the world has changed so much that outdated parallels with the past make little sense today.  Modern Russia is not the USSR that can be contained.  Nor is it some kind of Titanic that can be sunk under an iceberg of sanctions.

Truth be told, the West needs a bigger gun to counter contemporary Russia.  And, the bigger the gun, the bigger the recoil, both literally and figuratively.

This trade-off is real and boils down to the fact that unleashing economic Armageddon on Moscow – with brute force of 10 out of 10 on the pain scale – is all about mitigating unintended........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)