The Spectator: on 150 years of punishing Russia

Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine has left western diplomats scrabbling for sanctions that won’t backfire on to the rest of Europe and America. The foreign secretary William Hague said Russia must ‘face consequences and costs’. When a policy paper was photographed that said the UK should not support trade sanctions or close London’s financial centre to Russians, Mr Hague said it did not reflect government policy. But punishing Russia is sure to be an expensive business.

Just before the Crimean War, when Russia invaded Turkish Moldovia and Wallachia in 1853, a Spectator editorial took a hard line; Russia should be punished on principle.

The present operations of Russia proceed entirely upon the old fashion of coercing other states into an alliance against their likings if not against their convictions. Not- withstanding her diplomatic cleverness, Russia is by no means a fair type of European intelligence or honesty… Like a noble in the middle ages, the Czar seeks to bribe or bully his betters into standing by him; and hitherto the minor states of Europe, if not those of the first rank, have even been obliged to sacrifice their own clear perception and their conscience to their policy or their fear.