There were many reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin finally decided to invade Ukraine, but one was the failure of an international alignment on the consequences of such aggression.
Tacit indifference to Russia’s behavior from both sides of the Atlantic — regarding previous invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, nerve-agent attacks on political opponents, support for a bloody war criminal in Syria — undoubtedly encouraged the Kremlin's provocations.
But it’s not just indifference to Russia’s recent kinetic aggression that’s to blame. Insufficient response to its nonkinetic military operations helped equip the Kremlin with an effective virtual complement to the traditional invasion. The West in effect conducted a policy of digital appeasement in response to multiple cyberattacks. How did we get here and what can we do going ahead?