Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton expand on Rubio’s earlier list of mostly bad and ineffective proposals for responding to Russia:

Some may argue that these actions are overly provocative and will only encourage Russia to be more aggressive. But provoking Russia is exactly what five years of “reset” has now achieved.

The measures Rubio and Cotton suggest include, among other things, a trade embargo and pushing for Georgian membership in NATO. These are obviously provocative moves, but more to the point they are invitations to Moscow to respond with its own punitive measures. If Germany is unwilling to press ahead with major economic sanctions, that is probably because they have much to lose thanks to their and Europe’s dependence on Russian energy, and Britain is not eager to shut Russian money out of its financial institutions for similar reasons. It is relatively easier for American politicians and pundits to demand economic warfare against Russia, because the U.S. has much less to lose directly from inflicting damage on the Russian economy. Meanwhile, the European governments that have to cooperate in carrying out these punishments will be the ones to suffer the consequences, and that would have deleterious effects on their economies and eventually on ours as well.

Agitating for NATO expansion over five years after the idea should have been abandoned isn’t a show of strength, but a careless gamble that will create new occasions for conflict. If the U.S. needs to reassure existing NATO members of its commitment to them and if it needs to organize a unified allied response, that has to rule out reviving a controversial push for expanding the alliance that many other members of the alliance consider unwise and unrealistic. Furthermore, if there is any chance of getting major European governments to go along with at least some economic sanctions, that isn’t going to be helped by bringing up NATO expansion plans that some of them have previously blocked.

Rubio and Cotton never explain what it is they expect all of this to achieve. If the goal is de-escalation of the current crisis and the prevention of armed conflict, taking actions that are likely to antagonize Moscow and make it harden its position is foolish. While the desire to punish Russia for its actions may be understandable, is there any reason to expect that this will change its behavior for the better? I called Russia’s incursion as “gross overreaction,” and so it was, but it would be very unwise if Western governments imitated that behavior by overreacting in their own response. If the goal is simply to inflict damage on Russia to teach it a lesson and to show “the world that America is not going anywhere” (whatever that is supposed to mean), it is more than likely to backfire and produce more of the same kind of behavior that the U.S. and EU reject. Hard-liners in all countries adhere to some version of the cult of “resolve” that informs so many wrongheaded hawkish arguments here, so we can be reasonably sure that “punishing” Russia will convince Moscow to dig in its heels and take more reckless actions of its own so that it is not perceived as “weak.”

In contrast, Thomas Graham offers some constructive suggestions on how to defuse the crisis and on how to start stabilizing Ukraine. It’s possible that all parties might not be able to reach an agreement that included all of Graham’s proposals, but they seem far more likely to result in a reduction of tensions and the avoidance of conflict than anything provided by the hawkish members of Congress.