The inclination of most Western leaders most of the time has been to coddle or appease Mr Putin, rather than confront him—because they have been deluded about his real goals and motives, or distracted by other crises, or divided by the Kremlin’s gas deals. ~The Economist

The European response to Putin is more complicated (they are over a barrel because of oil and gas supply dependency, but they are ideologically hostile to Putin as much as anyone in Washington), but when it comes to Washington’s approach this is an amazing description.  On the surface at an official level, there has not been much confrontational and inflammatory rhetoric coming from administration officials, but to understand actual Russia policy you have to follow the old “watch what they do, not what they say” rule.  First, there was the withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, which the Russians viewed harshly, and there was also NATO expansion into eastern Europe, which Russia took very poorly.  Then there has been repeated meddling by Washington, the EU, the OSCE and Western NGOs in Russia’s near-abroad: Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan being the most oustanding examples.  Criticism about Chechnya also rankles, especially when it comes from those states that invade other countries.  The government was not quite as bad about excuse-making for the Beslan murderers as some pundits and journalists in establishment circles, but the general response to the Beslan massacre in the West was a mix of indifference and a sense that the Russians brought this on themselves, and the perception of a double standard about terrorism here is very hard to shake. 

To Putin, who was the first to offer aid to the United States after the 9/11 attacks and who put up no barriers to American deployments all over Central Asia in the campaign that followed, Washington’s actions have been obnoxious, pointed incursions on Russia’s sphere of influence and demonstrations of impressive ingratitude.  The targeting of regimes that have long-standing ties to Moscow on grounds of halting weapons proliferation must strike the Russians as oddly convenient, since it was our ally in Pakistan that has been responsible for most of the nuclear and missile technology proliferation of the last ten years.  The deployment of “missile defense” systems in central Europe, contrary to past commitments made to Moscow, has been something of a final straw, precipitating a series of more and more confrontational moves from the Russian side to make up for what I suspect the Kremlin regards as its excessive indulgence of Western encroachment.  The idea that the current situation has come about because the West has been soft and indulgent towards Russia is simply bizarre and I don’t know how anyone could make successful policy recommendations based on such a skewed view of the situation.