Publicly punishing Putin over MH17 no recipe for success
In my experience the best way to elicit co-operation from someone is probably not to publicly humiliate them.
Work colleagues, friends, waiters – in almost all cases an absence of ridicule is the most effective strategy.
So the world’s approach to the flight MH17 tragedy and the wider Ukrainian conflict on face value seems a curious detour from common practice.
The flames from the downed aircraft were still smouldering when world leaders announced that Russian president Vladimir Putin was to blame.
As far as supporting the groups most likely to have downed the plane, and quite probably supplying them with the weaponry to do so, Putin is probably culpable.
But it might be polite to at least have some sort of rudimentary examination of circumstances before publicly laying blame, and, niceties aside, if you want his help just maybe that sentiment could be more diplomatically conveyed.
So, that might exclude the megaphone of global media?
Yet every world leader so inclined – including our own PM – has telephoned Putin, given him forthright outline of their expectations of him, and just to salt the wound, proceeded to crow about it in their own national media.
US president Barack Obama suggested that while Putin’s verbal response was adequate he’d better follow up with deeds or else ratcheting up sanctions might just be the start.
Just to revisit the theme: success looks like the bodies of the deceased are respectfully gathered and removed, the site is sealed off, investigators do their bit and some hard fast conclusions are reached.
Conventional wisdom is that Putin is the key to most if not all these goals, and the deft art of international diplomacy lays the groundwork for tacit agreement, where no-one loses face and all sides come away satisfied.
What do we do instead? The US makes threats within hours of the event and every jackdaw pretender to the world stage boasts that they have given Putin a piece of their mind.
The irony is that these leaders puffing their out chests at home do so to enhance their image to a domestic audience, apparently blind to the fact that Putin has an image to preserve at home as well.
And is being seen as a compliant jellyfish that gets ordered around like a schoolboy what any leader wants?
If you were publicly humiliated by people you don’t respect, and then those same people asked for your intervention on their behalf, would you comply merrily?
Not least of the complicating factors undermining the west’s “just get on with it” demands are the fact that, for now at least, Ukraine is a sovereign nation over which Putin has no legitimate authority.
And assuming he is calling the shots for the so-called separatists how will it sound when the global surveillance octopus records him giving orders?
In more than one instance what looks like a bumbling militia using sophisticated weaponry well beyond their abilities with catastrophic consequences, has been labelled “terrorism” and, in tabloid ranks, “evil.”
If this tragic mistake constitutes terrorism then so would the accidental shooting down of Iranian Airbus A300 in 1988 by the US Navy.
As events demonstrate, neither Putin nor the armed groups of eastern Ukraine have anything to gain by shooting down a passenger jet, just as insulting people with reckless labels like evil terrorists is no way to get them to the table.
Similarly repeated reports of them being “drunken” with no supporting evidence aren’t helpful either.
And it’s not the first time name-calling has been substituted for anything the least bit constructive.
In March presidential speculator, Hillary Clinton compared Putin to Hitler over the Crimea annexation.
And according to The New Yorker magazine, during a face-to-face meeting in 2011, US vice-president Joe Biden said to Putin: “I’m looking into your eyes and I don’t think you have a soul.”
Mr Putin reportedly, smiled and said: “We understand one another.”
But as this sad episode clearly demonstrates, we don’t.
Tony Webber is a Dubbo resident and former journalist.