In a world where it sometimes seems like traditional international alliances are fracturing, the strong and co-ordinated response to the Russian nerve-agent attack in the United Kingdom is timely and welcome.
To date, 18 NATO countries and their allies have expelled or are planning to expel Russian diplomatic staff. The United States alone says it will expel 60 people and close the Russian consulate in Seattle, WA. The U.K. expelled 23 Russians earlier this month. Canada is expelling four.
All of this stems from the attempted assassination of a former Russian double agent and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury on March 4. The British government has produced compelling evidence that the deadly poison used in the attack could only have been provided to the assailants with the co-operation of the Russian government.
It was a reckless and arrogant open-air attack on foreign soil that also badly injured a police officer and could have been fatal to passersby. Russia’s denial that it was involved is too unlikely to be believed – a point driven home by the fact that even U.S. President Donald Trump, not exactly known for his hard line against Russia, felt there was enough evidence to respond forcefully.
It’s about time. Russia has been a bad actor for too long. Between its occupation of Crimea, its military intervention in Ukraine, its cyberattacks on U.S. power grids and its meddling in foreign elections, it is on the verge of qualifying for pariah status.
Individual countries have hit Russia with economic sanctions; the U.S. did it again this month in retaliation for meddling in the 2016 election. But now Russia has roused NATO countries to unified action and, even better, forced Mr. Trump to reassert his support for that critical alliance.
This show of unity come on the heels of President Vladimir Putin’s re-election this month. The vote was more an exercise in Kremlin-orchestrated marketing than in democracy, but it did give Mr. Putin a mandate to continue to provoke Western countries that he may have believed would not respond cohesively. Now he knows differently.