THE horror of blatant murder is that of naked power, of power unfettered by shame, restraint or fear. This is quite different to the blundering murder of the impromptu criminal: the betrayed lover; the panicked burglar; the furious drunk. Where such killings are obvious, it is not by design. But some murders are meant to be noticed: do you really doubt that Kim Jong-Un could have found a less dramatic way to kill his brother, had he wanted to? Tyrants and serial killers are alike in that both are attention seekers whose method is murder. The overt murders of Litvinenko and of Kim Jong-Nam, like the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter last week in Salisbury, are attempts by the dictator to force others to recognise his power; his immunity from justice and his mastery over life and death. Why use nerve agents or radioactive toxins unless you wanted the crime to be noticed, and for everyone to know who was responsible? What is striking about these crimes is not only their puerile flair – using weapons of mass destruction where a pistol would do – but their sheer pointlessness. North Korea is the most closed society in the world: the notion that the sad, deflated playboy that was Kim Jong-Nam could have threatened his brother’s position from his hotel suite in Macau is absurd. Similarly, what purpose could possibly be served by slaying old spooks like Litvinenko and Skripal, save as a pure expression of power? The attack on the Skripals is outrageous. But what is to be done?

We can answer that difficult question by first addressing a much easier question: what does Putin want us to do? The answer to this question should be obvious: he seeks confrontation. He is openly murdering his enemies on British soil in the hope that we will feed his propaganda machine with furious rhetoric of our own, and perhaps even with the economic sanctions he needs to excuse the pitiful economic performance of his gangster republic. Why else would this murder coincide with Russia’s sham presidential election, if not to manufacture an opportunity for Putin to play the strong man, resisting Western interference? We must punish this crime as best we can. The rub is doing so without inadvertently giving the dictator what he wants. Understand: what allows dictators like Putin to outmanoeuvre their democratic opponents is their power to make others suffer the consequences of their actions. The supposedly brilliant Putin is in fact a very conventional autocrat. He projects the illusion of the master strategist only by trading Russia’s vital long-term interests for tawdry propaganda victories, and does so at a steadily diminishing rate of return. To appear strong in his confected confrontations with “the West”, he has, in the guise of restoring “national pride”, taken Russia step-by-step to her present disastrous place, where Russia is isolated and encircled; impoverished and corrupted; feared and hated. Millions of Russians already know that national pride cannot be eaten. Millions more will join them before their country changes course. The present regime in Moscow is a menace to everyone. We owe it to the Russians and to ourselves to stop feeding this cycle. However we respond, we must not do so in a way that can be weaponised by the Kremlin for propaganda at home. The Defence Secretary’s speech telling Russia to “go away and shut up” is a good example of what we should not be doing.

Fortunately, we do have ways of punishing the Russian dictatorship without ceding a propaganda victory. A good start would be to toughen up and more vigorously enforce our own version of America’s Magnitsky Act. This act, named after a young Russian lawyer tortured to death in police custody for investigating corruption, has proven threatening enough to Putin to provoke a hysterical response (among other things, banning American families from adopting Russian orphans), and has since been copied in several other countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom. These acts are highly targeted sanctions programmes which restrict the ability of foreign officials implicated in human rights abuses to enjoy respectable lives in the West. One can imagine a more stringent British version permitting the authorities to seize assets in the U.K. where there is reason to believe they are controlled by anyone linked to abusive dictatorships. The reason Magnitsky Acts are so effective against Putin and others like him is that they hurt their powerful supporters within (for example) the Russian elite without harming ordinary Russians. More importantly, they do so without giving Putin’s state-controlled media a grievance with which to manufacture propaganda. It is hard to imagine the average Russian citizen being outraged by the news of some oligarch’s yacht being compounded. (And as a Londoner, I can testify that besides weakening Putin’s grip on power, preventing his vile accomplices from spending their loot on handbags in Harrods, mansions in Belgravia and on schooling their children at St Paul’s is long overdue.)

Equally important is what we refrain from doing. We should not seek untargeted economic sanctions on the Russian economy, because even if we ignore the suffering they would impose on one of the poorest peoples of Europe their primary political effect will be to strengthen the regime, not to weaken it. Similarly, we must resist the temptation to enter Putin’s war of words. We must be boring, not belligerent. Our determination to resist must be communicated behind closed doors, or through opaque signals, and always with an eye to how it could be used by the regime to buttress its fortress of lies. A classic robotic speech by Theresa May is exactly what we need right now, stating in the blandest possible terms the need for a full investigation and for all parties to tone down their rhetoric. In private, of course, a more frank conversation between our government and the Russians is necessary. Such stern words must be followed by swift action. London’s days as a high-end brothel for ex-KGB thugs must end. Let the mass forfeiture of Mayfair townhouses begin!

Nathan

Sunday March 25th, 2018

Camberley