> It’s relatively easy for us in the West to call balls and strikes for some actors, but much more tricky when it comes to other third parties (like Armenia).

> It’s relatively easy for us in the West to call balls and strikes for some actors, but much more tricky when it comes to other third parties (like Armenia). Along the same lines I think it’s easy to forget that imposing sanctions and voting against the interests of a major power is, in a way, a privilege because it always has a cost. Even among some of the major European countries like Germany you can see that the economic realities of sanctioning Putin ran the risk of being too burdensome. If a country as wealthy and influential as Germany needs to coordinate among all of their allies (and still be prepared to bear a significant cost at home!) in order to make sanctions against Russia feasible I’m not sure how Russia’s smaller, non-EU neighbors could possibly be expected to do the same.