Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl describes how the craven Europeans are once again appeasing a maniacal dictator in their midst. Anyone who doubts the need for such a blog as La Russophobe need only read this column to be convinced. Putin has figured out that dictatorship can be imposed over apathetic Rusisans without any of the ham-handed bluntness of the USSR, simply by making them too weak to defend themselves even if they wanted to. Welcome to the Neo-Soviet Union.

Crumbling Before Putin

Vladimir Putin must wait another month before he can play the coveted role of host to the world's most powerful democratic leaders at the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg. But already the Russian president appears close to accomplishing his principal objective: preventing a serious response by the G-8 to his autocratic domestic policies and imperialist bullying of neighbors.

A couple of months ago Western officials were confidently promising that Putin would not be allowed to strut among the elected presidents and prime ministers in St. Petersburg without being reminded that he is not their political peer. At the insistence of the Bush administration, Russia's interventions in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova -- former Soviet republics trying to establish themselves as independent democracies -- were placed on the agenda of G-8 preparatory meetings. U.S. diplomats pressured NATO to allow the first steps toward membership this spring for Georgia and Ukraine.

In the past few weeks, however, the Western will to stand up to Putin has crumbled. At a NATO ministerial meeting 10 days ago, France and several other European governments rejected U.S. talk of an "enhanced dialogue" with Georgia or a membership action plan for Ukraine -- even as Russian-backed demonstrations in the Ukrainian Crimea forced NATO to withdraw U.S. Marines who had deployed there for an exercise. The White House then announced the cancellation of Bush's visit to Ukraine, largely because of the inability of the pro-Western parties to agree on a new government.

Cheney's speech, meanwhile, produced a backlash not just from Moscow but also in Western Europe, where the vice president was roundly criticized as too provocative. As for Russian neo-imperialism: Administration officials say they are still seeking to put Georgia and Moldova on the agenda of a pre-summit foreign ministers' meeting next week, but they don't expect to succeed. "We're dead in the water," says Bruce Jackson, a conservative close to many in the administration who heads the Project on Transitional Democracies. "Russia is playing a more aggressive, thought-out game, and they are outplaying us."

Putin's strongest move was his agreement to participate in a pending Western bid to freeze Iran's nuclear program. In exchange for its support Russia won the postponement of a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have ordered an end to the program; it also delayed a looming rift between Russia and the West over sanctions against Tehran. As long as Moscow is nominally on board with its most important foreign policy initiative, the Bush administration is constrained from pressing the issues raised by Cheney -- though officials insist that they haven't been dropped.

European policymakers don't suffer such scruples. In Washington and in Brussels, they are arguing straightforwardly that Putin's noxious policies should be tolerated -- not just because of Iran but also because of Russia's importance as an energy supplier. Brussels has been intimidated: At a meeting at the Black Sea resort of Sochi in late May, Putin flatly rejected European Union appeals that Russia loosen its stranglehold on pipelines carrying gas and oil to Europe and allow greater European investment in Russian fields. Last week his government confirmed that Western companies will be allowed only minority stakes in all but the smallest projects.

Putin's intransigence has produced a response that a U.S. official summed up in one word: "appeasement." A senior European official explained the logic to me this way: For the foreseeable future, European economies will depend on Russian energy. But that energy won't be available unless Russia makes huge new investments in the coming years and chooses to continue marketing its oil and gas in Europe, rather than China. "That means we have no choice but to support a powerful center in Moscow," the official said, "so that the necessary investments are made and the supplies are available to us."

Faced with such European fecklessness, U.S. officials appear to have resigned themselves to a summit at which Putin will portray himself as ruler of a resurgent superpower. Georgians and Moldovans will watch Western leaders toast Putin while the Russian boycotts of their exports and promotion of separatism in their countries go undiscussed. Russian democrats and independent civil society groups will, if they are lucky, content themselves with meeting mid-level U.S. officials in Moscow. And viewers in the rest of the world might understandably ask, does the Group of Eight exist to serve Russia? Or is there some other purpose?

One assumes that this craven "Senior European Official" was French, and that he believes his country also had "no choice" but to surrender to Adolph Hitler in World War II, or to launch the crazed Napoleonic invasions. But perhaps the worst offender is Germany's corrupt former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who left office to become a paid shil for Gazprom, selling his own country down the river for personal gain.

Then again, why should Europeans be expected to stand up to Putin when Russians themselves won't do so? Once again, the only thing that stands between Europeans and catastrophe is the courage of the U.S.A. and Britain, as well as of course the former Soviet slave states. Neo-Soviet Russia will still be defeated far more easily than the USSR, which lasted less than a century. The ones who will suffer most from European cowardice are the Russians themselves.

For, in the end, Russia will only breed resentment by trying to hoard its energy resources over the heads of the Europeans, and hasten their development of alternative energy sources even as Russia's finite resources run out. Meanwhile, Russia's myriad of social and political ills will take their tolls, and soon enough the Europeans will find they have a giant basket case to deal with.