On July 16, 2014, the United States ratcheted up sanctions on Russia’s financial, defense, and energy sectors. It was not clear that the Europeans, who would be more directly impacted economically, would go along. But then the next day, July 17, a shocked world learned that separatists, apparently believing that they were aiming at a Ukrainian troop plane and using a Russian ground-to-air missile, had shot down a Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine. All 298 passengers aboard perished, two-thirds of them Dutch. The Europeans joined the new sanctions. In lieu of force, the sanctions became,
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