On March 16, a referendum was held in the autonomous region of Crimea in Ukraine, and the expected result brought Crimea one step closer to joining Russia. The Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians boycotted the referendum, but it had no impact on the outcome. Moscow played by the book, mobilized the Russian-speaking Crimeans and is set to annex the most strategic part of Ukraine.

The Crimean referendum is illegal and will have no binding status in international law. All Western countries, including Turkey, have announced that they will not recognize the referendum. They have agreed to continue to put pressure on Moscow.

While this position is perfectly justified, it will not have much impact on Russian President Vladimir Putin's behavior. Putin has seen the weak hand of the Western bloc and the international system before and estimates that he will not face any serious consequences other than some harsh rhetoric and lightweight sanctions. As long as he maintains a firm grip over the Russian hinterland, he is ready to weather any pressure.

This is yet another result of the failure of the international system against the steady rise of Russia as a nuclear and geo-political power.

Russia has nuclear weapons, a certain military force, which it is not afraid to use, a burgeoning economy and finally a geo-political location, which it uses to expand its former sphere of influence in several directions. But the real issue lies not with Russia's power elements but with the weakness of the current international system.

Crimea is the last episode in a serious of events that have seen Putin's rise over the last decade. The first major test was the Georgian war of 2008 when Putin went into Georgia and practically carved out the two vassal states of Abkhazia and Ossetia.

The Western bloc made a lot of noise. But Moscow got what it wanted and punished the Western-leaning Georgia and its President Mikheil Saakashvili.

The second important test was and is the Syrian crisis where Russia supports the Assad regime despite its claims to the contrary and paralyzes the U.N. Security Council. Unlike in Georgia, the Western bloc did not even make much noise in Syria; instead, they opted for diplomatic niceties and let the Syrian war turn into the bloodiest massacre of the 21st century.

All red lines were crossed and nothing happened. Putin saw the game in similar terms: My support for the criminal regime of Bashar Assad will not harm me, and the West including the Gulf countries in support of the Syrian opposition have no real impact on the ground.
Now we have the Crimean crisis. It is the same scheme in its essence: Russia pushes ahead with a geo-strategic move that expands its sphere of influence, the West reacts angrily but does very little to make its anger or strategic calculation count on the ground, and Russia takes comfort in the fact that its unstoppable rise has been confirmed one more time.

As far as the U.S. and the EU are concerned, promising financial aid to Ukraine will not solve the Ukraine-Crimean crisis.

It will certainly not shield the strategic weakness of the Western bloc in such key geo-political issues. The encouragement Moscow derives from this may well propel it into other regions, including the southern Caucasus and Central Asia.

But the Crimea issue is also Russia's crisis. While punishing the West to overthrow pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Moscow now must think about how it will shoulder the financial burden of an economically dilapidated Crimea.

There are other issues facing Moscow.

Making peace with the Tatars will not be easy because the Tatars, led by their charismatic leader Mustafa Cemil Kırımoğlu, still live with the memories of the great deportation of Crimean Tatars by Stalin in 1944. While Tatars have lived in peace with Ukrainians and Russians in Crimea, living under Russian rule again is a whole different order. Kırımoğlu is openly against such a prospect, and he has a point: Russian policies in the past have been costly to Tatars.

Putin has done very little to convince them otherwise.

In his phone diplomacy with Putin, Angela Merkel, Ilham Aliyev and others, Prime Minister Erdoğan has underlined Turkey's position vis-a-vis the Crimean crisis: Turkey opposes the secession of any part of Ukraine and supports the rights of the Tatar people in Crimea. The de facto situation Moscow created on the ground in Crimea will have no legal basis for Turkey and other countries. Turkey will continue to coordinate its efforts with its Western allies but also maintain its contact with Moscow to find a peaceful solution to the Crimean crisis. But I am doubtful Putin will heed any of these. He flexed his muscles in Georgia, got his way in Syria and is now icing his cake in Crimea. This should be a good wakeup call to reassess the strategic priorities of the current international system.