"He already knows he has the west in his pocket and has thus acted accordingly "
I actually disagree with that.
We should not, as I said before, beat ourselves up about what4 we have failed to do before.
I do think that MH17 should have been the catalyst to use the SWIFT option, but it is always easy to be wise after the event, and in any case it is very unlikely, bad as that and what preceded it were, that it would have been possible to keep a united front against Putin.
Now it is different: Putin is plainly hellbent on a course which actually might well be his own downfall. He looks deranged and isolated to me and he has united the free world against him.
Nothing is going to deter him short of a direct confrontation with NATO and to be perfectly honest I'm not even convinced that that would.
As I said before, the chief obstacle to his progress will be Ukraine's resistance, hopefully aided as much as possible from outside