Well might you make wisecracks about the mouse that roared. Or resurrect memories of the pre-World War I editorials of a long deceased newspaper that repeatedly issued warnings to Germany's Kaiser from that global repository of international power and influence otherwise known as Greymouth.
With military intervention by the West simply out of the question as a means of forcing Russia to abide by international law and respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine, that leaves diplomacy, trade policy and sanctions - either economic, financial or targeting specific members of Russia's ruling elite - as the only means of getting Vladimir Putin to think again.
Any New Zealand contribution to that response is going to be minor in its impact. But merely condemning the "invasion" is insufficient.
It may already be too late. Crimea is now effectively part of Russia. The genie is now well and truly out of the bottle in large tracts of eastern Ukraine with large populations of ethnic Russians who are now hardly likely to kow-tow to Kiev any more.
New Zealand's initial response has been about as rigorous as the circumstances demand.
