Shifting Goals Cloud Utility of Sanctions on Russia

The meeting, organized by Tufts professors Christopher Miller and Daniel Drezner, did not come up with a decisive answer to the key question: are the sanctions working — and the related question, should they be wound up, continued, or intensified?

In part, this is because Western leaders have been vague when it comes to defining the goals of the sanctions, which have shifted over time. Initially, the goal was to deter Russia from launching the invasion. That did not work. So then the goal was to crash the Russian economy, force a bank run and collapse of the ruble, which would hopefully cause Russian elites, and/or the Russian people, to rise up against Putin and force him to abandon the war. For a week or two, that seemed to be working. But the Russian Central Bank imposed strict controls to stop the outflow of capital and ended the convertibility of the ruble. The Russian economy did not collapse.

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Edward Fishman, a former U.S. Treasury official, said the “Goal was to shock the system, create chaos, and force Russian policy makers to redirect attention to developments inside Russia.” But we underestimated the skill of Russian financial managers and the extent to which they had been preparing for sanctions in the wake of the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Read the full article and more at Responsible Statecraft.