I encourage you to read Joseph Nye’s remarks on the Russia-Ukraine War at The Strategist. After four months of war he draws the following conclusions:
- nuclear deterrence works
- economic interdependence doesn’t prevent war
- uneven economic interdependence can be weaponised by the less dependent party
- while sanctions can raise the costs for aggressors, they don’t determine outcomes
- information warfare makes a difference
- both hard and soft power matter
- cyber capability isn’t a silver bullet
- war is unpredictable
All of those observations are more nuanced than I’m making them appear (which is why I encourage you to read the post).
The only observation of my own I can add is that economic sanctions are more likely to work the more motivated by economic factors a country and its leaders are.
Can anyone name one single instance where sanctions worked? North Korea, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Russia… didn’t work on any of them.
Maybe Libya. But then we still invaded the country and killed Gaddafi.
In the case of Russia, the sanctions have resulted in a massive blowback. Gas supplies to the EU are collapsing, and so is the EU economy.
Someone forgot that Russia is a major supplier of gas, oil, coal, wheat and other grains, fertilizer, glass, aluminum, titanium (only real source) diesel, urea (fertilizer and diesel additive), rocket engines.
They also forgot that Russia is the most autarkic economy in the world, and is self-sufficient in all critical items.
Fortunately, someone remembered that Russia has the largest, most modern, and most diversified nuclear arsenal of any country.
If the US had been willing to discuss Russia’s perceived security problems, and if the Kiev government had not prepared a large-scale invasion of the Donbas (at US urging), we would not have a very dangerous war and a growing economic disaster.
Well, maybe the Biden handlers could have ginned up an economic disaster on their own.
Sure. South Africa.
I don’t think they “forgot” it but I don’t think they understand that Russia’s economy has been screwed up for most of the last 200 years. At this point Russians expect it to be screwed up.
“if the Kiev government had not prepared a large-scale invasion of the Donbas ”
Invading your own country.
Steve
OK. I will grant you South Africa. But they are in a slow moving economic collapse, and a low level race war. So the end state of sanctions was every bit as bad as Libya.
Sanctions only hurt the little people. The Ruling Class loses nothing. Which is why sanctions always fail in the end. RSA is a good example.
Sanctions / embargoes can work; its been a core component of American way of war / diplomacy since the Union adopted the “Anaconda” strategy in the civil war.
Economic warfare worked against Germany (both world wars), Japan (world war II), Soviet Union. It semi-worked against Iraq. It failed against Iran, Cuba, North Korea.
And Americans aren’t original in using sanctions and embargoes as a tool against their opponents. Every preeminent naval power has done the same; UK against Germany, Napoleon, Athens against Sparta, etc.
I wonder what’s the academic literature on why it sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails.