This post is not a reaction to any particular article but to any number of articles. I’m not surprised that the economic sanctions imposed on Russia were not as effective as their advocates had claimed. They certainly haven’t brought Russia to its knees or ended the war.
I’m actually surprised that anyone thought that. Russia was already the next thing to an autarky—it is far less dependent on imports or exports than we are. And the only way that sanctions might have had the effects their advocates wanted would have been to apply them to Russia’s trading partners including China and India as well. It should be obvious we were not going to do that.
Consequently, I think that the real objective of the sanctions was performative, symbolic, a show of opposition to the war.
I do think the White House and various capitals in NATO thought sanctions were a magic bullet of a sort.
This was Biden’s tweet March 26, 2022 — “As a result of our unprecedented sanctions, the ruble was almost immediately reduced to rubble.
The Russian economy is on track to be cut in half.
It was ranked the 11th biggest economy in the world before this invasion — and soon, it will not even rank among the top 20.”
I’ll let readers judge how the well the boast turned out.
In general, war rarely goes according to plan. The Russians thought they could shock and awe their way to negotiations and a deal on their terms. The West thought sanctions cause far more domestic discontent or degrade Russia’s war making capability far quicker then it has, forcing Russia to end the war on the West’s terms.
Neither has proven true and is why we are in a slowly ever escalating war with no easy end in sight.
Meh. The Russians have had much worse inflation than we have had and as Dave has made clear inflation is the worst thing that can happen to an economy. Also, while Russia is producing and selling as much oil as ever the discount for Russian oil has increased. We always knew they would trade with China and India so a big hit wouldn’t happen right away.
Steve
“…as Dave has made clear inflation is the worst thing that can happen to an economy.”
Hmmm. Perhaps not if you are an autarky, keep the oligarchs happy, and don’t really care about the fate of the general population.