Opinion | Are the sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine working?

Sanctions work like medicine. Their effectiveness in controlling or eliminating a malignancy depends on when they’re applied in the course of a disease.

In the case of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Western reluctance to seriously apply sanctions over the past decade has enabled him to attack his neighbours, poison his critics and commit mass atrocities with impunity.

When he invaded Georgia in 2008, we did nothing. When he took Crimea in 2014, we did very little and quickly returned to business-as-usual. When he shot down the civilian airliner MH17, we did nothing. When he poisoned his enemies in Salisbury, we all cheered on the World Cup in March.

Doing nothing is what Vladimir Putin naturally expected the West to do when he attacked Ukraine. Had the West applied just a portion of the sanctions we have today, before Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, he may have recalculated, or not have invaded at all. He may have settled on a sham referendum in Donetsk and Luhansk — as he did in Crimea in 2014.

In the absence of any credible consequences, Putin felt free to carry out his savage invasion. Over the past 20 years, the West’s addiction to Russian oil and oligarch money sloshing around Western nations has impaired our ability to recognize and acknowledge the threat that Putin represents.

Today, there is very little that the West can do to convince Putin to back down. I have never backs down. He will not compromise, demonstrate weakness or negotiate. If he does, that would be seen as diminishing his power and image of him as a Stalin-esque strong man. At this point, sanctions alone will not stop Putin.

Our sanctions strategy must now focus on cutting off Putin’s ability to fund his barbaric war.

So far, the West has done well, placing sanctions on 35 oligarchs — but we need to sanction all 118 on the Russian Forbes list.

Sanctions have directly hindered Putin’s ability to build and maintain the heavy weapons required to achieve his objectives in Ukraine. Russian tank factories have run out of funding and parts, and production lines have ground to a halt. A ban on the export of advanced semiconductors to Russia has undermined Russia’s ability to repair or replenish its more high-tech weapon systems and the lack of foreign parts has stopped the construction of new ships.

Putin’s inability to replace tanks and other weapons, which have been destroyed over the past two months by Ukrainian defense forces, has contributed to his failure to make significant gains. Yet Western democratic nations can do significantly more to intensify the effects of our current sanctions.

Greater coordination of allied sanctions lists is required. Currently, the US list is different from the UK, EU and Canadian lists. We need them all to mirror each other and we need to co-ordinate and properly fund the enforcement of them.

We also need to acknowledge that Putin’s oligarchs hide their money in the names of family members, nominees, and proxies. We have to be creative and thorough in going after those entire networks and update our existing sanctions legislation to allow us to include these individuals and entities on our sanctions lists.

Last week, US President Joe Biden proposed innovative legislation that would allow the US government to sell off and repurpose assets seized from Russia. Canada’s Foreign Minister, Mélanie Joly, has expressed support for a similar Canadian bill that is currently moving through the Senate.

The proceeds of those liquidated Russian assets could be redirected to support refugees and eventually the reconstruction of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. The prospect of potentially losing billions in assets to rebuild Ukraine will cause Russian officials and oligarchs to panic. The passage of this legislation should be fast-tracked and replicated by all Western nations.

Finally, all democratic nations should follow the EU’s lead in banning all Russian oil imports to cut off Putin’s daily income and the billions he receives daily to help fund his war. Western nations should also pressure Saudi Arabia to increase its production to stabilize global oil prices. The export of Canadian liquified natural gas (LNG) should be immediately expedited to help eliminate European reliance on Russian gas and restore allied energy security.

While current Western sanctions are biting the regime, they need to be sustained and expanded, so long as Putin remains in power. Like medicine, sanctions require regular application, monitoring, and adjustment to eliminate the disease that they’re targeting.

Sanctions alone will do little to stop Russia’s war in Ukraine. Both the World Bank and the Russian Central Bank estimate that Russia’s economy will shrink by 10 to 11 per cent by 2023, given the effect of sanctions on the national budget, which is 40 per cent dependent on energy sales.

The contraction will be even worse if India and China are unable to purchase and stockpile the discounted oil and gas. It is hoped that sanctions will compel Russian President Vladimir Putin to withdraw from the war, or to incite his removal by a kremlin coupmilitary intervention, or popular uprising.

However, there are three reasons that penalties are unlikely to produce any of these dramatic effects.

First, in a study of sanctions effectiveness in 174 cases, the goal of regime change and stopping a military operation, was only successful in 30 and 20 per cent of cases, respectively. The successful cases were overwhelmingly isolated minor countries with an economy one-tenth the size of the sanctioning coalition.

Notably, decades of sanctions remain imposed on Cuba, Iran and Venezuela, without any liberalizing effect on their governments. Sanctions are far more likely to be effective if affected in conjunction with the very high costs of war. While Moscow is rapidly burning through its stocks of advanced weaponrywhich may compel an imminent cessation of hostilities, Russia has historically fought, on average, more than a year-and-a-half in wars it initiated, but ultimately lost. It usually takes sanctions an average of 1.3 years to stop a military operation, if and when successful. However, when sanctions fail, which they do when sanctions are as porous as they currently are against Moscow, they linger on for an average of more than six years, without much effect.

Second, while 500 Russian oligarchs control 40 per cent of Russia’s household wealth, three times the global average, there continues to be disagreement over whether Russia’s wealth distribution is better or worse than that of the US Political surveys have found that Russian dissatisfaction with wealth maldistribution is limited to legal equality of opportunity.

While this state of affairs is generally viewed by Russian respondents as problematic, the widespread expectation is that it is up to the government to resolve the issue, which paradoxically reinforces, rather than erodes, the popular legitimacy of the government. This peculiar orientation has to do with the still evolving Russian social culturewhich is becoming less deferential far more slowly than even societies like China.

Third, the 18-to-30 age cohort, the typical political base for activism and military revolts, are only 9 per cent of the Russian population, proportionately a third less than the comparable US demographic segment. They are the lost generation of the post-Soviet transition of the 1990s, when economic insecurity cut Russian fertility levels by nearly a third. The prolific, young, and fearless Russian YouTuberswho continue to broadcast regularly and are still available for everyone to watch, typify this generation.

However, the likelihood of Russian disaffection transforming into insurrection, depends on the 31-to-50 age cohort. This group is more supportive of the war in Ukraine, and is unlikely to be as severely affected by unemployment as long as most of the world refrains from joining the western sanctions coalition against Moscow. Like Adolf Hitler, Putin started his invasion without full mobilizationand gambled for a quick and cheap victory, to spare burdening this important constituency.

Even if crippling sanctions eventually weaken Moscow’s ability to rebuild its military, or contribute partially to the demise of Putin’s regime, there is a dangerous temptation to keep them in place until full Russian political liberalization is achieved. This is evident in the discussion of the moral importance of insurance war reparations against Russia, to rebuild Ukraine.

One of the many unresolved issues is the extent to which the Russian people are morally and legally complicity in this war, as opposed to being its victims. While it is completely understandable that those who favor sanctions are more concerned with creating a sanctions program, than with being able to turn it off, we do not want a permanent sanctions regime of the type imposed on Iran and North Korea. Russia is a major power.

Any successor regime in Moscow, that replaces Putin, will still be able to inflict severe retributive costs on the international community, such as by sharing of nuclear weapons technology and fissile material with anti-Western governments.

COMPARTIR: