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Opinion
April 27, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 23
STOLYPIN:
Sanctions have evident bite but little evident strategy
Mark Galeotti of the Institute of International Relations Prague
Sanctions must bark, as well as bite. Just as a bark combines a flash of teeth and a clear mes- sage, so too sanctions ought to be driven not simply by moral outrage, and even less so by the assumption that doing anything is better than do- ing nothing, but by a careful marriage of means and ends.
Although the initial, dramatic effect of the most recent bout of US sanctions was later partially reduced as markets corrected themselves in their usual way, Oleg Deripaska is generally
seen as — in economic terms — as a dead man walking, Rusal's warehouses are overflowing with unsold aluminium, and Russia's bond offerings are looking appropriately toxic in the new, post- Skripal order.
So these sanctions, the fear of more, and the way they stretch out well beyond the US government's immediate jurisdiction, have all clearly had a distinct effect. But are they effective? The answer to that question depends on the intended impact, and that is harder to assess. There may be a clear strategy in the minds of those framing policy in Washington, but frankly there appears to be no consensus there, let alone across the West as
a whole.
What are sanctions good for?
One of the problems is that sanctions can have four purposes, even if these often overlap and
Pyotr Stolypin is famous for his reforms to Imperial Russia's agricultural sector.
complement each other, and too often they are getting confused.
They may be used in an attempt to pressure
a country into specific action, with an explicit or implicit promise that they will be listed. The European sanctions relating to Ukraine, for example, are based on the annexation of Crimea and non-compliance with the Minsk Accords, respectively. If Moscow demonstrates a more productive stance on the Donbas or, distinctly less likely, withdraws from the Crimea, then they may be lifted or lightened.
Alternatively, sanctions are an instrument of deterrence: you did something we don’t like, so we hit back at you. If you do it again, we’ll hit you again, and maybe harder. The focus on US elec- tion interference in public statements strongly suggests that this is a primary driver behind the latest US sanctions, and the key difference is that they offer no clear route to their lifting, only the avoidance of more.
Sanctions can be deployed even more aggressive- ly in the pursuit of regime change or disruption. Figures close to the Russian leadership certainly affect to believe this is the West’s real intent, talk- ing of “economic warfare” and, in one especially over-excitable case, “a neutron bomb aimed at the Kremlin.”