22nd February 2022
Let’s consider the word ‘sanctions’.
The word is in the news because of Russian imperialist aggression against Ukraine.
(And yes, what Russia is doing is imperialism – the notion that only the English can be imperialistic is just another way of being Anglocentric.)
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One common response to this aggression is to demand ‘sanctions’.
A demand, in effect, that ‘something must be done’.
Those demanding sanctions may not have any clear idea – or, indeed, any idea -as to what should be done as a sanction or what effect it may have.
It is enough, for them, that they are demanding ‘sanctions’ – almost as a form of political therapy.
A thing to call for, instead of admitting that there is little or nothing that can actually be done – at least short of a military (mis)adventure which would, in turn, likely be a fiasco.
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In reality, ‘sanctions’ rarely work.
They are the Yellow Cards of international affairs.
And, as in football, such Yellow Cards rarely deter – still less eliminate – foul play.
They are instead little more than a cost of business.
In practice – and I have advised as a lawyer on sanctions – they are usually business inconveniences and irritants that can be addressed and navigated.
There are many creative and ingenious ways with which a ‘sanction’ may be complied with.
Any sanction that would actually have the desired political effect would adversely affect the sanctioning state as well as the sanctioned state.
And this is because of the nature of sanctions in an economically interdependent world.
Unilateral commercial relationships are rare and so – almost by defintion – an economic sanction will have domestic effects as well as on the sanctioned adversary.
And so it unlikely that the United Kingdom would sanction Russia in a way that would significantly disrupt the flows of Russian money into London.
But.
Serious sanctions can be done – as Germany has impressively shown today with reconsidering Nord Stream 2 – although perhaps this is not a ‘sanction’ as such but a fundamental (and sensible) reconsideration of energy policy and strategy.
And that will hurt Germany – yet they are willing to take the hit.
The United Kingdom has instead merely talked the talk of tough sanctions – and so today’s announcement of a ‘package’ was unimpressive.
It is always easier to talk tough sanctions than, well, convert that tough talk into meaningful sanctions.
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One response to such scepticism about ‘sanctions’ is to ask: what else can be done?
Some even resort to saying ‘sanctions’ would have ‘symbolic’ importance.
But this is akin to ‘enshrining in law’ nonsense.
What can be done is to be wary of this form of magical thinking.
To realise that we risk misleading and bewitching ourselves.
To realise that sanctions, as with legal prohibitions, are not magical spells.
And to accept the stark hard truth that – unless we place ourselves at a severe disadvantage, or risk military (mis)adventure – there is little or nothing that can be done.
To admit to our own political impotence.
We may as well ‘tut’.
But.
Because we do not want to do that, we will blithely demand ‘sanctions’ instead.
For something must be done.
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A “package” of sanctions?
I thought Johnson referred to it as a “barrage” of sanctions?
If making the lives of three individuals (who were being “sanctioned” by everybody else in any case) and five pseudo-banks a bit more difficult than it was represents a “barrage” to Johnson, I shudder to think just how much the UK’s naval capabilities have been diminished.
If there was an Olympic competition for hand wringing, the UK would surely be medalists. Johnson and the Tories are utterly compromised by Russian money funding the party and washing through the UK laundromat. By the way, whatever happened to that report into Russian political funding?
‘Sanctions’ are weasel words. What we must do – and it will hurt us – is to dismantle Londongrad and its whole professional apparatus.
We must take that hit, because the alternative is much worse. And you’re right: it’s not magical. But the pain now is as nothing compared to the pain later if we don’t do this.
I’d be really interested to know if it would hurt us in the long run. (And in what ways.)
What would be the impact of keeping Russian money out of the UK (and out of the Conservative Party)?
Would it be long-term, or a bit of a wobble and then back to normality?
I can’t help thinking all that money sloshing around didn’t do us an awful lot of good in the first place (although that is just prejudice rather than based on anything).
I would imagine that the Chinese would be grateful if Russian money were kept out of UK politics – it never helps to get in to a bidding war.
It made a number of British service companies and professionals rich, or at least well off. They naturally fear losing the gravy train. It would also stop all the other offshore gains, as you can hardly target only offshore companies that happen to have people with Russian names on the board (and who might have British or other non-Russian nationality). Interestingly, Ukrainian oligarchs who’ve used the Londongrad laundromat would lose out as well.
If there are people linked to Putin and his gang who have gained preference from donating to the Tory party then they should be sanctioned and lose office and both parties should lose the money. Maybe there are none, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Most of the non-domestic financial industry in London fundamentally exists to serve China, Russia, and Arab money. By “serve” I mean “be of use to” in the way that a servant is used. And therein lies the rub, because not many servants will deny themselves a master. Since the entire UK rightwing – including, via the ERG, the Cons – has long been pwned by these forces it would be unusual to expect the current UK government do address the fundamental issues. Quite the reverse as Brexit showed when only Putin and his ilk exulted.
Too true.
Would not ostracising a nation from the currency markets, systems & exchanges dominated so much by the west have a severe economic effect on a nation possibly inducing the collapse of its currency or at least any confidence in it.
The real problem with sanctions is how to do it in such a way as not to harm a nation’s citizens in the process as all despots will sacrifice the welfare of their citizens for their own wealth, vanity and glory.
Russia has been building up its reserves and developing a SWIFT money transfer system SPFS that it could integrate with China’s CIPS. Targeting the Russian oligarchy will be a more surgical approach than hitting the general population
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS
I can’t see Russian oligarchy living it up with the Chinese nor for that matter Russian industry diverting resources and trade from the West to China but yes, Russian citizens would suffer consequentially.
Sanctions simply don’t work. North Korea is a classic example. Despite the UN Security Council unanimously adopting 11 resolutions since 2006 that apply the most severe economic and financial sanctions against the country, and despite many UN member states applying additional autonomous sanctions, all these efforts have failed to stop the DPRK’s WMD developments. Instead they have had appalling humanitarian consequences affecting food security and public health and it is the civilian population of the country who suffer, not the elites. Interesting reports, papers and submissions on the humanitarian consequences of sanctions can be found at https://nkhumanitarian.wordpress.com/academic-papers/
To be fair (?) to the UK, Nord Stream 2 wasn’t progressing in all reality so cancelling it was cost-free for Germany. The only sanction that could, realistically, punish Putin without causing huge loss of life, is an energy embargo — but Europe gets over a third of its oil/gas from Russia, so the economic cost would be mutually disastrous
As an addendum to this, Russia has something like $700bn in cash reserves so it would also be some time before they felt the pinch of an energy embargo (assuming the Chinese respected such an embargo anyway)
I assume you mean $700bn in foreign cash reserves. As for their own domestic cash reserves, they have an unlimited amount available to them as they are the monopoly currency issuer of their own money.
I want to see full details of kompromat they have on Johnson. Including photos .
Simple, even facile thought: won’t Putin have factored in what “sanctions” the West might apply, and tried to take avoidance measures?
Not at all facile. Yes, he will have done some factoring, but he will not have been able to guard against all potential ‘sanctions’.
The thing to bear in mind while considering sanctions is to realise that the timing of this move is not coincidence. After Putin’s first move in to Ukraine and the annexing of Crimea, Putin learned exactly what the effect of sanctions would be.
He has spent the last 8 years very carefully preparing for this moment. He has used energy exports to build a reserve of foreign currency. He has worked tirelessly to build relationships with Xi in China, Kim in North Korea, as well as the Middle East. He is a keen student of history and will have prepared meticulously. He will seize two regions of Eastern Ukraine, briefly recognise them as independent states and then welcome their overtures of union with Mother Russia. PR win back home… furthers his ideological dream of former Soviet glory… and, best of all, each time he takes a bite out of Ukraine and the West does nothing, he further undermines NATO.
He’s smart enough to not try and grab too much in one go. Biden won’t put US troops on the ground and Putin knows it. He only uncertainty was whether Europe would, which seems unlikely now.
But Putin must also know that at this rate, he’ll be dead from old age by the time that he finishes swallowing all of Ukraine, so the sometimes-reported idea that Putin craves restoring ‘former Soviet glory’ is starting to look logistically questionable.
Much more likely, perhaps, would be a move to create a bogeyman for his domestic audience. We know there is political trouble in Russia – you only need to look at the way he is treating Navalny to know that Putin is running scared of a more serious uprising against him. So perhaps this is intended to do two things: weaken NATO and shore up support back home.
Russia likes to talk the talk – and it would be highly unwise to underestimate the amount of political mischief of which he is capable.
But remember that Russia has a lower GDP than Italy. The Russian Navy has a single aircraft carrier which is so old and fragile that when it sailed to the Syrian coast as a show of support for Assad, it had to be escorted all the way there and back by a tug, just in case it broke down. Really. Where Putin are more than capable of punching above their weight would be dirty tricks. Think of the 2016 US Presidential election.
So Putin will carve another small slice of Ukraine, enough to win points back home, but not so much as to warrant a significant western response. The west will wring hands, rattle sabres, threaten (useless) sanctions and do absolutely nothing else. He and his inner circle will chortle with glee at their success in undermining the credibility of NATO, which he will then spin in to a round of political visits to former vassal states.
And in another couple of years maps will get re-drawn and the west will try and pretend the invaded lands were always Russian.
As you say, sanctions tend to be ineffective, not least because of the reluctance of the sanctioning nation to cause itself serious pain. And the track record of achieving regime change isn’t good – it seems to be the common consensus that US sanctions against Cuba actually strengthened Castro.
And yet. I wonder. While I can’t immediately think of a case where economic sanctions led to regime change, the sporting sanctions against South Africa did seem to shift the dial somewhat over time. And I’m seeing reports on Twitter of Russian oligarchs’ yachts suddenly fleeing European ports and heading for Russia.
I’m not going to suggest that the oligarchs will immediately overthrow Putin because of minor annoyance about where they can put their boats. He’s too useful to them. And the chances of sanctions achieving anything if Germany ends up being the only country to make a serious sacrifice aren’t good. But you never know.
And if the only result of the sanctions is that Germany becomes less dependent on Russian gas and has to launch an emergency programme of building renewable energy capacity, that’s no bad thing in itself.
“As you say, sanctions tend to be ineffective, not least because of the reluctance of the sanctioning nation to cause itself serious pain.”
Let’s dig in to this for a moment (although I’m straying away from “law and policy” – sorry…
I you look back over the last couple of years, we’ve learned that everything in our world, from the trivial (like the availability of lavatory paper) to the complex (like cars, which require CPUs) too the basics (like nursing and food and refuse collection) are built from a complex, inter-connected web.
Today, we have “Just-In-Time Manufacturing” and “Just-In-Time Supply”, which reduce the value of assets tied up in storage, which makes companies look more profitable (CEO dividends) but also makes them much more vulnerable to disruption.
What interests/worries me about “UK plc” is that our government [and this is not a party political observation as I think it applies broadly] just don’t think in these terms.
Worse, I think that the argument in favour of naked capitalism – i.e. today’s profit matters more than anything – is actually going to make it easier for despots and dictators. The US would *love* to stop giving China so much business, knowing that the profits are being spent on foreign influence and military build-up. But US corporations are too greedy and China offers cheap labour.
But the point you make is telling… Our inability to apply effective sanctions against Russia tells a much more serious story about or on-going vulnerability to a long, long list of external risks or threats.
I suspect that the only reason that there isn’t more outrage at governmental negligence is that most people simply don’t realise how grave the situation might be.
I always thought Sanctions were a modern twist on siege Warfare hurting the ordinary people because the wealthy tend to be in a position to move faster to protect their Assets and shuffle things around to avoid the impact of imposed Sanctions.
Yet l have no answers to offer for another solution. Nor do l believe in Bloodshed as an answer.
PS. Daft feeling at the close of the day: Trump will do well out of this l fear.
During the Apartheid era Reagan and Thatcher vetoed mandatory U.N. sanctions. She argued that they would harm the ordinary people of South Africa. The ANC agreed, but regarded the relatively short-term harm from really effective sanctions, sufficient to bring an end to Aparetheid, as a price the ordinary (i.e. non-white) people of South Africa were willing to pay. The alternative was to prolong indefinitely the intolerable harm that they were already suffering.
Sanctimonious sanctions.
But there are other ways. If even approximately 80% of Russians are against invasion of Ukraine, then good quality information promulgated into Russia can only weaken Putin. Why in this age are we risking WW3 on the whims of an isolated dictator? Would it not be fine if the Russian nation finally joined the West? And ended the global mischief they have indulged in?
Europe & the EU would be more credible as a source of such a campaign, than the US with their white hats-black hats mentality.
Putin would be terrified, as it could work.
When you go into any fight, including a war, you have to be prepared to accept injury or worse. If we start thinking about sanctions as a way to hurt the other side without causing injury to ourselves, then almost by definition the sanctions will be useless.
Further, this idea of “targeted sanctions”, with the negative effect hitting the people in control while not affecting the people at large, is magical thinking. If the population at large can get away without being affected, so can the elites.
War is painful. The one who wins is the one who imposes the most pain on the other side. The west has to stop being wusses.
All legal remedies have downsides.
To suggest that sanctions should be disregarded when faced by a fascist state which has been rearming for over 10 years and now openly claims that a sovereign country of over 40 million people has no right to exist rather misses the point.
There are going to be shortages of more than just petrol in the months and years ahead . If the objective is to stop Putin then targeted and inventive sanctions can have a role to play in undermining his position.
Doing little or nothing on the basis you are dealing with the devil you know is an option but that of course comes with a downside.
Having turned full circle here perhaps a serious and hopefully urgent debate can take place.
The cancellation of Nord Stream 2 should be seen as a “reconsideration of energy policy and strategy”. Construction of earlier pipelines was discussed by the Major Projects Association at Oxford in the mid 1980s and the balance of opinion at the time was that the then Secretary General of the Communist Party, Chernenko, stood to lose more by cutting off the gas supply to Germany than he could gain and that the West German economy might suffer a blip and a lower growth rate but nothing worse.
8 years to plan for this . Years that Putin hasn’t wasted. Years that the Tory party has used Russian money for funding.
Sanctions are a waste of time, too little too late. Offering a better life to the Russian people, a chance to share in western standards of life and opportunities might be a better way to undermine the Putin regime. Carrot not stick.