Yes the sanctions against Russia feels almost nuclear in comparison to what we have seen kn the past. But still they can be tuned up higher, so I think they are not yet in nuclear territory
I agree that the scope and scale of these sanctions are beyond anything I think we've seen before. However, I don't think that invalidates the question 'how effective are they really?' Let's not fool ourselves into thinking they will act as a short-term deterrent as current events are showing. Sure, they may very well cripple and/or even lead to the collapse of Putin's regime given enough time. (i.e. likely years or more) That's not much help to Ukraine in the time frame they have to operate in.
Not likely as long as Russia has at least one major trading partner (i.e. China) who can redirect critical goods to them. If all major trading partners cut them off, then possibly.
Doubt it. The US will never get punishment for Iraq and Afghanistan so the precedent of we go to war because we really want to will stay. The lesson will be - be better prepared.
For anyone with a brain watching the lesson will be: you get to invade other countries when you have enough friends, or at least, not enough opposition. Which has been the case since countries started being a thing.
It would certainly help Ukraine if Russia is deprived of the parts and material it needs to maintain equipment. E.g., Russian airlines will soon be in dire straits as sanctions are cutting off their access to vital replacement parts; sanctions could have a similar effect for Russia's air force.
The Russian economy might very well implode soon ( weeks to months), and the rapid disappearance of many brands and types of products from the Russian market is probably highly unpopular with the population. If they're forced to send in reservists ( which isn't out of the question seeing how the initial Russian advance is stalled on basically all fronts), that will only add to the growing resentment. There's historical precedent for forced conscripts to turn around and fight against the authority conscripting them ( French Revolution, Russian Revolutions and Civil War).
Not to the same extent they haven't, and even if that were not the case, there's a big difference - Russia was a developed-ish country. People have Internet everywhere, mobile phones, computers, gadgets, Netflix, Spotify, etc. Lots of heavy industry relying on imported machinery. Lots of exports.
Cuba, North Korea didn't have any of those. Venezuela and Iran only share the export-reliant economy bit.
If the goal is to make the population turn on Putin's regime, sanctions are more likely to work here than ever before.
Venezuela had 'sanctions' starting on 2016, last year of Obama presidency. The scope of those sanctions is very limited to SOME individuals either in the Government and some business associates. There is no general embargo. And while the political scenario seems to no have changed very much, at least on the name and faces, the sanctions are the clear starting point on a big economic change that happened on 2018, where the economy opened up and was unofficially dollarized, probably by those who were not longer able to easily extract those dollars and euros into the US and EU (and fiscal paradises)like they were use to do. In this case, the sanctions had improved millions of lives and I guess that is good enough
They will cripple russian industry (already some factories stopped production) including parts of military production, which in itself means they are at least somewhat effective.
Tbh I don't care so much whether they're working or not, it's about public and private money from my country not financing war crimes that I do care about.
A good chunk of euros Germany spent on Russian gas entered into the war machine killing people in Ukraine
Economic isolation at least makes sure we're not paying for their bombs, and even for that goal alone they make sense.
How about a large part of taxpayers money being used for buying oil and gas from Saudi? Or war in Afghanistan? Or the dire conditions of the factories where the fifth iphone upgrade was made? If you decide to wage a moral victory then at least do it at your own cost.
So you are saying that because we don't live in a perfect world, we should all do business with the scum of the Earth? It is all or nothing? We can never start with the case at hand and maybe do better on the other ones later?
No my point is our warmongering regime needs a reason to continue the military spending spree. In an ideal world, we don’t have any business transactions with the Middle East where our values clearly don’t match and democracy is just a mockery for dictators to legitimize. Yet last I checked US is in bed with the Saudis even with after the 9/11 attack.
The point is for us to figure out how this time it is different. Yes it's arguably more "out there" (though if you ask some, there have been far worse wars/invasions previously that we've ignored), but it's still the same thing.
Maybe we'll realize that the big difference this time around is the media going through great lengths to weaponize public sentiment. It's a very bad feedback loop because the media will feed off of it and give the public more of what it wants.
Because it's not an argument against the action, it's a complaint about the lack of other actions.
The poster has not presented an argument as to why the sanctions are not a good response, or won't have the intended response, instead they have posted a list of other injustices to which we did not implement sanctions or otherwise take action.
No, it is not per se. It is a meta-level argument on inconsistency.
>The poster has not presented an argument as to why the sanctions are not a good response, or won't have the intended response, instead they have posted a list of other injustices to which we did not implement sanctions or otherwise take action.
If you think that a regional scale conflict and a country yelling nuclear annihilation at every turn are at the same level and needs the same, consistent, response you have no place discussing meta arguments.
Please stop using whataboutism arguments for anything. It's beyond useless in that it posits hypocrisy as an argument to do... nothing. The world is not zero sum and one action done virtuously need not endlessly be weighed against what was not done.
Next to ad hominem, it's the lowest common denominator of arguments and doesn't belong here (or anywhere else).
> The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was a British company founded in 1909 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Iran. The British government purchased 51% of the company in 1914,[1] gaining a controlling number of shares, effectively nationalizing the company. It was the first company to extract petroleum from Iran. In 1935 APOC was renamed the "Anglo-Iranian Oil Company" (AIOC) when Reza Shah Pahlavi formally asked foreign countries to refer to Persia by its endonym Iran.
> Fate
Became "British Petroleum Company", assets nationalised by the Iranian government
A big part of the point of these sanctions is effectively communicating to the Russian people the scale of the rest of the world's disapproval of their government's actions. The Kremlin can propagandize all they like, but it's pretty tough to explain McDonald's and Coca Cola, both profit seeking companies, voluntarily choosing to withdraw operations from their country. It's a message that can cut through the propaganda and can't be ignored.
The sanctions have already had a profound impact on the market valuations of Russian companies (they're not trading, but we know that impact is going to be enormous), and the Russian ruble. These things cause real tangible pain to Russian citizens and their government. Their ability to conduct a military campaign is going to be severely limited by the lack of available inputs and capital as well, in a mechanical way. These sanctions may not get Russia to change its course, but they will significantly impede their ability to operate.
The sentiment is that "these companies are using our friendly disposition to try and force us do things for them in a pathetic fashion, by throwing a fit".
All that attitude does is that it puts the potential neutrals in Russia on Putin's side, after all the West is the side that has taken Coca Cola and bank credits and Big Macs out of their reach, why should they side with the Russians that approve of those people? at the limit they're traitors.
The West will learn about the futility of all this pretty soon, but I doubt they'll change course, it's too late now, it will mean showing that "Putin has won".
Who are potential neutral? Why would those be useful to anyone? Russians by large stand by Putin or think Ukraine deserve it. That is with or without sanctions.
Sanctions don't have potential to make Russians more passive or less likely to protest, because that society haven't done that for years.
Putin cracked down on internal opposition years ago. That included murders of Russians. This is not the first war Russia is in either. And not much opposition was visible whole time.
The Ukraine was either not mentioned in news or willified as nazi. And not just for few days. That was Russian media before invasion. There was Russian evacuation of Donbas all over Russian news to supposedly protect civilians from Ukrainian nazi. Because Ukrainiane apparently decided to attack Russians exactly as Russian army was amassing at that exact border.
No other opinion is even legal now, there is 15 years imprisonment for that and independent media are closed. Russians who have Ukrainien families refuse to believe them even as their are getting pictures of basement living.
This premise of support for Putin is what people/journalists stationed in Russia reports. Before they left, because it is not safe anymore. People who reported on Russia for years, including in runup toward this war. Including during previous wars and whose past reporting turned out ok.
The war in Ukraine is result of long term process. The opposition, civil rights groups and what not were dismantled or weakened as part of that process.
Russian propaganda will tell people "see, the West wants us suffer, this means we're are right". Those who support this regime cannot connect cause and effect, even in total poverty they will still think "Putin good West bad". Don't overestimate intellectual ability of an average TV consumer.
Sanctions deal more damage to those who are trying to flee the country, leaving everything behind with no VISA/MasterCard and no hope for acceptance in other countries based on nationality.
I mean here stuff said towards western media and toward western politicians and public.
I do read accounts of people who were/are in Russia or Ukraine, reported from Russia for years and interview with Russians who run away. The latter includes journalists and activity that concluded regime became too dangerous for them finally.
The messaging toward west, toward Ukraine and toward Russians are three different messagings.
"The sanctions have already had a profound impact on the market valuations of Russian companies"
And all that means is that somebody else can pick up the physical capital for next to nothing. Which is what the nationalisation process Putin announced allows. Essentially if the West pulls out, then the Russians will confiscate everything physical and carry on producing in the same way. All that is lost is the monetary value extraction to the West, which is then diverted to the Russian Treasury.
"Their ability to conduct a military campaign is going to be severely limited by the lack of available inputs and capital as well, in a mechanical way."
How is it? What are the Russians, Russia being a country that can put people on the International Space Station, lacking in physical terms? They always have as much money as they require because they have their own currency and it has a floating exchange rate which means that it always circulates within the Russian currency area no matter what.
That means Russia can provide whatever liquidity is required to allow internal production to continue, and the Russian tax system - which requires payment in rubles - can be relied upon to drive the system.
Russia doesn't need up to date Western equipment. Guns and bullets made 1980s style will still kill people very effectively.
So they have all the available physical inputs, and all the necessary physical capital. Monetary capital is never an issue in a nation with its own currency. Plus if the West doesn't want Russia's exports, they can move people from that industry to the War Machine.
The only people that lose there is the West. Less natural resources in circulation, higher prices, less output. China, on the other hand, gets an energy discount which will be reflected in the cost of Chinese output.
I doubt very much that sanctions will impede the Russians. What it may do is get the West to re-evaluate what they believe. In particular whether 'the mighty dollar' really is that mighty after all.
What people seem to forget is that the value of the ruble in US dollars is utterly irrelevant to Russians in Russia. The price of their bread in rubles is unlike to change because of it, nor is the availability of that bread.
If we want to stop Russia, we have to put boots on the ground. I'm not sure the West is ready to face up to that uncomfortable truth.
> Russia doesn't need up to date Western equipment. Guns and bullets made 1980s style will still kill people very effectively.
What about planes? Helicopters? SAMs? Drones? India has cancelled their order of MiG-29s - it seems unlikely this is because of pro-Ukraine sentiment. It could be because they no longer have confidence in the performance of MiG-29s. But most likely it is because India does not believe Russia will be able to manufacture those planes as a result of sanctions. Guns, bullets, tanks, APCs, artillery - these Russia may be able to continue to produce. But these alone are not enough to win a war against another nation-state.
The idea that a country like Russia cannot make mere aircraft - particularly once it suspends enforcement of the West's patents and copyright - is likely wishful thinking.
Yet Russia has to come crawling to China for parts for airlines - who has refused to provide them.[0]
Modern aircraft are rife with specialised electronics - where is Russia going to get them?
Perhaps Russia will be able to build fighters up to the standards of the 1980s. But sanctions will cripple its ability to build modern fighters.
Another matter entirely will be Russia's ability to find engineers who are able to design military hardware for them. They had already been suffering brain drain prior to the invasion and sanctions, and currently there is a flood of emigration. Not just to the West, but even places like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Flights from Moscow to Tbilisi reached almost $2k.
True, bread and housing will be just as available and affordable to a Russian engineer. But if he wishes for any of the comforts of the West, those will be unavailable to him. And not to mention income - for instance, Roscosmos engineers before the invasion supposedly made only around $10k a year.
The currency crash doesn't need to impact them. They can just raise prices. If your theory were correct, McDonald's wouldn't still be paying their employees, but they are. It's very clearly a moral, or at least reputational, choice.
Just curious, how come McD is still open in Saudi Arabia, the country that routinely commits war crimes in Yemen and setting new records in mass beheading (yesterday's number was 81). Seems that "reputation" thing is more sophisticated than previously thought
The only message these sanctions are generate is more hate towards the west.
People in the west think that most Russians appreciate the attitude of the west towards Russia. In fact it's the total opposite. Not entirely strange, since a lot of people feel the effect of sanctions for a long time.
The current sanctions will not result in hate towards the Russian government, but more hate towards us the west.
There’s no cure for stupidity but any thinking Russian will place the blame for the sanctions upon Putin, as there’s a clear cause and effect involved. Russia invaded Ukraine, then vast numbers of companies left Russia and the economy collapsed.
Propaganda works based on simple logic, be it truth or lies, and this simple truth is a lot more believable than the “Russian invaded Ukraine to rid it of neo-nazis” narrative that the Kremlin is trying to push.
That is probably true but it's also true that throughout history, peoples tend to support their government when their lives are good/improving in general, regardless of what the government stands for otherwise.
If your country was at war with another country, you would not be doing business with them. The effects would be indistinguishable from sanctions.
This is war. It's just one we're the western powers are pretending they are not at war with Russia. And for good reasons.
People in the US are too used to being able to wield such an asymmetrical power, namely the ability to just respond to violence with violence without really worrying about the consequences (and some people even threat to "just nuke them" etc).
However here the opponent is a nuclear power, and one that can employ an effective madman strategy.
I don't think these sanctions are designed to apply western soft power. They are a desperate act of war a response to Russian aggression.
>The current sanctions will not result in hate towards the Russian government, but more hate towards us the west.
In U.S. election seasons, there's a common saying: "It's the economy, stupid."
Meaning, the more people feel economic pain, the less they support incumbent candidates. Regardless to whether that incumbent has any control over the economy. The candidates who win elections through scapegoats are usually challengers, and they like to include incumbents among the goat herd.
I'd like to think the Russian people are similar to Western citizens. And when the war-time surge of nationalism starts to ebb, they'll blame the people in charge for how bad everything is.
I hate Russia’s war as much as anyone, but McDonald withdrawing from a country is not in itself a message that can’t be ignored or turned around.
To put things in perspective, in an unrelated case Meta raised a risk of withdrawing from EU depending on the sanctions they face, and the general opinion on that hasn’t been to lament the EU governance.
I’m willing to bet the farm that the Rubble falling down and the direct financial sanctions leading to restricted access to deposits have far more psychological impacts than McDonald’s and Coca Cola (did Coca Cola actually withdraw from Russia ? I thought the local bottling company was still doing business)
Neither Samsung nor Xiaomi need Google to ship android devices.
Play Store/Google Services presence is a big plus, but if the choice is between not shipping the phones or shipping without Play Store, I’m sure the decision will be simple (at least for Xiaomi, I’d see Samsung more open to take a stand against Russia)
So here's the thing: a huge amount of Europeans don't really like Meta, and realize it's a highly substitute-able thing.
McDonalds in Russia is...kind of a big deal. It's a giant billboard that Russia is open and participates in the global economy, and the wealth and opportunity that brings. Americans don't see it because they were never that cut off, but for anyone behind the iron curtain the whole concept is still a sign that they had left an age of rationing, empty shelves and unavailable produce.
If you're a young person in Russia today, you have probably heard stories from your parents about when their wasn't McDonalds, or supermarkets which had things. The big mark of stuff getting better after the cold war the influx of the American brands, and the massive luxuries they brought in.
This is a cultural perspective that's hard to communicate, but Russia - well the USSR - used to have exactly one McDonalds - which opened in 1990 in Moscow[1], and parents would save for months to be able to afford to take their children there. The people who lived through that time are still alive.
I think you are ovestating things. Yes, this was true in the 1990s, when McDonalds was one of the few windows into what western capitalism has to offer, but this magic of novelty is long gone. Right now McDonalds is, like in the rest of the world, just a place where you can grab food of predictable shitty quality when you are low on time and money (though indeed often the primary choice).
They don't work but in this case it may have some effect.
Cubans moan about US embargo and how unfair it is to them and how it only makes their lives harder while the elite doesn't care. And yet most Cubans clearly know that it is their socialistic government that is against them and not the west.
In Russia the situation is that most people actually support Putin and his insane policies including the war. There is a minority which actually understands what is going on but it is not enough.
The sanctions and economic hardships may help for others to come to their senses that when the whole world condemns this war with the exception of North Korea and Syria, then their must be something wrong with their leader and not the world.
Take those polls with a grain of salt:
1) they are all conducted by government or affiliates, independent ones are extinct
2) in danger people tend to stick with the power
3) you can get in trouble for saying anything against the regime, even in polls
I am surprised that you find this idea so unbelievable. I have many Russian friends and a lot of them are supporting Putin when talking in person. It is not about them not being able to speak against but very active being pro-Putin.
This is such a circular and convenient argument. It's next to impossible to get to any conclusion other than "Russia Bad".
All you have to do to trigger this downward spiral/feed-back loop is to start an aura of "illegitimacy" and it's all downhill from there. Next thing you know, polls are "suspect", and "independent inspectors found evidence of". Or there was "intimidation at the polls". Then the government becomes a "dictatorship". Then it's magically no longer a democracy. Then it becomes a "regime" and all their wealthy elite become "oligarchs". Etc etc.
The dirty secret and why Russians and anti-west individuals are right is that these properties above magically start disappearing when the "right" people get elected. If it's a democratic election and the "wrong" person wins, then that must mean that the polls were tampered with. You can clearly see it in the drastically different rhetoric coming from the media when Trump won (it was due to Russian interference and hacking and bots and how Trump is now a dictator and how the "Far-Right" took over the whitehouse etc etc). But when Biden won and the other camp screamed election fraud, the narrative changed entirely and it was all about defending the legitimacy of the election.
It's a very straightforward argument, actually. Did Russia pass laws criminalizing speech that goes against its war propaganda? Yes, verifiably so - you can find it posted prominently on government websites. Are you seriously claiming that a poll taken in such an environment should be considered accurate?
Also don't forget that quality of life in Russia increased significantly last 20 years.
Despite the authocratic system people received more economic freedom. That's why Putin is still popular amongst it's citizens. The complaining minority is what we see in the west
> In Russia the situation is that most people actually support Putin
Russian here. I'm not so sure about the public support.
I've yet to see a single [Z] or [V] sticker on a car in my city. I haven's seen a single Uber driver excitedly telling me about "our victories" -- they've become much less chatty since the war started.
Yes, I saw a few video billboards with clumsy [Z] propaganda, but the ad companies may have been forced by the state to display it, under the threat of withdrawing their license to operate an ad business.
In my social circle (educated people -- architects, artists, IT, engineers, etc.) there's not a single person who supports the war. A few are in denial, but the majority is profoundly depressed by what's happening.
A personal datapoint: My wife hated everything Ukrainian for all her life, way before the war and even before the Crimea events. She has hardwired, biological, instinctual nationalism on a level that would be more appropriate for a football ultra. However, she's been genuinely horrified and gravely depressed since the first day of the war.
It isn't changing. I may be projecting, but this grave mood has been dominant since the first day of the war.
On the contrary, when Puting announced the recognition of two Donbass republics as independent countries a few days before the war, there was a round of cheer and optimism -- because that would mean that the cross-border shellings in Donbass will finally stop. But that cheer has completely evaporated the morning the invasion started.
(Take this with a grain of salt -- this is based on my personal observations of my relatively narrow social circle, plus I may be projecting).
Thank you. My overall mood is grave, but I have a business to save and a family to feed.
Yes, I'd be able to live quite well with the cheaper ruble, but that requires being able to retain the foreign revenue flow into Russia and being able to convert the dollar to ruble at a decent rate. There's still a lot of uncertainty about both of these.
As for why am I staying... well, that's a big, big question. I won't feel at home abroad. Yes, I've been to multiple countries in Europe, and I'd be perfectly fine on an everyday level, but I won't be at home. And I'm not exactly young either.
It is sad that the Russian World is really small, compared to the Angloshere, and it's dominated by Putin's Russia. We Russians don't really have another place to run to... Yes we can smuggle ourselves to Europe, but we'll spend decades on getting the citizenship, diligently working boring CRUD jobs, wasting our potential until we're old...
It's because you are not old and you are educated. Unfortunately, some Russians (older and less educated) do support Putin. But for sure, even amongst them, almost nobody supports the war.
Absolutely, older Russians ("The TV people" as we call them here) did support Putin before the war. However, I haven't yet formed my opinion about what they think now. Remember, they've been raised during the Soviet era, when Ukraine was considered one of the brother nations to Russia, who fought together with us against Hitler. And now we're bombing their cities -- we're the Hitler now.
Maybe they'll go into denial ("NATO hates us and forced us to do it"). Maybe. Also, their life quality will severely degrade in the coming months -- they'll have to spend much more money on food and medicine; and that would also be a factor.
Judging by my extended family, it seems to depend on the proportion of news obtained from the TV versus the Internet. Many older people basically don't trust the Net, but have an ingrained habit of religiously following the news on TV - and right now it's basically non-stop propaganda, from what I hear.
Good enough in containing them, sure. Now imagine not containing them. Iran especially is desperate to remove sanctions on oil trade, so they could pump more money into their military campaigns.
This is another one of those unfortunately clickbait titled papers. What the paper actually states is:
- Sanctions with economic goals have been demonstrated to work fairly well.
- Sanctions alone with political goals are only demonstrated to work in a minority of studied cases. Sanctions combined with military action tend to perform better, but then you end up with problems teasing out causal effects.
- Sanctions can be mitigated by whipping up nationalistic fervor, substitution via other avenues, and shifting the burden to disenfranchised groups.
- The current research on this is crap quality.
The breadth and scale of the current sanctions against Russia (far bigger and more comprehensive than any in history) will make substitution harder. As well, Russia is engaged in a very expensive war that is quickly depleting her coffers due to wastage, poor training, bad coordination, and low morale. With scores of Western countries actively supplying billions in arms to Ukraine, that does not bode well.
Substitution won't be so hard if only Western nations impose sanctions.
You will see countries like China stepping in, and becoming an intermediary.
Nobody dares imposing sanctions on them though, so they won't be as effective.
Chinese companies are already shying away because they don't want to be sanctioned themselves. China is not self-sufficient enough that it can actively thumb its nose at American sanctions. There are specific institutions in China for bypassing sanctions, but they are a small minority and must be kept separate to avoid cross-contamination. This minimizes their utility.
Also, Chinese support of Russia has cooled after this embarassing fiasco. China is more interested in not getting Russian dirt on them atm, since they have a housing and building crisis to manage, as well as a half-finished cultural revolution and self-sufficiency push that makes them more vulnerable for the moment. Now is not a good time for this shit.
> China is more interested in not getting Russian dirt on them atm
I have always gotten the feeling that China collectively recognizes a paper tiger when they are politically engaged with one. My big lesson here is, Russians drank the domestic kool-aid, up to and including Putin.
Pape says the data (HSE database) is flawed and that the logic of
sanctions is flawed. We've never properly evaluated their impact. And
we cannot separate their effect from military actions which almost
always occur simultaneously.
He says that sanctions fail because there is rarely coherent
international cooperation - actually that seems to be different in the
present Ukraine crisis.
Also that nationalism drives sanctioned countries closer together into
a more dogged position. Possibly that's true in Russia.
48 pages of academic prose is too much for a Sunday morning, so my
take-away is light - it's not that economic sanctions are ineffective
but that we have no real understanding of how effective they are, and
if so why.
I was skimming through a Wikipedia article the other day that suggests there is not much unity [0, 1]. From those two UN votes it looks like Asia is more or less neutral and will be happy to trade for Russia's energy and resources.
And that is just an official UN vote, what actually happens in cynical practice will look even more opportunistic.
"Russia is in a bad way financially" is accurate, but from a Western perspective.
Russia is obscenely rich in oil, gas, and almost every commodity. Russia is USD poor, gold reserve rich (even with the West stealing some of it), and long literally every input material that the West will need for the massive infrastructure projects it claims to want for ESG purposes.
Give it six months and when massive famines tear through most of the Third World (a term that is suddenly applicable in its Cold War era meaning), Russia will not have food security issues. Gas will be obscene expensive in Europe, but cheap in Russia. All these benefits will be extended to countries that chose to continue to trade with Russia. Want food security? Here is some Russian wheat available at a reasonable price . . . or you can import some very expensive American one.
To put it simply, Russia's "peace and honor" strategy is to run the timer. Let the West's self-destructive sanctions work. Destroying yourself economically over Ukraine is the definition of a luxury belief, and most of the world has no room for luxury beliefs. Whether their wheat is coming from a corrupt Ukrainian government or a corrupt Russian government makes no difference as long as it comes.
I think that "run the timer" might well have been the initial strategy for the reasons you state but I think it's naïve to think that things are progressing according to that strategy.
The sanctions are much harder than anyone predicted and with a country that is, unlike North Korea, tightly integrated in supply chains through the world, they are hitting Russia hard. Now, Putin may not care about that and he obviously has no problem with letting people suffer so the war might continue for a few weeks but I doubt that we will see it lasting years, simply because I think they will not have the resources.
> The sanctions are much harder than anyone predicted
That's an unfalsifiable statement, but let's not forget that this is exactly what Biden had been saying for weeks before the war broke out... if Russia didn't know this was coming is only because they chose to believe Biden was just kidding, which I personally find silly to believe.
Sure, I guess there is a chance that Biden knew that even Switzerland would abandon its policy of neutrality that it had been maintaining since the 1500's but it doesn't seem likely to me.
E.g. disabling SWIFT was mentioned every now and then since 2014, and this was taken quite seriously in Russia at the time - enough so to consider options. I remember a discussion I had with my family about how to wire money across the border if it happens.
I think there's an element of truth to what you say but I don't know if it would work. Russia will presumably still want to export its' raw materials and grains, even if not directly to the West. Because trade is very much global, countries will re export Russian imports to the rest of the world. This is actually how Russia's economy worked during the Soviet era with a surprising amount of indirect trade going on between the USSR and the west. While the sanctions are likely to be punishing for both sides with China especially willing to act as a middle man I suspect the actual effect of sanctions on Russia / west End to end trade will be less than expected and will help further strengthen China's position. And from a purely international realist position, western governments have never given a damn about people in the third or developing world starving and I can't see that changing now.
There won't be massive famines tearing through the third world. Much of the third world consists of net food exporters, not importers. As for the importers, food prices will increase due to missing Russian and Ukrainian supply, but food prices have always been volatile, and in recent decades that hasn't led to famine except in a few specific countries where high prices are combined with extreme repression or civil war.
> I'm not sure what their "peace with honor" exit strategy is.
Look at past wars Russia was involved in and you'll see a clear pattern. When things get tough, they first try to split the enemy internally so that it gets help from inside (which is probably what Putin expected would happen eventually, but so far has not happened except in the separatist regions in the East)... and if that fails, they bring in the big guns and wipe the enemy off the map, quite literally. See Grozny and more recently, their Syrian campaign. If anyone thinks Russians will leave Ukraine humiliated after they run out of cash, they are dreaming.
Your statement about Russia and its current engagement is correct (from what I read).
But the bigger point: while we wait and expect Putin to somehow fail (economically, militarily, or both), Ukrainians are dying.
Edit: when I write "wait", I mean "wait while the economic sanctions have a big enough impact". I'm not suggesting that nothing is being done neither that we should (or should not) engage militarily.
Backing Putin into a corner politically isn't going to lead him to retreat. Rather than doubling down on sanctions and promising ever-more draconian measures, the Biden administration should be developing "off ramps" or ways to de-escalate the conflict by giving Putin some sort of face-saving measure to withdraw or abide by a settlement that gives maximum peace and safety to Ukraine and stability and security to Europe.
> (...) or ways to de-escalate the conflict by giving Putin some sort of face-saving measure (...)
One thing I never understood is what "face-saving" means in this context. Could somebody try to explain that?
Edit: to explain the question -- to me as a political and military layman in central Europe, it seems that the most face-saving move is to return to Russia and stop the war. Anything else would be worse. So either the key point is that I'm not the audience of such a move (who then? My guess is Russian politicians, military, or civilians), or I'm seriously getting wrong how one's moves are interpreted on the geopolitical stage.
Towards who, and for what purpose, that's what I don't get -- except if the audience is the Russian population. Anybody in the western world has seen enough (or has been presented enough by the western media, if you're cynic) to make any attempt to interpret the outcome as "winning" futile.
Specifically to the people who could overthrow him (I.e the security apparatus in Russia) as well as secondarily to the Russian people (who the security apparatus opportunistically pays attention to).
If he retreats without enough of a “win”, he is done - hence backed into a corner.
I don't think he cares about being overthrown. I think he cares about Russia not being broken up / being relegated to something like Yugoslavia was. And he can be pretty ruthless in pursuing it.
They hammer on effectiveness, in juxtaposition with "wars being effective" (how do you measure this, are they really resolving problems?). Yet they claim they do not want to compare. In any case, even if economic sanctions were 3x less effective, it is reasonable to choose it over war, where the omnipresence of violence and uncertainty causes massive, large-scale trauma.
Grotesque question: What is on the "war invoice" for Russia? Rockets, fighter jets and tanks were already paid for. Fuel costs zero if you are a dictatorship with petrol in your backyard. Salaries are probably just printed money.
As recently as March 12th, Putin showed unwillingness to end the war. This means that either:
A. He lives in an alternative reality.
B. He is bluffing.
C. Economic sanctions don't affect the war machine as much as we hoped for.
Everything costs. Refining fuel, transporting fuel & munitions & personnel, paying soldiers, logistics, food, intelligence, maintenance, supply lines... it all costs - a LOT. And it's even worse doing it in a country full of people who are now hostile. Just because you're printing money doesn't change the actual real cost. If your salary can't even buy food for a day, you notice.
Putin is trying to stave off inflation by keeping the markets closed and blocking capital flight, but that only gives a little bit of breathing room. Stores are running out of their pre-shock stock, and once that happens everything goes crazy.
This happened because Putin trusted his FSP reports too much, underestimating just how badly they were lying to appease their superiors (you get forced to redo reports until they show at least a minimum of optimism). Putin knows they're lies from his own time there, but somehow he still vastly underestimated. Reports of 10,000 missiles turned out to actually be 1/10 of that. Fighting force readiness was grossly exaggerated. SVR also exaggerated Ukrainian desires - he actually thought that he'd be welcomed, and that any resistance would be from agents provocateurs and splinter groups (thus his 1-day estimate to complete the takeover of Ukraine).
Now he's stuck, and angry, arresting members of his intelligence service and sacking military commanders when he has none to spare. This is not how the cold, calculating Putin we've all known behaves.
He's rolling the dice again and again, upping the stakes and hoping for the big payoff. I suppose that's understandable since it's now his neck at stake.
We do know, however, that he's not insane. He's avoided attacking NATO countries or weapons convoys, and is instead going for intimidation (like with the rocket attack 15km from the Polish border) and sieges (attacking and mining humanitarian corridors).
But he's been bluffing so much now that it's lost its effectiveness. The West knows they've got him, that his military is a shambles, that no one will help him, that the oligarchs are scared, and that he's spending the country into oblivion. All they have to do is wait. The Ukrainians will fight to the death, so there's no real danger of Russia actually taking Ukraine - just provide enough weaponry and they'll hold out for as long as it takes.
Russian intelligence predicts that the war can only be sustained until June. I personally believe this to be laughably optimistic.
The author states they do not compare sanctions against military action. The author is assessing if sanctions achieved the goal of the sanctions. I think a way to think about sanctions is applying a tax to a country. It's not that the country won't find some way to evade the sanctions to achieve their goals but the cost of doing so is higher than it would have been otherwise. You might say sanctions fail against North Korea because they still import things. But when you look at all the crazy schemes they come up with to evade the sanctions, those have a cost to implement. For example they do mid ocean oil transfers from one ship to another. First you have to find a company willing to do that, then occasionally they get caught and the oil is returned to the origin country. Doing that must cost extra compared with just buying oil by regular methods.
Is the point not to make it very clear to the general public that what is happening is bad?
Like, in the current scenario, it might not be very well known what the truth is, so by enforcing sanctions it gets brought into the public eye - and even if you still believe what the government says, it must at least make you stop and wonder /why/ the rest of the world has suddenly stopped doing business with your country.
At the very least it causes dissent in the populace, which is a very powerful tool
From the intro to this paper: "I do not address whether sanctions are an effective substitute for war." But isn't substituting for war the whole purpose of sanctions?
Sanctions are a nonmilitary response to a military action. What is the alternative way for the world to respond to the invasion of Ukraine?
The first goal of sanctions is to diminish the capability of the Russian economy to sustain a military invasion.
The second goal is to be a chip at the negotiation table. Releasing sanctions can traded for a withdrawal, creating an incentive to end the invasion.
I think one of the reasons this situation is different, at least in modern experience, is because the sanctions are such a clear case of having hands tied.
It's fairly obvious that if Russia were nonnuclear, this would have largely been over weeks ago, with the Russian military obliterated. Russia had its military piled up in one spot, has been engaging in unacceptable aggression, to the point of there being legitimate widespread war crimes, and there's a clear legitimate security threat to Europe.
In any other case, NATO would have responded harshly and proactively and obliterated the Russian military almost completely.
But they feel they can't due to nuclear risk, rightly or wrongly. So there's this huge dissonance, of something clearly morally disgusting, and a security threat, and something they're more than capable of addressing, but can't due to nuclear threat.
This is really different from most sanctions in recent history, where the sanctions have been over something more distal, further away, maybe less morally repugnant, and/or not such a clear security risk to the NATO region, and/or where military action would be less justified or decisive.
Kasparov has raised some important points in all of this, which is if the concern is really MAD, why would any military action by Russia against any other country, including a NATO country, be responded to differently by NATO?
I think this, in turn, raises another function of sanctions which maybe hasn't been discussed yet, which is deterrence. Maybe the sanctions aren't enough to get Russia out of Ukraine, maybe they're not enough to remove Putin from power, but maybe they'd be enough to keep him from thinking about invading Finland or Estonia while his military is slowly being ground to dust in Ukraine, the spectre of conflict with Japan has been reignited, etc etc etc.
For what it's worth, the West (and world) needs to make this more than about Russia. There has to be a way to respond to human rights and fundamental security violations without being hamstrung by the threat of loss of humankind.
Now it is told to any other countries that if you plan to go with aggression to threaten the core interests of the west, better be prepared to the consequences of a complete cut from Western economy as whole.
That is a pretty good example that Russia is setting.
> Now it is told to any other countries that if you plan to go with aggression to threaten the core interests of the west, better be prepared to the consequences of a complete cut from Western economy as whole.
Can you see how that can't be very good for the West? Being seen as a bully who will force its way on others will just cause everyone else to stay the hell away from you if they can help it (admitedly, most can't help it - but China is already a viable alternative to parts of the world, and will just continue to grow its influence and it may seem like a more attractive partner who, at least so far, never tries to impose its ideology on anyone else).
> Being seen as a bully who will force its way on others
Russia starts the war. They are the textbook bullies who forced their way on others, and worse through violence. In this case, the West are given a cause to act extreme.
China will have alternatives of its own anyway, regardless. Other countries can choose hedge the risk of too integrated with the Western economy, but do they really trust China that much? It is indeed a question to be answered.
Russia is being a bully, not doubt... but what doubt is there that the West is responding by using textbook bully tactics as a response? If your point is that, at least the West is not using violence, then I totally agree. It's much less problematic to be an economic bully than a violent one.
The sanctions against Russia are not just economic. They’re also being sanctioned from all sporting events, football, gymnastics, ice skating, Formula 1. How do you “substitute” that?
This is a paper from 25 years ago that interprets a study that happened 37 to 32 years ago. That study used sanctions data from 1914 to 1990, which are 108 to 32 years ago. I'm not sure this paper is valid in any way for today.
I don't know how useful or interesting it is to know what has happened a handful of times it has been done before. Each instance is complex and unique and the same history is available to everyone involved... so it is very likely that things will be different in significant ways every time.
What is happening now is rather easy to see. The US is claiming that these are designed to hinder Russian oligarchs in the long term. They're not designed to take effect in months or years.
The problem with that is the Russian people will be impacted immediately and as unemployment and poverty grows, the Russian people will be more dependent on the government for everything much more so than they already are. This just gives them a very large population (145 million) on their side with not much to lose... which will put Europe in immense danger... which means good business for the American weapons industry, the puppetmasters of Biden.
Only if they can find enough engineers. Supposedly, many Russians are so desperate to leave, that a ticket to Tbilisi costs thousands of dollars. They're fleeing to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan...
Things must be grim indeed if Kazakhstan looks like a step up from staying in Russia.
The discussion about effectiveness of sanctions is made pointless by the fact that they are, next to sending arms, the only way the West can respond to Russian aggression. A military response is out of the question for obvious reasons.
And sanction will work -- the reason the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc collapsed is economic. People seem to forget that e.g what made workers go on a country-wide strike in the 80s Poland and eventually led to the downfall of communism in that country was not the notorious lack of freedom and media censorship but empty wallets.
The situation here may be similar and the process can be long, possibly decades. I think what makes the situation worse for Russians is the fact that economic ties with the West are so much stronger compared to the 1950s. The Russian middle-class from big cities will be hit the hardest -- losing their good paying IT and finance jobs and facing a huge downgrade in the quality of life or facing emigration. It's true that the sanctions will have less effect on blue-collars or people from smaller town and villages, likely the main source of support for Putin and also the main audience for the state propaganda. But, I'd argue that the middle-class city dwellers are more influential and less prone to the propaganda.
Oligarchs are another group key to influencing Russian politics and that's harder to reason about. On one hand losing one's yachts and houses on Cote d'Azur is a blow to the status. On the other hand their wealth comes from exploiting commodities and sanctions are unlikely to target that. On the contrary: in the short term the current situation is likely to be beneficial.
If there's a silver lining for the EU, it might be accelerating the process of Green transformation. Even if the war ends tomorrow, I can't see there being any support for retaining existing level of dependence on Russian oil and gas. That ship has sailed. Countries that will remain dependent on Russian fossil fuels, e.g Hungary, have visibly strong autocratic tendencies and will be increasingly ostracised in the EU, possibly eventually leaving it.
We can see some effect of the sanctions right now, and it's significant. But they didn't stop the war yet, unfortunately. Corruption in the russian army is a bigger stopper than sanctions right now. Maybe sanctions will help to overthrow Putin in 3-7 years, but how expensive this waiting might be for Ukraine? Even if it will take just 1 year - this war created an enormous amount of suffering in 2 weeks, it's difficult even to think about the possible damage from 1 year of the war.
What helps much, much more than sanctions: unmanned aircraft units, Bayraktars. Turkey (a NATO country) helped Ukraine, and I wonder why other countries can not send (without the soldiers) some unmanned aircraft units or F35? They create a really HUGE effect.
If you are reading this and you are a citizen of some western country, please consider asking your representatives, if they can start a discussion about sending such help to Ukraine.
136 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadWe (the West) can't just invade Russia and enforce peace that way. Political, economical and cultural isolation is the next best thing we have.
I fully support sanctions against them.
Cuba, North Korea didn't have any of those. Venezuela and Iran only share the export-reliant economy bit.
If the goal is to make the population turn on Putin's regime, sanctions are more likely to work here than ever before.
Venezuela had 'sanctions' starting on 2016, last year of Obama presidency. The scope of those sanctions is very limited to SOME individuals either in the Government and some business associates. There is no general embargo. And while the political scenario seems to no have changed very much, at least on the name and faces, the sanctions are the clear starting point on a big economic change that happened on 2018, where the economy opened up and was unofficially dollarized, probably by those who were not longer able to easily extract those dollars and euros into the US and EU (and fiscal paradises)like they were use to do. In this case, the sanctions had improved millions of lives and I guess that is good enough
Putin stooges and apologists like to bring up European winter and industry.
Whatever, Europe survived without Russian gas, there are substitutes even if they cost more
Bringing Russia to her knees is worth the price.
A good chunk of euros Germany spent on Russian gas entered into the war machine killing people in Ukraine
Economic isolation at least makes sure we're not paying for their bombs, and even for that goal alone they make sense.
It's not about punishing, duh.
That's pretty sad dude.
Maybe we'll realize that the big difference this time around is the media going through great lengths to weaponize public sentiment. It's a very bad feedback loop because the media will feed off of it and give the public more of what it wants.
Money we pay to Russia currently pays for their military. Parts, tools, materials to Russia go to maintaining its capacity to wage war.
The existence of one injustice doesn't somehow make another okay.
The poster has not presented an argument as to why the sanctions are not a good response, or won't have the intended response, instead they have posted a list of other injustices to which we did not implement sanctions or otherwise take action.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Indeed, it is not per se.
>it's a complaint about the lack of other actions
No, it is not per se. It is a meta-level argument on inconsistency.
>The poster has not presented an argument as to why the sanctions are not a good response, or won't have the intended response, instead they have posted a list of other injustices to which we did not implement sanctions or otherwise take action.
Yes, there is nothing fallacious about that.
If you think that a regional scale conflict and a country yelling nuclear annihilation at every turn are at the same level and needs the same, consistent, response you have no place discussing meta arguments.
Next to ad hominem, it's the lowest common denominator of arguments and doesn't belong here (or anywhere else).
> Fate Became "British Petroleum Company", assets nationalised by the Iranian government
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Persian_Oil_Company
The sanctions have already had a profound impact on the market valuations of Russian companies (they're not trading, but we know that impact is going to be enormous), and the Russian ruble. These things cause real tangible pain to Russian citizens and their government. Their ability to conduct a military campaign is going to be severely limited by the lack of available inputs and capital as well, in a mechanical way. These sanctions may not get Russia to change its course, but they will significantly impede their ability to operate.
The West will learn about the futility of all this pretty soon, but I doubt they'll change course, it's too late now, it will mean showing that "Putin has won".
Sanctions don't have potential to make Russians more passive or less likely to protest, because that society haven't done that for years.
Putin cracked down on internal opposition years ago. That included murders of Russians. This is not the first war Russia is in either. And not much opposition was visible whole time.
> Russians by large stand by Putin or think Ukraine deserve it. That is with or without sanctions.
is false, or used to be false before these sanctions were implemented.
No other opinion is even legal now, there is 15 years imprisonment for that and independent media are closed. Russians who have Ukrainien families refuse to believe them even as their are getting pictures of basement living.
This premise of support for Putin is what people/journalists stationed in Russia reports. Before they left, because it is not safe anymore. People who reported on Russia for years, including in runup toward this war. Including during previous wars and whose past reporting turned out ok.
The war in Ukraine is result of long term process. The opposition, civil rights groups and what not were dismantled or weakened as part of that process.
Sanctions deal more damage to those who are trying to flee the country, leaving everything behind with no VISA/MasterCard and no hope for acceptance in other countries based on nationality.
"Western countries aren't sanctioned for their war crimes. Hence sanctions are only siege warfare against Russia."
I do read accounts of people who were/are in Russia or Ukraine, reported from Russia for years and interview with Russians who run away. The latter includes journalists and activity that concluded regime became too dangerous for them finally.
The messaging toward west, toward Ukraine and toward Russians are three different messagings.
Most Western world TV consumers are probably thinking right now: "Putin bad, West good". We blame others but we make the same mistakes over and over.
And all that means is that somebody else can pick up the physical capital for next to nothing. Which is what the nationalisation process Putin announced allows. Essentially if the West pulls out, then the Russians will confiscate everything physical and carry on producing in the same way. All that is lost is the monetary value extraction to the West, which is then diverted to the Russian Treasury.
"Their ability to conduct a military campaign is going to be severely limited by the lack of available inputs and capital as well, in a mechanical way."
How is it? What are the Russians, Russia being a country that can put people on the International Space Station, lacking in physical terms? They always have as much money as they require because they have their own currency and it has a floating exchange rate which means that it always circulates within the Russian currency area no matter what.
That means Russia can provide whatever liquidity is required to allow internal production to continue, and the Russian tax system - which requires payment in rubles - can be relied upon to drive the system.
Russia doesn't need up to date Western equipment. Guns and bullets made 1980s style will still kill people very effectively.
So they have all the available physical inputs, and all the necessary physical capital. Monetary capital is never an issue in a nation with its own currency. Plus if the West doesn't want Russia's exports, they can move people from that industry to the War Machine.
The only people that lose there is the West. Less natural resources in circulation, higher prices, less output. China, on the other hand, gets an energy discount which will be reflected in the cost of Chinese output.
I doubt very much that sanctions will impede the Russians. What it may do is get the West to re-evaluate what they believe. In particular whether 'the mighty dollar' really is that mighty after all.
What people seem to forget is that the value of the ruble in US dollars is utterly irrelevant to Russians in Russia. The price of their bread in rubles is unlike to change because of it, nor is the availability of that bread.
If we want to stop Russia, we have to put boots on the ground. I'm not sure the West is ready to face up to that uncomfortable truth.
What about planes? Helicopters? SAMs? Drones? India has cancelled their order of MiG-29s - it seems unlikely this is because of pro-Ukraine sentiment. It could be because they no longer have confidence in the performance of MiG-29s. But most likely it is because India does not believe Russia will be able to manufacture those planes as a result of sanctions. Guns, bullets, tanks, APCs, artillery - these Russia may be able to continue to produce. But these alone are not enough to win a war against another nation-state.
They ship these things to Turkey to help build nuclear power plants. https://sdelanounas.ru/blogs/145486/
The idea that a country like Russia cannot make mere aircraft - particularly once it suspends enforcement of the West's patents and copyright - is likely wishful thinking.
Modern aircraft are rife with specialised electronics - where is Russia going to get them?
Perhaps Russia will be able to build fighters up to the standards of the 1980s. But sanctions will cripple its ability to build modern fighters.
Another matter entirely will be Russia's ability to find engineers who are able to design military hardware for them. They had already been suffering brain drain prior to the invasion and sanctions, and currently there is a flood of emigration. Not just to the West, but even places like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Flights from Moscow to Tbilisi reached almost $2k.
True, bread and housing will be just as available and affordable to a Russian engineer. But if he wishes for any of the comforts of the West, those will be unavailable to him. And not to mention income - for instance, Roscosmos engineers before the invasion supposedly made only around $10k a year.
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russia-sa...
It's not: Sanctions from "the west" have crashed the ruble... profit seeking companies can no longer make profit, and have to close.
I'm not convinced these companies are leaving on moral grounds. Purely the currency crash.
Not clearly a moral choice at all.
Propaganda works based on simple logic, be it truth or lies, and this simple truth is a lot more believable than the “Russian invaded Ukraine to rid it of neo-nazis” narrative that the Kremlin is trying to push.
This is war. It's just one we're the western powers are pretending they are not at war with Russia. And for good reasons.
People in the US are too used to being able to wield such an asymmetrical power, namely the ability to just respond to violence with violence without really worrying about the consequences (and some people even threat to "just nuke them" etc).
However here the opponent is a nuclear power, and one that can employ an effective madman strategy.
I don't think these sanctions are designed to apply western soft power. They are a desperate act of war a response to Russian aggression.
In U.S. election seasons, there's a common saying: "It's the economy, stupid."
Meaning, the more people feel economic pain, the less they support incumbent candidates. Regardless to whether that incumbent has any control over the economy. The candidates who win elections through scapegoats are usually challengers, and they like to include incumbents among the goat herd.
I'd like to think the Russian people are similar to Western citizens. And when the war-time surge of nationalism starts to ebb, they'll blame the people in charge for how bad everything is.
To put things in perspective, in an unrelated case Meta raised a risk of withdrawing from EU depending on the sanctions they face, and the general opinion on that hasn’t been to lament the EU governance.
I’m willing to bet the farm that the Rubble falling down and the direct financial sanctions leading to restricted access to deposits have far more psychological impacts than McDonald’s and Coca Cola (did Coca Cola actually withdraw from Russia ? I thought the local bottling company was still doing business)
Play Store/Google Services presence is a big plus, but if the choice is between not shipping the phones or shipping without Play Store, I’m sure the decision will be simple (at least for Xiaomi, I’d see Samsung more open to take a stand against Russia)
McDonalds in Russia is...kind of a big deal. It's a giant billboard that Russia is open and participates in the global economy, and the wealth and opportunity that brings. Americans don't see it because they were never that cut off, but for anyone behind the iron curtain the whole concept is still a sign that they had left an age of rationing, empty shelves and unavailable produce.
If you're a young person in Russia today, you have probably heard stories from your parents about when their wasn't McDonalds, or supermarkets which had things. The big mark of stuff getting better after the cold war the influx of the American brands, and the massive luxuries they brought in.
This is a cultural perspective that's hard to communicate, but Russia - well the USSR - used to have exactly one McDonalds - which opened in 1990 in Moscow[1], and parents would save for months to be able to afford to take their children there. The people who lived through that time are still alive.
[1] https://www.boredpanda.com/first-mcdonald-restaurant-opens-s...
In Russia the situation is that most people actually support Putin and his insane policies including the war. There is a minority which actually understands what is going on but it is not enough.
The sanctions and economic hardships may help for others to come to their senses that when the whole world condemns this war with the exception of North Korea and Syria, then their must be something wrong with their leader and not the world.
How do you know this?
But it is still quite unequivocal that most people support Putin even if it is due to their lack of information.
Here is more detailed explanation: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-war-in-ukraine-...
I am surprised that you find this idea so unbelievable. I have many Russian friends and a lot of them are supporting Putin when talking in person. It is not about them not being able to speak against but very active being pro-Putin.
All you have to do to trigger this downward spiral/feed-back loop is to start an aura of "illegitimacy" and it's all downhill from there. Next thing you know, polls are "suspect", and "independent inspectors found evidence of". Or there was "intimidation at the polls". Then the government becomes a "dictatorship". Then it's magically no longer a democracy. Then it becomes a "regime" and all their wealthy elite become "oligarchs". Etc etc.
The dirty secret and why Russians and anti-west individuals are right is that these properties above magically start disappearing when the "right" people get elected. If it's a democratic election and the "wrong" person wins, then that must mean that the polls were tampered with. You can clearly see it in the drastically different rhetoric coming from the media when Trump won (it was due to Russian interference and hacking and bots and how Trump is now a dictator and how the "Far-Right" took over the whitehouse etc etc). But when Biden won and the other camp screamed election fraud, the narrative changed entirely and it was all about defending the legitimacy of the election.
I've yet to see a single [Z] or [V] sticker on a car in my city. I haven's seen a single Uber driver excitedly telling me about "our victories" -- they've become much less chatty since the war started.
Yes, I saw a few video billboards with clumsy [Z] propaganda, but the ad companies may have been forced by the state to display it, under the threat of withdrawing their license to operate an ad business.
In my social circle (educated people -- architects, artists, IT, engineers, etc.) there's not a single person who supports the war. A few are in denial, but the majority is profoundly depressed by what's happening.
A personal datapoint: My wife hated everything Ukrainian for all her life, way before the war and even before the Crimea events. She has hardwired, biological, instinctual nationalism on a level that would be more appropriate for a football ultra. However, she's been genuinely horrified and gravely depressed since the first day of the war.
On the contrary, when Puting announced the recognition of two Donbass republics as independent countries a few days before the war, there was a round of cheer and optimism -- because that would mean that the cross-border shellings in Donbass will finally stop. But that cheer has completely evaporated the morning the invasion started.
(Take this with a grain of salt -- this is based on my personal observations of my relatively narrow social circle, plus I may be projecting).
Yes, I'd be able to live quite well with the cheaper ruble, but that requires being able to retain the foreign revenue flow into Russia and being able to convert the dollar to ruble at a decent rate. There's still a lot of uncertainty about both of these.
As for why am I staying... well, that's a big, big question. I won't feel at home abroad. Yes, I've been to multiple countries in Europe, and I'd be perfectly fine on an everyday level, but I won't be at home. And I'm not exactly young either.
It is sad that the Russian World is really small, compared to the Angloshere, and it's dominated by Putin's Russia. We Russians don't really have another place to run to... Yes we can smuggle ourselves to Europe, but we'll spend decades on getting the citizenship, diligently working boring CRUD jobs, wasting our potential until we're old...
Absolutely, older Russians ("The TV people" as we call them here) did support Putin before the war. However, I haven't yet formed my opinion about what they think now. Remember, they've been raised during the Soviet era, when Ukraine was considered one of the brother nations to Russia, who fought together with us against Hitler. And now we're bombing their cities -- we're the Hitler now.
Maybe they'll go into denial ("NATO hates us and forced us to do it"). Maybe. Also, their life quality will severely degrade in the coming months -- they'll have to spend much more money on food and medicine; and that would also be a factor.
- Sanctions with economic goals have been demonstrated to work fairly well.
- Sanctions alone with political goals are only demonstrated to work in a minority of studied cases. Sanctions combined with military action tend to perform better, but then you end up with problems teasing out causal effects.
- Sanctions can be mitigated by whipping up nationalistic fervor, substitution via other avenues, and shifting the burden to disenfranchised groups.
- The current research on this is crap quality.
The breadth and scale of the current sanctions against Russia (far bigger and more comprehensive than any in history) will make substitution harder. As well, Russia is engaged in a very expensive war that is quickly depleting her coffers due to wastage, poor training, bad coordination, and low morale. With scores of Western countries actively supplying billions in arms to Ukraine, that does not bode well.
Also, Chinese support of Russia has cooled after this embarassing fiasco. China is more interested in not getting Russian dirt on them atm, since they have a housing and building crisis to manage, as well as a half-finished cultural revolution and self-sufficiency push that makes them more vulnerable for the moment. Now is not a good time for this shit.
I have always gotten the feeling that China collectively recognizes a paper tiger when they are politically engaged with one. My big lesson here is, Russians drank the domestic kool-aid, up to and including Putin.
Pape says the data (HSE database) is flawed and that the logic of sanctions is flawed. We've never properly evaluated their impact. And we cannot separate their effect from military actions which almost always occur simultaneously.
He says that sanctions fail because there is rarely coherent international cooperation - actually that seems to be different in the present Ukraine crisis.
Also that nationalism drives sanctioned countries closer together into a more dogged position. Possibly that's true in Russia.
48 pages of academic prose is too much for a Sunday morning, so my take-away is light - it's not that economic sanctions are ineffective but that we have no real understanding of how effective they are, and if so why.
And that is just an official UN vote, what actually happens in cynical practice will look even more opportunistic.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_Nations_General_As...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:International_reactions_t...
Russia is in a bad way financially, and I'm not sure what their "peace with honor" exit strategy is.
Russia is obscenely rich in oil, gas, and almost every commodity. Russia is USD poor, gold reserve rich (even with the West stealing some of it), and long literally every input material that the West will need for the massive infrastructure projects it claims to want for ESG purposes.
Give it six months and when massive famines tear through most of the Third World (a term that is suddenly applicable in its Cold War era meaning), Russia will not have food security issues. Gas will be obscene expensive in Europe, but cheap in Russia. All these benefits will be extended to countries that chose to continue to trade with Russia. Want food security? Here is some Russian wheat available at a reasonable price . . . or you can import some very expensive American one.
To put it simply, Russia's "peace and honor" strategy is to run the timer. Let the West's self-destructive sanctions work. Destroying yourself economically over Ukraine is the definition of a luxury belief, and most of the world has no room for luxury beliefs. Whether their wheat is coming from a corrupt Ukrainian government or a corrupt Russian government makes no difference as long as it comes.
The sanctions are much harder than anyone predicted and with a country that is, unlike North Korea, tightly integrated in supply chains through the world, they are hitting Russia hard. Now, Putin may not care about that and he obviously has no problem with letting people suffer so the war might continue for a few weeks but I doubt that we will see it lasting years, simply because I think they will not have the resources.
That's an unfalsifiable statement, but let's not forget that this is exactly what Biden had been saying for weeks before the war broke out... if Russia didn't know this was coming is only because they chose to believe Biden was just kidding, which I personally find silly to believe.
Look at past wars Russia was involved in and you'll see a clear pattern. When things get tough, they first try to split the enemy internally so that it gets help from inside (which is probably what Putin expected would happen eventually, but so far has not happened except in the separatist regions in the East)... and if that fails, they bring in the big guns and wipe the enemy off the map, quite literally. See Grozny and more recently, their Syrian campaign. If anyone thinks Russians will leave Ukraine humiliated after they run out of cash, they are dreaming.
But the bigger point: while we wait and expect Putin to somehow fail (economically, militarily, or both), Ukrainians are dying.
Edit: when I write "wait", I mean "wait while the economic sanctions have a big enough impact". I'm not suggesting that nothing is being done neither that we should (or should not) engage militarily.
As a European, I see Biden as less involved than his EU counterparts. Especially Macron and Scholz, at the moment.
But I'd accept there could be a bias here :D
One thing I never understood is what "face-saving" means in this context. Could somebody try to explain that?
Edit: to explain the question -- to me as a political and military layman in central Europe, it seems that the most face-saving move is to return to Russia and stop the war. Anything else would be worse. So either the key point is that I'm not the audience of such a move (who then? My guess is Russian politicians, military, or civilians), or I'm seriously getting wrong how one's moves are interpreted on the geopolitical stage.
If he retreats without enough of a “win”, he is done - hence backed into a corner.
As recently as March 12th, Putin showed unwillingness to end the war. This means that either:
A. He lives in an alternative reality.
B. He is bluffing.
C. Economic sanctions don't affect the war machine as much as we hoped for.
Putin is trying to stave off inflation by keeping the markets closed and blocking capital flight, but that only gives a little bit of breathing room. Stores are running out of their pre-shock stock, and once that happens everything goes crazy.
This happened because Putin trusted his FSP reports too much, underestimating just how badly they were lying to appease their superiors (you get forced to redo reports until they show at least a minimum of optimism). Putin knows they're lies from his own time there, but somehow he still vastly underestimated. Reports of 10,000 missiles turned out to actually be 1/10 of that. Fighting force readiness was grossly exaggerated. SVR also exaggerated Ukrainian desires - he actually thought that he'd be welcomed, and that any resistance would be from agents provocateurs and splinter groups (thus his 1-day estimate to complete the takeover of Ukraine).
Now he's stuck, and angry, arresting members of his intelligence service and sacking military commanders when he has none to spare. This is not how the cold, calculating Putin we've all known behaves.
He's rolling the dice again and again, upping the stakes and hoping for the big payoff. I suppose that's understandable since it's now his neck at stake.
We do know, however, that he's not insane. He's avoided attacking NATO countries or weapons convoys, and is instead going for intimidation (like with the rocket attack 15km from the Polish border) and sieges (attacking and mining humanitarian corridors).
But he's been bluffing so much now that it's lost its effectiveness. The West knows they've got him, that his military is a shambles, that no one will help him, that the oligarchs are scared, and that he's spending the country into oblivion. All they have to do is wait. The Ukrainians will fight to the death, so there's no real danger of Russia actually taking Ukraine - just provide enough weaponry and they'll hold out for as long as it takes.
Russian intelligence predicts that the war can only be sustained until June. I personally believe this to be laughably optimistic.
I want to say that this is not a disease unique to dictatorships. The US military has been known to do this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
Like, in the current scenario, it might not be very well known what the truth is, so by enforcing sanctions it gets brought into the public eye - and even if you still believe what the government says, it must at least make you stop and wonder /why/ the rest of the world has suddenly stopped doing business with your country.
At the very least it causes dissent in the populace, which is a very powerful tool
Sanctions are a nonmilitary response to a military action. What is the alternative way for the world to respond to the invasion of Ukraine?
The first goal of sanctions is to diminish the capability of the Russian economy to sustain a military invasion.
The second goal is to be a chip at the negotiation table. Releasing sanctions can traded for a withdrawal, creating an incentive to end the invasion.
It's fairly obvious that if Russia were nonnuclear, this would have largely been over weeks ago, with the Russian military obliterated. Russia had its military piled up in one spot, has been engaging in unacceptable aggression, to the point of there being legitimate widespread war crimes, and there's a clear legitimate security threat to Europe.
In any other case, NATO would have responded harshly and proactively and obliterated the Russian military almost completely.
But they feel they can't due to nuclear risk, rightly or wrongly. So there's this huge dissonance, of something clearly morally disgusting, and a security threat, and something they're more than capable of addressing, but can't due to nuclear threat.
This is really different from most sanctions in recent history, where the sanctions have been over something more distal, further away, maybe less morally repugnant, and/or not such a clear security risk to the NATO region, and/or where military action would be less justified or decisive.
Kasparov has raised some important points in all of this, which is if the concern is really MAD, why would any military action by Russia against any other country, including a NATO country, be responded to differently by NATO?
I think this, in turn, raises another function of sanctions which maybe hasn't been discussed yet, which is deterrence. Maybe the sanctions aren't enough to get Russia out of Ukraine, maybe they're not enough to remove Putin from power, but maybe they'd be enough to keep him from thinking about invading Finland or Estonia while his military is slowly being ground to dust in Ukraine, the spectre of conflict with Japan has been reignited, etc etc etc.
For what it's worth, the West (and world) needs to make this more than about Russia. There has to be a way to respond to human rights and fundamental security violations without being hamstrung by the threat of loss of humankind.
Now it is told to any other countries that if you plan to go with aggression to threaten the core interests of the west, better be prepared to the consequences of a complete cut from Western economy as whole.
That is a pretty good example that Russia is setting.
And it will have long lasting effect.
Can you see how that can't be very good for the West? Being seen as a bully who will force its way on others will just cause everyone else to stay the hell away from you if they can help it (admitedly, most can't help it - but China is already a viable alternative to parts of the world, and will just continue to grow its influence and it may seem like a more attractive partner who, at least so far, never tries to impose its ideology on anyone else).
Russia starts the war. They are the textbook bullies who forced their way on others, and worse through violence. In this case, the West are given a cause to act extreme.
China will have alternatives of its own anyway, regardless. Other countries can choose hedge the risk of too integrated with the Western economy, but do they really trust China that much? It is indeed a question to be answered.
Russia is being a bully, not doubt... but what doubt is there that the West is responding by using textbook bully tactics as a response? If your point is that, at least the West is not using violence, then I totally agree. It's much less problematic to be an economic bully than a violent one.
Because US foreign policy forced them too.
What is happening now is rather easy to see. The US is claiming that these are designed to hinder Russian oligarchs in the long term. They're not designed to take effect in months or years.
The problem with that is the Russian people will be impacted immediately and as unemployment and poverty grows, the Russian people will be more dependent on the government for everything much more so than they already are. This just gives them a very large population (145 million) on their side with not much to lose... which will put Europe in immense danger... which means good business for the American weapons industry, the puppetmasters of Biden.
Things must be grim indeed if Kazakhstan looks like a step up from staying in Russia.
And sanction will work -- the reason the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc collapsed is economic. People seem to forget that e.g what made workers go on a country-wide strike in the 80s Poland and eventually led to the downfall of communism in that country was not the notorious lack of freedom and media censorship but empty wallets.
The situation here may be similar and the process can be long, possibly decades. I think what makes the situation worse for Russians is the fact that economic ties with the West are so much stronger compared to the 1950s. The Russian middle-class from big cities will be hit the hardest -- losing their good paying IT and finance jobs and facing a huge downgrade in the quality of life or facing emigration. It's true that the sanctions will have less effect on blue-collars or people from smaller town and villages, likely the main source of support for Putin and also the main audience for the state propaganda. But, I'd argue that the middle-class city dwellers are more influential and less prone to the propaganda.
Oligarchs are another group key to influencing Russian politics and that's harder to reason about. On one hand losing one's yachts and houses on Cote d'Azur is a blow to the status. On the other hand their wealth comes from exploiting commodities and sanctions are unlikely to target that. On the contrary: in the short term the current situation is likely to be beneficial.
If there's a silver lining for the EU, it might be accelerating the process of Green transformation. Even if the war ends tomorrow, I can't see there being any support for retaining existing level of dependence on Russian oil and gas. That ship has sailed. Countries that will remain dependent on Russian fossil fuels, e.g Hungary, have visibly strong autocratic tendencies and will be increasingly ostracised in the EU, possibly eventually leaving it.
What helps much, much more than sanctions: unmanned aircraft units, Bayraktars. Turkey (a NATO country) helped Ukraine, and I wonder why other countries can not send (without the soldiers) some unmanned aircraft units or F35? They create a really HUGE effect.
If you are reading this and you are a citizen of some western country, please consider asking your representatives, if they can start a discussion about sending such help to Ukraine.