Prematurely sanctioning Russia will accomplish nothing
By Daniel W. Drezner, Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University
Within the foreign policy community, the technical term to describe this situation is “not good.” The crisis and uncertainty have overshadowed the fact that Ukraine’s only provocation to Russia is that it exists as an independent country.
The question is how to respond to a Russian strategy of continually ratcheting up military pressure on a sovereign nation that Russian President Vladimir Putin does not think is a real country. The principal deterrent threat that NATO members have wielded has been the threat of economic sanctions.
Last week Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky talked to my Washington Post colleague Lally Weymouth and suggested that rather than keep the sanctions at the threat stage, they should be implemented now: “if we are talking about the sanctions policy and the probability of escalation, then the question is, why are you not introducing sanctions now rather than wait until after the escalation?”
Writing from Kyiv, my other Post colleague David Ignatius relayed a similar suggestion from regional experts: The “United States and its allies must check the balance of intimidation — by taking action themselves rather than responding to Moscow. Impose severe sanctions on Russia now, rather than after it has rolled into Ukraine.” On Twitter, this idea was enthusiastically embraced by my third Post colleague Josh Rogin.
I may be just a small-town international relations professor who has written a few things about economic sanctions and coercive bargaining and lived in Donetsk for a stretch, but I confess to finding some problems with this line of reasoning.
For sanctions to work, there have to be two credible commitments. The first is that sanctions will be imposed if the targeted actor does something. If the target thinks the sanctioner is bluffing, there is not much of a deterrent threat. The second is that the sanctions will be lifted/not imposed if the targeted actor reverses course. If the target thinks the sanctioner will impose and maintain sanctions no matter what, then they will view bargaining as a pointless endeavor; nothing they could do would alter the sanctioner’s behavior.
Prematurely sanctioning bolsters the first credible commitment but sabotages the second credible commitment (a problem that has bedeviled recent U.S. sanctions). This would exacerbate the problem that Dmytro Razumkov, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, told Ignatius: “What I am concerned about is that Russia is putting itself in such a position that it can’t step back.” That concern seems valid; Western analysts have also noted that, as per usual, Putin has negotiated his way into a corner. Preemptively imposing sanctions simply offers up additional pretext for Putin to strike Ukraine.
If the Biden administration wants to rely only on economic statecraft as its means of deterrence, then the solution is not to impose sanctions now, but ratchet up the cost of the threatened sanctions. In Politico, Edward Fishman and my Fletcher colleague Chris Miller suggest the most powerful sanctions imaginable: “bending Russia’s macroeconomic fortunes — and Putin’s calculus — will require targeting the country’s financial system as well as key exports such as oil. Such sanctions would have significant effects on Russia’s economy and perhaps on the global financial system but for them to impose significant costs on Russia, they would be pretty costly to the sanctioners as well.”
These proposed sanctions would exact costs on the global economy as well as Russia. Even then, I am not sure they would work. This debate presumes sanctions alone can deter a great power from using force in its own backyard. The history of economic statecraft suggests that assumption to be badly in error. In 1940, the United States imposed a punishing embargo on Japan in response to that country’s aggression in the Pacific Rim. The sanctions did affect Japan’s economy, to the point where they decided the best option was a preemptive strike on Pearl Harbor. U.S. sanctions against Russia in 2014 have clearly not deterred Russia from further aggression in its near abroad.
To put it more simply: The United States has imposed more punishing sanctions on Iran after 2018 than anything being contemplated toward Russia in the present moment. Everyone now acknowledges that the sanctions on Iran have failed. Why should anyone expect sanctions to stop Russia — a state that has amassed far greater reserves and capacity for resistance — from pursuing what it believes to be its core interest?
Imposing sanctions now accomplishes little but to give Russia a pretext for further escalation. To the extent that sanctions shore up deterrence, better not to use them until Russia has actually invaded.
Deterrence will require steps that go beyond economic sanctions. What those steps would be is a topic for Tuesday’s column.
This piece was re-published from The Washington Post.