Yes, a goal is to punish Putin/Russia for invading Ukraine.
As Biden said when the sanctions were imposed: “Putin’s aggression against Ukraine will end up costing Russia dearly, economically and strategically. We will make sure of that.”
But absent full withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, what conditions need to be met to end their use?
Instead of having clear policy goals, the sanctions seemed to have been deployed so that the international community could be seen as "doing something!"
As Gary Clyde Hufbauer, @KimAElliott, Jeffrey Schott, & Barbara Oegg found in their influential @PIIE study, turning to sanctions without clearly stating why and how isn't unusual.
They wrote: "In many cases, sender countries hastily imposed economic sanctions without adequately analyzing their potential impact, simply to slake the public demand for action against foreign outrages."
That was a key reason why sanctions became popular after WWI.
As @njtmulder argues in his new book, they are an instrument of war "perceived" (that's a key word) as a way to take action without carrying the same risk and cost as actually going to war.
"Perceived" is a key word because threatening sanctions can actually make a situation more tense by leading a target to dig in.
This is partially why @dandrezner aptly labels sanctions use a "paradox": they are used in highly contentious situations, which is where they are most likely to fail.
This is also why @KimAElliott, writing in @IntSecJournal in the 1990s, said that analysts are "are generally far more nuanced in their conclusions and more limited in their expectations of what sanctions can achieve"
The hasty and unclear fashion in which the sanctions against Russia were imposed is just the first reason why I have doubts about the their ability to "work".
A second reason is that I'm skeptical of the ability of "targeted sanctions" to work in this case.
By "targeted", I'm referring to sanctions on Putin and the "oligarchs".
As is evident from this @NPR interview by @MichelMcQMartin with @apmassaro3, actually getting to the oligarch's assets is really tricky and requires a long game. Don't expect immediate results.
The third reason I have doubts about the use of sanctions against Russia is their sustainability: can the international community actually stay committed to imposing these sanctions?
There is no doubt that the sanctions are doing serious economic damage to Russia:
The fourth and final reason that I have doubts about the use of sanctions against Russia is the possibility of that they could actually make the situation worse.
As I discussed in another 🧵, there is the concern that the sanctions could actually backfire by inducing Putin to lash out.
Addendum 3: Underpinning how sanctions success requires the international coalition imposing the sanctions to stay together, @lady_professor in @II_journal wrote how "only concession by the sender causes sanctions to `fail'". tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
Addendum 4: Not only are the sanctions unlikely to lead to a "palace coup" among the oligarchs (see @olga_chyzh's 🧵 above), but, as @TomPepinsky points out in 👇🧵, the general economic crisis in Russia is not going to lead to Putin's ouster either.
Addendum 5: In addition to the potential for the sanctions coalition to collapse, it's important to note that some key players are not participating (h/t @daniel_mcdowell). Sanctions are indeed only as strong as the weakest link.
The House passed a defense supplement for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
Ukraine aid was the most controversial portion of the supplement and might cost Speaker Johnson his leadership position.
Why did he do it?
[THREAD]
As is being reported, Johnson stated “To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys. My son is going to begin in the Naval Academy this fall....This is not a game, this is not a joke.” cnn.com/2024/04/21/pol…
While it's partly personal for Johnson, his remarks emphasize a larger point, one that I raised in a recent @WPReview column: cutting off US aid won't end the war. Instead, it would embolden Russia. worldpoliticsreview.com/us-ukraine-aid…
To mark the event, here are 7 (and a half) historical facts about NATO.
[THREAD]
These facts draw from the #NATO7for70 series of 🧵 I wrote during NATO's 70th anniversary (along with *half* a new one). So this is essentially a 🧵 of🧵s.
Fact 1: NATO almost didn't happen. The negotiations were contentious, with France (yep, France) almost scuttling the whole deal. Lot's of contention over the treaty covering Algeria (then part of France) and including Italy.