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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
[+] [-] kstenerud|4 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] nonrandomstring|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] david_draco|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trutic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Simon_O_Rourke|4 years ago|reply
Russia is in a bad way financially, and I'm not sure what their "peace with honor" exit strategy is.
[+] [-] anticristi|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] xcambar|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] darawk|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] IncRnd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KVFinn|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] derbOac|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] karmasimida|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] brabel|4 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] jdrc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnny22|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avereveard|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mercy_dude|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bennyp101|4 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bitcharmer|4 years ago|reply
We (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.
[+] [-] int_19h|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blihp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mongol|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] indemnity|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] laichzeit0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] int_19h|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tootahe45|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeplusplus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mannerheim|4 years ago|reply
Things must be grim indeed if Kazakhstan looks like a step up from staying in Russia.
[+] [-] EugeneOZ|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] IMSAI8080|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skoczko|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] shmerl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barry-cotter|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoPie|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] MrDisposable|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] manojlds|4 years ago|reply
How do you know this?
[+] [-] xiaodai|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ComradePhil|4 years ago|reply
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.