Sanctions don’t work, so why does the United States continue to use them?
Last August, the Trump Administration kicked off a new round of sanctions against Russia aimed at curtailing Russia’s access to international financing, especially loans issued by American banks. This latest round of sanctions came as a surprise to most Russia-watchers considering the fact that Russia, at least ostensibly, hasn’t done anything of recent to incur the wrath of new sanctions. The justification for the new sanctions was puzzling for at least two reasons.
First, the State Department announced it was sanctioning Russia “for its use of a “novichok” nerve agent in an attempt to assassinate Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal.” The only thing is that the United States has already purportedly “punished” Russia for its alleged involvement in the Skripal saga, when it expelled 60 Russian diplomats and closed the Russian consulate in San Francisco back in 2018. Given the fact that there haven’t been any new developments and Russia hasn’t done anything lately to warrant new sanctions — it looks like the Trump administration is sanctioning Russia because it can, not because there are legitimate reasons to do so.
What’s perhaps the most puzzling is the United States’ insistence on sanctions as its preeminent tool of diplomacy despite an abundance of evidence that suggests sanctions aren’t as potent as their proponents believe them to be. In fact, according to research on the efficacy of sanctions, sanctions have about a 4% success rate in achieving their stated purpose. So why does the United States continue to use economic sanctions as a one-size-fits-all approach to all predicaments of foreign policy?
The thing is sanctions have a long history both as a political strategy and as a tool of foreign policy. Sanctions have been a preferred method of political persuasion dating as far back as the early days of the American Republic when Thomas Jefferson signed the Embargo of 1807 — which effectively sanctioned all foreign ships and vessels from harboring in the United States, and in doing so, stuck a thumb in the eye of Great Britain for it’s provocative policy of impressment. Those sanctions, by the way, also failed and were expeditiously repealed by Jefferson in 1809 — but what’s interesting about this point is that a mythology about sanctions has persisted and lived on in spite of failure after failure.
That mythology is based on what seems like sound theoretical thinking. In most cases, the goal of sanctions is regime change. And so the theory is that by inspiring discontent among the broader public, whom sanctions inevitably harm, sanctions themselves can prompt a change in behavior on the part of the government that finds itself sanctioned. It assumes that the public will mobilize its discontent and that the government in power will either respond or be replaced. The theory sounds great on paper, but in reality, sanctions fail to achieve their stated purpose and end up doing more harm than good.
Take for example, a report published by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), which found that American sanctions against Venezuela contributed to more than 40,000 deaths between 2017–2018. Study after study shows that while sanctions may not be effective in achieving desired outcomes like regime change, they are effective in reducing life expectancy, access to medicine, and overall quality of life.
In the case of Russia, a similar saga has unfolded.
In 2012, the United States Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, which was the first round of sanctions levied against Russia. Seen from Russia’s perspective, the Magnitsky Act was in itself, an uncharitable and absurd act of aggression that punished Russia for an internal incident that had no relation to the United States. Although those and later sanctions have failed to effectively rein in Russia — by truncating GDP growth and with it the prospects of much-needed wage growth, those and later sanctions have done more to hurt ordinary Russians than Russia’s political elite and so-called oligarchs.
More importantly, after almost seven years of economic warfare waged against Russia, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the economic pressure is not working. The United States has nothing to show for beyond mildly harassing the Russian economy. There have been no foreign policy victories for the United States on the account of sanctions, nor are such victories closer to being attained. Russia, for its part, has not conceded an inch, the Putin administration has not been defenestrated from power, and there is very little chance that either of those things will happen anytime soon.
So again, why does the United States continue to do what doesn’t work?
The answer is quite simple. As the Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov, put it, “Sanctions are a sign of irritation; they are not the instrument of serious policies.” There is a powerful contingent in the Washington establishment that is genuinely irritated by Russia’s rise and reemergence onto the world stage. That contingent has been particularly infuriated on a number of occasions in which Russia has thwarted plans for the expansion of American influence. Regime change in Syria and Ukraine are among such examples.
The problem is they have no other tools at their disposal. Sanctions have become what you do, when you can’t do anything else. When you can’t invade, organize a coup, or simply coerce a country to do what you want it to do — sanctions become the last resort in this line of zero-sum logic.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Many Americans want to see the United States as striving to be a force for good in the world; but to do that, American leaders have to build bridges and be ready to make reasonable concessions. The tandem of diplomacy and compromise has far more success stories than sanctions ever will. That’s because compromise inspires trust, which is the foundation for partnership. And as we all know, the world needs less enemies, less hostilities, and more partnership.
Hunter Cawood is the founder of the Russian Public Affairs Committee. He holds a Master’s in Management from Saint Petersburg State University (Russia) as well as a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Kennesaw State University.
