The faulty assumptions behind sanctions
As I write this, some first reports of Russian troop withdrawals from Belarus and the Ukrainian border are coming in. Hopefully, as you read this, those reports will have been confirmed and an end to this wearying crisis will be visible. It’s too early to draw all the conclusions, but not too early to start examining the assumptions that might underpin them.
DID THE THREAT OF SANCTIONS WORK?
It’s pretty clear that the ultimate decision on whether to invade Ukraine and upend the entire European order rests with Vladimir Putin, which is an alarming one, because he seems to have gone pretty weird in the last couple of years, and was already quite odd before that. If last summer’s peculiar essay on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians hinted towards this, it was confirmed by the photographs of him sitting 15 feet away from his own ministers at a ludicrously long table as if they’re the only visible members of an otherwise imaginary cabinet.
- “His circle of contacts is getting smaller. It affects his mind,” a former Russian official told the FT. “He used to see things in 360 degrees, now it’s more like 60.”
Quite a lot of the discussion about using sanctions to alter the Kremlin’s behavior assumes that since the (extremely wealthy and very limited) circle around Putin keeps so much of its wealth offshore, it will restrain his wilder instincts in order to avoid provoking sanctions so as to protect that wealth. If he’s not seeing anyone anymore, and is instead getting his information from the internet like a strange uncle somewhere, then does that still hold true?
A second assumption underpinning sanctions is that kleptocrats are vulnerable because they move their money through and keep their assets in Western jurisdictions.