Paul Kennedy
WSJ, Jan. 27, 2022
“History suggests that sanctions simply don’t work if they are “soft” sanctions, a tap on the wrist meant to show disapproval rather than to punish. Sanctions don’t work if there are huge financial or commercial loopholes to the economic cordon that is meant to be being imposed. Sanctions don’t work if another Great Power steps in to supply to, or buy from, a country being chastised—for instance, Chinese supplies to North Korea today, or Russian purchases from Iran).”
Be warned, Vladimir Putin told President Biden after their much-publicized videoconference call of Dec. 7, and do not think of enacting any further sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis, for that would simply backfire. Persuading European states not to participate in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which promises to provide them Russian gas, does not frighten us. But it will hurt some of your allies. NATO declarations of resolve don’t scare us. Financial restrictions upon Russian banks and large businesses will not work. Your economic weapons are to no avail, for we are either resilient enough already or will find ways of getting around them. Don’t you understand, Mr. Putin seemed to be telling the world: Sanctions are a hopeless tool in diplomacy, so why not toss them into the dustbin of History?
—Mr. Kennedy is the Dilworth Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of many books, including the forthcoming “Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II.”
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