The Feel-Good Purpose of Sanctions

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post asking: “Can Even More Sanctions Beat Russia?”  My answer was no.  More evidence to support this view came last week in both the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. 

The FT had two articles.  One was about a Russian spy network that is buying machine tools and microchips Russia needs to maintain its military-industrial complex.¹  While people from Washington are traveling to western Europe to talk about tightening enforcement of sanctions, the point is the Russians are still able to get around them.

Both the FT² and the Journal³ wrote about shipping companies that are now carrying Russian oil exports.  The FT article was about how Gatik, an Indian company, “has become one of the world’s largest tanker owners in little more than a year, shipping crude [oil] to India for Rosneft.”²  The Journal wrote about a Greek shipping tycoon who is shipping Russian oil when other companies won’t.  The Greek company claims it is strictly following the rules, shipping only oil that has sold below the $60 price cap on Russian oil.  They may be true, but the point is Russian oil is still being exported and Putin is still getting the money he needs to continue the war against Ukraine.⁴

Which is point about sanctions.  They’re easy to impose.  But they don’t accomplish what they proponents say they will do.  There are almost always loopholes.  There are always ways to evade them and people willing to do so.  They seldom accomplish much, other than to make the country imposing them feel good about itself.  Which all too often seems that like the main purpose of them.
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¹ Miles Johnson, Max Seddon, and Chris Cook, “Russian spy network evades sanctions to smuggle sensitive EU technology,” Financial Times, May 4, 2023.
² Tom Wilson, Chris Cook, Chloe Cornish, and Anastasia Stognei, “Mystery Mumbai company emerges as big transporter of oil from sanctions-hit Russia,” Financial Times, May 5, 2023.
³ Joe Wallace and Costas Paris, “Ship Tycoon Scores With Russian Oil,” The Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2023.
⁴ It is very important to understand that, while the United States helped organize sanctions on exports of Russian oil, the U.S. actually wants Russian oil to still be exported – to keep the price down.  While U.S. sanctions against Russia have increased food prices around the world, especially in the sol-called Global South, the U.S. doesn’t want to do anything that would cause American gasoline prices to increase.  It’s easy for American policymakers to demand that other countries do things that impose costs on their citizens.  Doing things that might increase the price of gasoline on American citizens is a different story.