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There’s evidence that sanctions have worked to secure U.S. foreign policy interests in the past, but experts are underwhelmed by the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
President Biden has ruled out a no-fly zone in Ukrainian airspace and vowed that there would be no military confrontation between U.S. and Russian troops outside of NATO soil while incrementally increasing sanctions against the Kremlin’s interests over the past two and a half weeks.
“The totality of our sanctions is crushing the Russian economy,” the president tweeted Friday. “The ruble has lost more than half its value.”
President Biden waves as he boards Air Force One for travel to Philadelphia from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, March 11, 2022.
(REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
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But Russian troops haven’t backed out of Ukraine.
Rich Goldberg, an advisory board member at the Vandenberg Coalition and former director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction for the White House National Security Council, said the incremental approach hasn’t deterred Putin but has “scared the h— out of the market” instead.
“We have driven up the price of oil with half measures that have not achieved our objectives,” he told Fox News Digital. “Sanctions need to be tailored for the appropriate situation to have the desired impact, achieve a certain outcome. Not all sanctions are alike. Not all sanctions are created equal, and not all situations merit the same type of sanctions response.”
That means that the right sanctions applied to the right circumstances can lead to concrete results, he said.
“An example would be the Trump administration issuing sanctions against senior Turkish officials, which tanked the lira and forced Turkey to release Pastor [Andrew] Brunson,” Goldberg said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council via a video link at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, March 11, 2022.
(Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS)
Brunson, an American, had been living in Turkey for decades when he was arrested on politically motivated “terrorism” charges, prompting the U.S. to demand his release and place sanctions and tariffs on Turkish officials and goods.
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In order to combat Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Goldberg said, the U.S. would need to dramatically step up its sanction game, cutting off all Russian banks — not just some — from the international SWIFT transfer system.
A decade ago, he said, the world oil market was able to stabilize despite a “maximum pressure campaign” of sanctions on Iran. Buyers could still purchase Iranian oil, but the payments were held in escrow rather than being sent back to Tehran. Meanwhile, U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia increased production.
“If you wanted to try to design sanctions that would have maximum impact on Putin today and Russia today and over the long term, while trying to minimize the boomerang effect on the U.S. economy or on our allies in other parts of the planet, you could apply the same model to Russia,” he said.
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However, President Biden has both failed to impose such sanctions and struggled to shore up similar support from allies in the Persian Gulf this time around, in part because before the invasion of Ukraine, Biden had been cold toward them.
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“The Biden administration came into office basically declaring a state of ‘cold war’ against Saudi Arabia and putting maximum distance between the White House and the Royal Court in Riyadh,” Goldberg said. “This was driven partly by domestic politics inside the Democratic Party that wanted to shun Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, and a strong Iran lobby in Washington.”
One issue there was the prince’s alleged role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi who lived in the U.S. He was killed in Turkey in 2018. The Biden administration said last year that bin Salman had approved plans to “capture or kill him.”
The U.S.-Saudi relationship was shored up during World War II under the understanding that the U.S. would offer security guarantees in exchange for oil production help, Goldberg said.
“That played an important role at the end of World War II, that played a crucial role in the Reagan victory strategy to bring down the Soviet Union, and it played a vital role in our sanctions policies over the last decade against Iran,” he said.
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Now without help from oil-producing allies, little interest from Democrats in increasing U.S. energy production and “half measure” sanctions against Russia, the Kremlin has stepped up violence in Ukraine, allegedly killing civilians and bombing hospitals while troops encircle the capital city, Kyiv.
Clint Ehrlich, a foreign policy analyst and Russia expert, said the sanctions currently imposed on Russia have actually served to boost Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s popularity at home while prompting his citizens to “rally around the flag.”
“People who are hit by sanctions know where those sanctions are coming from,” Ehrlich told Fox News Digital. “It’s not a mystery for them why their economies are suffering, and they don’t place the blame on their governments for the policies that led to the sanctions. They place their blame on the countries that are administering the sanctions.”
And that means more support for the invasion of Ukraine, at least for now, he said.
“Especially after 2014, when we put Russia on notice that It needed to prepare to become self-sufficient,” Ehrlich added.
That’s when Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea region, which it has occupied ever since. Since then, he said, Putin’s government has dramatically increased Russia’s agricultural production.
“That’s the most important thing from the perspective of sanctions,” Ehrlich said. “Consumer electronics, brands, people can do without.”
The capacity to produce food, however, puts Russia on strong footing, he said.
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Sanctions have worked in past situations, he agreed, but they haven’t halted the violence in Ukraine.
“Sanctions were effective against South Africa to end apartheid,” he said. “That’s the classic example.”
However, South Africa wasn’t an aspiring superpower and had far fewer resources, he said.
Russia is a massive supplier of global energy, including to some of Europe’s wealthiest economies.
A green-minded, anti-nuclear government like Germany’s backing away from its energy deals with Russia would be like “if the GOP had to suddenly become pro-Obamacare,” Ehrlich said.
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However, he added, the fighting in Ukraine has led to Russia putting some demands on the table that could be the basis for a realistic end to the violence.
Those include backing away from Ukraine’s ambitions to join the Western NATO alliance, legitimizing Russia’s control over Crimea, and granting autonomy to pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, along the countries’ shared border.
