Don’t rely solely on sanctions: ways to facilitate regime behavioral change

Yet sanctions remain attractive precisely because they offer governments a means to punish military aggression or human rights violators without going to war. Since 2000, the number of individuals and entities on the US sanctions list has increased more than tenfold to 10,000. About 19 countries, including Belarus, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan and Zimbabwe, face some type of sanctions. As the precision, power and scope of sanctions have improved, so have the means by which they are circumvented.

While sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea may have restricted these states, their elites have successfully rallied against regime change, albeit at the expense of their citizens.

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Circumventing sanctions is made easier by a lack of diplomatic support for the cause behind their imposition, which reflects self-interest.

The Russian war in Ukraine is an example of this. Governments representing about 60% of the world’s population, including India, China, South Africa and much of the Middle East, did not accept the Ukrainian or Western narrative about the 2022 war at the start of the conflict for various reasons.

In response to Russia’s invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, the West imposed an unprecedented series of economic measures against Moscow. By mid-2024, the EU had adopted 14 sanctions packages, targeting more than 2,200 individuals and entities and covering a wide range of sectors, goods and services. The US, in turn, has imposed more than 14,000 sanctions, more than those against Iran, Cuba and North Korea combined, targeting 10,173 individuals, 4,089 entities, 177 ships and 100 aircraft. In total, Russia is subject to more than 14,000 sanctions.

The idea from the start was that Western sanctions would bite slowly but inexorably, turning the conflict into a “battle between the refrigerator and the television,” as one Ukrainian colonel noted at the start of the 2022 phase of the war. Rhetoric may fill the heart, he said, but it rarely fills the stomach.

According to a study published by the joint US-Ukrainian International Working Group on Russian Sanctions, the sanctions have shrunk Russia’s current balance of payments surplus, which is estimated to fall by 60% by 2022/2023. The ruble also devalued, driving up inflation and causing social effects that were exacerbated by the diversion of money from Russia’s National Welfare Fund to the war. Receipts from oil and gas trade – responsible for almost half (about $230 billion) of export revenues in 2021 – are reported to have fallen by around 50% in 2023.

Given the closed books and secrecy of Putin’s state, it may be difficult to determine the true long-term effects of the sanctions regime. To be sure, it has likely made military production and rearmament more expensive and complicated, given the supply of higher-priced components, especially from North Korea, China and Iran.

However, in early 2024, it was estimated that Russian defense spending due to the war in Ukraine represented as much as 40% of the Russian budget, more than the combined expenditure on health and education. By comparison, the US spent 11%, while the NATO average was 4.3%.