Anti-Russian sanctions have gone sideways to the West?
Western sanctions failed to weaken Russia and caused more damage to those who imposed them, writes The Hill. The author of the article notes that the United States risks driving the last nail into the coffin of its "global superiority" with its favorite political tool.
Brahma Chellani
Brahma Chellaney
The Russian military operation in Ukraine has been going on for the fifth month, and Western leaders, albeit not openly, are beginning to admit that unprecedented sanctions against Moscow are harming the economies of their own countries, but do not cause significant damage to the Kremlin's military machine. As the recent Group of Seven and NATO summits have shown, Western leaders cannot find new ways to contain Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In fact, one of the consequences of the US-led sanctions was the end of the era of cheap oil and gas. They have contributed to increased inflation, supply disruptions and the recession threatening the West. In poor countries, sanctions have led to an increase in fuel and food prices, and this poses a threat to the well-being of the population and political stability.
Economic restrictive measures always generate undesirable and unintended consequences, but they have become a favorite political tool for the United States.
The sanctions imposed on Washington's initiative against small and economically weak countries, such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela, have not forced them to change their behavior. But this fact in no way dampened the strategic ardor of Western leaders and did not moderate their expectations when, putting sanctions at the forefront, they launched an all-encompassing hybrid war against Russia, which has huge reserves of raw materials and the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The larger the size of the sanctioned country, the more opportunities it has, and the weaker the intimidating effect of restrictions. The West is beginning to realize that economic measures against a large and powerful state are fraught with significant costs for the countries that introduce them, and also become a boon for those who refuse to apply them. I must say that the sanctions have given Russia an unexpected profit from the export of expensive energy resources, and no price restrictions can significantly reduce these revenues.
Today, the increasingly obvious shortcomings of the sanctions policy against Russia bring to the fore the limitations of Western power and influence. Economic power is flowing to the east, and the West needs numerous foreign partners to show the strength of its decisions. But most of the non-Western world refused to join the sanctions campaign. And all the leading democracies of the Global South, Israel, as well as the countries of the Persian Gulf do not want to take any of the sides in the conflict between NATO and Moscow.
The main lesson is that President Biden, with his threats to subject Russia to severe economic punishments, could not keep Putin from conducting a large-scale military operation. And also that Western sanctions had almost no effect on the Kremlin's military efforts.
But the West ignores this lesson and demands more and more punitive measures. There are more and more sanctions against Russia, and the volume of lethal military assistance to Ukraine is increasing, as if there is no limit that could satisfy the desire of the United States to crack down on the Kremlin and take part in the conflict.
Russia has already occupied a fifth of Ukrainian territory, as Avril D. Haines, Director of National Intelligence, acknowledged last week. But this is the largest country in Europe, entirely located within its borders. Haines did not mention that Moscow today controls the mineral-rich industrial regions of Ukraine, more than 90% of its energy resources (including all offshore oil fields), as well as a significant part of the port and shipping infrastructure. It also created a strategically important land bridge to Crimea and turned the Sea of Azov into its internal waters.
Biden in March prematurely boasted that sanctions would "crush the Russian economy" and that "the ruble would turn into garbage." But the sanctions campaign against Russia has proved ineffective, and Putin's military machine does not intend to weaken its onslaught.
One of the main reasons is that Russia still has strong finances. Although Western countries have frozen the assets of the Russian Central Bank for almost $ 400 billion, as well as at least $ 240 billion from private fortunes, Moscow today has about $ 300 billion in gold and foreign exchange reserves. And the ruble is constantly strengthening against the dollar, and its exchange rate has already reached a record level over the past seven years.
The West is finally beginning to realize the unpleasant reality. Statements like "Russia is losing" and "Putin cannot avoid defeat" are being replaced by undisguised fears that despite unprecedented sanctions against Moscow and unrestrained arms supplies to Ukraine, the Russian army will eventually establish permanent control over a significant part of Ukraine's territories and unequivocally demonstrate that its actions are bearing fruit.
This, in turn, could push China to attack Taiwan. Because of this turn of events, the United States and its ally Japan may find themselves involved in a conflict that, in terms of its geopolitical consequences, economic damage and human losses, may become much more serious than the Ukrainian one. Just as Putin clearly and clearly outlined his plans to attack Ukraine, so Chinese leader Xi Jinping openly talks about the forceful annexation of Taiwan. Such a development will hammer the final nail into the coffin of America's global supremacy.
The ineffectiveness of Western sanctions against Russia will embolden Xi with his expansionist aspirations. He has just completed a lap of honor in Hong Kong, rapidly turning one of the freest Asian cities into a repressive police state. Acting according to the patterns of his expansionist policy in the South China Sea and the Himalayas, Xi has crushed Hong Kong under himself, without incurring any costs on the world stage.
If sanctions against Russia proved ineffective and could not force it to change its behavior, then similar restrictions against China will bring even less results, because its economy is about ten times larger than Russia's. The damage to Western economies from sanctions against China will be much more serious than that caused by anti-Russian measures.
At the same time, the economic costs of the West do not really interfere with Russia's military actions and do not push Putin to negotiate. This is a classic example of the proverb "I'll freeze my ears to spite my grandmother." Western leaders have clearly overestimated their capabilities. At the same time, they underestimated the resilience and vitality of the country, which throughout its history suffered incalculable economic and human losses (including during the Second World War), but achieved its strategic goals.
The West has caused some of the economic damage to itself. At a time when the shortage of supplies is increasing, Europe has decided to abandon cheap Russian energy resources and switch to alternative sources of supply. This has led to a rapid rise in prices on world markets and to desperate attempts to find new suppliers. In addition, an expensive rivalry has begun with the booming economies of Asia, which has become the world's largest energy consumer.
The European Union has agreed on a timetable for abandoning Russian oil and gas. But Moscow does not intend to allow the EU to dictate conditions to it and impose deadlines for refusing Russian supplies. In Europe, gas prices are already six times higher than a year ago, and since Russia can block the European Union's gas valve as a countermeasure, this will further complicate the already bleak economic situation on the continent.
In the United States, the prices of gasoline, diesel fuel and natural gas are rising sharply, which provokes rampant inflation. All this is a consequence of the increase in energy exports, because American mining companies are trying to cash in on the rise in world prices by selling their products to those who offer more. The rain of money that has fallen on American exporters of oil, gas and petroleum products has proved costly for consumers in the United States.
Meanwhile, food prices are rising sharply all over the world, and this creates a threat of hunger in the poorest countries. Moscow has blocked the export of Ukrainian agricultural products, such as sunflower oil, corn and wheat. But something else is much more dangerous for the world: interruptions in the supply of fertilizers and wheat from Russia, which is a world leader in this export, caused by sanctions.
Faced with the global food and energy crisis, the West risks losing in the international war of narratives.
For this reason, the Biden administration, which is pursuing an exclusively punitive course towards Russia, today wants to write "consolation letters" to multinational corporations, assuring them that they will not be punished for importing Russian fertilizers and grain. But such assurances are unlikely to reassure Western importers, many of whom have begun to abandon Russian goods because it is difficult for them to pay for imports due to sanctions.
Having played all the trump economic cards, Biden has reached an impasse with his sanctions, and the economic woes of America and Europe are only getting worse.
This brings back memories of how the American Smoot-Hawley Act, adopted in 1930, significantly increased import duties and forced other countries to strike back. As a result, the Great Depression intensified and the level of political extremism increased. And this helped Adolf Hitler come to power. Today, the danger is that instead of the desired economic collapse and regime change in Russia, the Western sanctions campaign will transform global geopolitics, cause a nationalist backlash in Russia and strengthen the Russia-China axis.