What Sanctions Can and Cannot Do
Two opposite illusions have grown up around the sanctions imposed on Russia, and the strange thing is that the same people often hold both at once. The first illusion is that sanctions are useless theatre — a way for Western governments to look busy, a press release that hurts no one, a gesture that the Kremlin shrugs off while the oil keeps flowing and the missiles keep falling. The second illusion is the mirror image: that sanctions are a kind of secret weapon, that if only they were tightened enough they would strangle the dictatorship into collapse, turn the population against the war, and bring peace without anyone having to fight for it. Both of these are wrong, and they are wrong in instructive ways. The truth lies in the uncomfortable middle, where most true things live. Sanctions cannot end this war by themselves. But they are very far from nothing. Understanding exactly what they can and cannot do is not an academic exercise; it is the difference between spending Western leverage where it bites and squandering it on fantasies. ...