Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
Excellent piece consolidating flaws in economic sanctions strategy, which has always been "under-theorized."
https://scholars-stage.org/of-sancti...tegic-bombers/

Sanctions are like strategic bombing, in that they often seem to be conceived and applied as a way to pressure "the masses" to turn on their elites and thus bring change to governmental policy undesirable to the sanctioning agent.




But regardless of how thoroughly or fatuously our governmental actors theorize it, sanctions aren't merely a tool against Russia's invasion - they must comprehensively degrade Russia's state capacity, which 'surgical' sanctions against the military-security complex can not accomplish even if they could be invented. We should hesitate to dismantle the adversarial sanctions regime before the Russian state renounces imperialism. And that's just not a promise a Putinist government could deliver credibly even if brought to those terms. If Cuba and Iran are the classic cases for sanctions relief, there's really no country that Russia in its present form could benefit ahead of, not even North Korea.
We should aim to take things back to the Cold War, diplomatically and economically. It'll hurt us, but it'll hurt Russia a hell of a lot more. Make it the new norm until Russia can persuade us otherwise.