Economic sanctions against Russia: How effective? How durable?

Jeffrey Schott

No PB23-3, Policy Briefs from Peterson Institute for International Economics

Abstract: Economic sanctions by Western democracies against Russia have not stopped the war and attacks on Ukrainian civilians. Together with continued economic and military support for Ukraine, however, sanctions are blocking Russian president Vladimir Putin from achieving his territorial objectives. Sanctions have contributed to a sharp compression of Russian imports; forced Russia's military and industry to source from more costly and inefficient suppliers at home and abroad; and slowly begun to squeeze Russian government finances. The G7 countries must sustain and augment their efforts, including by confiscating frozen reserves of the Central Bank of Russia to help fund Ukraine's reconstruction. G7 policymakers need to derive lessons from the current crisis about the utility of sanctions in conflicts between major powers. Maintaining coherent and coordinated sanctions against large and powerful target countries is critical for the effectiveness and durability of the policy. Deploying sanctions against such rivals also requires a long-term commitment to the implementation and enforcement of the trade and finance restrictions. Sanctions impose costs on both the target country and those imposing the sanctions, so Western policymakers need to offset those costs via domestic support or tax relief to sustain political support over time for sanctions in big power conflicts.

Date: 2023-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-int and nep-tra
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.piie.com/publications/policy-briefs/ec ... ffective-how-durable (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iie:pbrief:pb23-3

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Briefs from Peterson Institute for International Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peterson Institute webmaster ().