I got a column up on our site last night about President Biden’s press conference, focusing on the omissions from what were supposedly going to be the most punitive sanctions in the history of punitive sanctions — in particular, the lack of resolve to cut Russia out of SWIFT (which would make it very difficult for Putin to engage in foreign commerce, especially dollar- and Euro-denominated trade, which is how Russia reaps its prodigious oil and gas revenue), and the failure to sanction Putin himself (notwithstanding that he has become one of the world’s richest men by robbing his country blind).
Going back to basics, the column addresses what sanctions are and what they’re for. This is necessary because, as is always the case with the Biden administration, there is a mismatch — day-to-day, issue-by-issue — on what our government is trying to accomplish and why.
Were we trying to “stave off” and “deter” Putin’s aggression, as the president and vice-president, respectively, put it in recent days? If so, why wait to impose sanctions? Why not impose them and flip the burden to Putin — i.e., cut them back gradually only if Putin climbed down — if we really believed he would do that? Or, to the contrary, were we resigned to his carrying out his aggression against Ukraine, but punishing him for it? In which case — again — why wait to impose sanctions until after he’s carried out plenty of aggression? And if it’s going to take a long time for the sanctions to have real bite, as Biden concedes, what makes us think the overmatched Ukrainians have that kind of time, and doesn’t the pain calculus change once Putin has taken over the country? (There is Jim Geraghty wisdom on that subject.)
Since sanctions are the order of the day, and we are not going to understand their (modest) value in this equation by listening to the administration’s vertiginous talk-talk-talk about them, we should bear a few things in mind.
- If you are talking about sanctions in the face of military aggression, you are in a posture akin to our treatment of international terrorism as a law-enforcement issue. That is, you are essentially saying that you are willing to accept some degree of damage rather than make the sacrifices and run the risks that a forcible response would entail.
Now, you can argue that that is a sensible cost-benefit analysis. Yet, you cannot sensibly say that you are trying to defeat the aggressor. In reality, you are just to contain the damage from the aggression. Putin has demonstrated that Ukraine is more important to Russia (as an extension of its sphere of influence and revanchist ambitions) than it is to the West (which worries about the erosion of the post-Westphalian order of sovereign states but does not yet feel threatened itself). That being the case, our government’s cost-benefit analysis — reading the polls that show Americans don’t want war with Russia over Ukraine — appears be: Putin gets Ukraine, but we should make him pay dearly for it.
That’s a rational calculation, but it’s still a loss. Rather than rolling over, losing 7–0, and whetting the opponent’s appetite for the next conquest, we’re basically trying to lose 4–3, make the opponent sweat, and suggest that if he keeps it up, the next game will be different.
- Sanctions — especially in this game of “graduated sanctions” that Biden is playing — have the most potential to be effective when you are dealing with an opponent who (a) has not yet taken your measure, and (b) engages only in predictably graduated escalations that your next round of enhanced sanctions can counter.
That is not our situation.
Putin has not only taken the West’s measure since annexing a fifth of Georgia in 2008. He has, notwithstanding his aggression, insinuated himself deeply into the West’s economies, especially Europe’s energy needs. On the matter of taking Ukraine, he made cold calculations about what we’d be willing to do, in the way of both sanctions (nothing so punitive that we would feel great pain ourselves) and force (nothing at all).
Let’s put aside the fact that he has managed to improve his economic position dramatically, despite years of seizing strategic territory in two countries and waging a border war in eastern Ukraine. We refused to impose sanctions for months while he continued massing 150,000 troops and materiel to intimidate Kyiv and prepare for a full-on invasion, even as he was continuing to wage war in the Donbas and occupy Crimea and Georgia. When asked about sanctions, the Biden administration said they were being held in reserve to “stave off” Putin’s “possible invasion.” But Putin had already invaded and was already waging an extensive war of aggression. As we were holding off to discourage him from doing what he was already doing, Putin had to be laughing his head off.
Behold the mismatches: Putin takes part of Georgia and the “penalty” is . . . Obama wants to “reset” the relation and help him develop his own version of Silicon Valley. Putin engages in years of cyberespionage, and Obama and Biden respond by pleading with him to help them negotiate Iran nuclear pacts that are patently bad deals for U.S. security. We “warn” Putin not to escalate in Ukraine; he pockets what he’s already annexed and marshals tens of thousands of forces. We try to discourage Putin from taking the two breakaway “republics” he’s orchestrated in eastern Ukraine; he is now closing in on Kyiv — he’s logically concluding that if no one is going to stop him, he’s taking the whole thing.
So our sanctions strategy simply shows him we’re not very serious, and it elucidates that we are not accounting for how much he’s willing to escalate. We foolishly expect him to limit his escalations to what we’re willing to counter with modest sanctions that won’t exact too much pain on European and American economies. And somehow, we keep getting surprised by his audacity.
That is not just managing a loss. It is inviting more losses.