> "We imagine that the pain these civilians experience will translate into political change—either a change in regime, or a change in regime behavior."
The aim of the sanctions is not regime change, but the degradation of the Russian military's ability to wage war.
I think the author is observing the current sanctions in the same lens as the sanctions imposed after the occupation of Crimea, where there was a very hand wavy reasoning about integrated deterrence and how the pain of sanctions would make Russia pull out or at least not go forward with further aggression.
In my mind there is a very clear distinction in the aim of sanctions before and after beginning of the current Russian offensive, as I said before the aim now is clearly to hinder the offensive, before it was deterrence. I don't believe these particular sanctions are aimed at regime change.
Furthermore, as has been noted in the comment section of the article, while the strategic bombing -> low morale/regime change reasoning has been shown false, I think there is a still a lot of room to investigate how much the strategic bombings affected the targets ability to deploy it's forces. It's clear that to achieve victory in the context of the second world war there had to be boots on the ground, but that doesn't mean that the strategic bombing did not contribute.
Similarly because sanctions are not enough to achieve the argued final goal (regime change) that doesn't mean they don't have an effect.
This is addressed directly in the article:
> There are many plausible reasons one might inflict economic harm on an opposing country: [...]. Or they might be kept in place to degrade the Russian economy over the long term, thus frustrating Russian attempts to modernize their military in the decades to come. [...] It is not clear to me which, if any, of these rationales motivate our current sanctions regime.
You write:
> I think there is a still a lot of room to investigate how much the strategic bombings affected the targets ability to deploy it's forces
and the article places some breadcrumbs about that too:
> the collapse imagined by the early air theorists of the ‘30s was possible if the indiscriminate carpet bombing of World War II were replaced by surgical, precision strikes on enemy
Some kid starving to death because of sanctions doesn't understand what's happening. Their parents will be too poor and hungry to meaningfully fight back against their leaders.
It's only going to hurt the vulnerable people in a country - militaries and oligarchs will not be impacted unless you target them specifically and narrowly.
Imagine if China said, "we're no longer shipping electronics to America and will not do business with anyone who does". You and I would experience huge jumps in costs and probably be angry at China, not our own government. But you probably aren't going to take up arms up being down your own government.
Broad sanctions are just bad policy.
Those who can move -- move out of the country (usually the most economically active people), weakening the regime ability to make weapons.
Those who starve have nothing to lose, so they start fighting the regime. Revolutions never happen in well fed society.
If you accept this argument, you are letting the dictator hold his population hostage. Also the same argument applies to killing the invading soldiers.
Also it's not like Russian people are dying from hunger.
Especially when the "collateral damage" is in this case is "I can no longer buy iphone".
1. They're highly ineffective in that they've almost never led to regime change;
2. "Economic sanctions" is a euphemism. They are violence that disproportionately affects the most vulnerable. The article correct likens them to strategic bombing; and
3. They're a form of collective punishment. In many circumstances this constitutes a war crime.
Let me give you an example of (3). Imagine there are a spate of burglaries in your area. The police have good cause to believe the suspects are in your ZIP code. They decide to confiscate $100,000 collectively and spread evenly over each resident of that ZIP code. Why? Because this will motivate the residents to figure out who the burglar is and turn them in while making restitution to the victims.
That is collective punishment.
The inability of the Soviet Regime to freely trade with the west greatly contributed to it's demise, so sanctions have been proven to contribute to regime change, for a counter example see China or Vietnam, they opened their markets and their Regimes are very much still in power. Additionally the aim of these sanctions is not regime change but hindering the Russian offensive.
> 2. "Economic sanctions" is a euphemism. They are violence that disproportionately affects the most vulnerable. The article correct likens them to strategic bombing;
I don't believe I have to say this, but dropping bombs on cities (strategic bombing) and refusing to buy natural gas (sanctions) is not the same thing.
> 3. They're a form of collective punishment. In many circumstances this constitutes a war crime.
That makes no sense. First of all most of the sanctions are not "punishment", they prohibit certain transactions and are not aimed at people. i.e. The EU decided to stop buying petroleum from Russia, that cannot be possibly construed as punishment. In the cases where the sanctions are actually "punishment" seizing of assets and such, it is very targeted to people and organizations with actual decision making power and influence in Russia or somehow connected with the regime or the Russian State (Oligarchs, banks, etc).
An example of how I view sanctions. Let's say Bob goes to a bank and takes a loan, then Bob proceeds to buy a gun with that loan and rob another bank, sanctions are equivalent to the bank refusing to loan more money to Bob until he stops robbing banks.
You are not doing anything to anybody. You are just withdrawing your participation from mutually beneficial activity because of your principles. You always have right to do that.
2. The violence on the vulnerable is inflicted by the sanctioned regime, not the sanctioners. As another commenter noted, these regimes effectively hold their population hostage. They could feed their population, they just prefer to pour everything into the military.
3. In your example, are the residents following the orders of those burglars?
The crime and punishment issues are mostly solved for individuals and small groups. There is a good reason why in most societies the victim is not the one who decides the fate of the attacker — it is the job of the law. Sadly, this doesn't work at international scale. That is when large scale punitive operations take place. And then the other side responds with more violence.
In the end of this feedback loop we reach the point where 99% of the ones who suffer are collateral damage — from all sides. Is it inevitable? It seems so. No matter what happens next, someone has to pay, right?
First, as a German (!), I always have a hard time with articles that claim bombing Germany in WW2 somehow wasn’t justified. What would have been the alternative? Leave the regime in power? Concede half or more of Europe? Shrug your shoulders and accept the industrial scale genocide? Note that almost the entire population was part of this murderous machine in some capacity, and to some extent willingly so. To have any hope of democratizing Germany at all, the defeat had to be total. I haven’t seen very credible evidence that this could have been accomplished with milder measures.
Second, there’s an important ethical difference between sanctions and strategic bombing. The attacker chooses what to bomb. With sanctions, the target nation can choose which sectors of their economy their limited resources keep going into. Yes, autocracies will reliably loot and starve their population for the benefit of the military and their political friends. But that’s still their choice, not ours, and I think that’s an important distinction in terms of the moral implications.
There's a distinction between military action and indiscriminate bombing of civilian population centers (eg Dresden, Tokyo). "Strategic bombing" here specifically refers to a policy of total destruction that intentionally leads to massive civilian death. It's the same policy that led to the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This isn't an argument against any form of bombing.
> With sanctions, the target nation can choose which sectors of their economy their limited resources keep going into
In some ways that's worse. Put it this way: who do you think is bearing the brunt of sanctions in Russia? Is it Putin and the oligarchs or the poor?
Not that I'm defending strategic bombing (I'm really not) but at least there's a chance you may take out noteworthy targets. With sanctions you definitely won't.
The whole idea idea of sanctions is twofold:
1. Starve the war machine of resources; and
2. Prompt the populace to take actions against their leadership.
The second has shown to be incredibly ineffective. The premise is a dangerous one too. Why? Because it's the same argument used to support terrorism.
This is a major flaw in the analysis of the Ukraine situation. The Biden admin has bungled this affair and placed the Ukrainian people in the position of pawns with zero chance of victory who are getting their country blown up to only end up with less land and likely less sovereignty. The administration has focused the entire conflict straight to war, discouraging diplomacy and encouraging brinksmanship.
The sanctions were foolishly over estimated when applied to a country like Russia which is one of the most self-sufficient countries in the world with huge trading partners that are not afraid of the US’s empty threats. Is the US going to go after China for trading with Russia while the vast amount of its technology and goods are assembled there? The US gave up its dominance by pushing globalization as a “strategy” that eviscerated its manufacturing of critical hardware and technology. The US is now a paper tiger.
Maybe we'd do sanctions, cross our fingers, and hope that heavily entrenched Taiwan would be able to defend itself.
Who knows? It is the mystery of strategic ambiguity. They've been, while maybe not getting along, getting by for the last couple decades. So, hopefully we'll never find out what exactly the plan is.
Luckily Taiwan built a modern economy, where most of the value is in the people who live there (rather than natural resources). And they are pretty well entrenched. The amount of force required to conquer the place would probably slay the golden goose as a side effect. Surely China's government can see the benefit of doing peaceful business there...
Yes we have a law saying we will defend Taiwan. No we actually won't. Because we can't.
It is worth noting that it isn't that easy to invade Taiwan. At its closest point, 21 miles separates England from France. On a clear day you can see the white cliffs of Dover from France. Yet that 21 mile gap has meant that the last time England was successfully invaded was almost 1000 years ago (in 1066 to be precise). For almost 5 years the Germans had uncontested control of Western Europe and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
From the other side, the D-Day invasion took 2+ years of planning and massive resources to cross the English Channel with sufficient force not to get immediately wiped out.
Chinca could probably do it but the cost would be incredibly high. Airlifting would take a lot and be vulnerable to air defenses. Sea is a much more practical option but vulnerable to many defenses too.
No, China sucks it up because US is a nuclear power.
https://warontherocks.com/2022/05/amateur-hour-part-i-the-ch...
Sanctions are just modern day siege warfare. Go look at the 80 years war between the Dutch and Spanish for some of the longest and most interesting sieges in history. In almost all examples one can find sieges or sanctions almost never result in a local popularion rising up against their local elites and leadership. The fact that this is not more widely discussed in American sanctions discourse is a testament to American war propaganda effectiveness. Name one country where American sanctions have resulted in a local population regime changing their leadership. I can't think of any. Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, N Korea, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and of course Russia.
Go look at the list and find a single country under US sanctions where the USA has achieved regime change because of sanctions.
https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...
Go look at the history of countries the US has sanctioned and try and find one that resulted in regime change. You will not find any.
Instead sanctions typically have the effect of prolonging conflict and solidifying the power structures of the local regime and elites. They're punitive and they affect the poorest of a country. The UN says the greatest humanitarian disaster right now is in in Yemen, and that's directly caused by US and UK sanctions. It won't win the war for the Saudis and UAE, but it's starving hundreds of thousands of Yemenis.
Sanctions against Cuba did not remove Castro. Instead it provided his regime an ability to control food distribution. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the Cuban people and their ability to live under US sanctions, but even if I hated Communism in my bones I would recognise that US sanctions on Cuba have been an abject failure.
Black markets and smuggling develop under sanctions and these get controlled by those in power. Sanctions make it much easier for established power structures to survive and thrive. Suddenly people can't get fuel, food and other essentials. They need to come to those in power and beg for them. So those in power can decide who gets these essential items, and even better yet, blame their enemies on the fact that they have to be rationed. Sanctions are both a material and propaganda gift to the regimes the US says they want to dethrone.
So who benefits from sanctions in the USA, why do they keep imposing them? I think the answer to this question is really complex. Partly because there is both real political will in the USA to see regime change in sanctioned countries and people who benefit materially from sanctions knowing that they will not succeed.
If sanctions are so bad at achieving their stated objectives, why does the USG keep imposing them? This is the interesting question.
I disagree. First, the railroad already existed. You can argue its use in war was new. The Germans notably built railroads to the front at huge scale. But this presupposes a relatively static front, which was the reality of WWI. Probably the most important technological development was neither of these things: it was artillery.
I cannot recommend enough Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. There is a 6 part series called A Blueprint for Armageddon [1] that is well worth the 30+ hours it'll take to listen to.
Additionally, the full power of railroads (in terms of logistics) wasn't unleashed until the 1920s. Why? The invention of the humble pallet. I highly recommend reading this [2].
> Today the closest analogue to the logic of the strategic bomber lies in the world of economics. I speak of sanctions.
I 100% agree: economic sanctions are violence and not that far removed from strategic bombing. It's honestly a little surprising to hear an American saying this.
Sanctions ultimately are a form of collective punishment and in many such circumstances we consider that a war crime for good reason. In the 1990s, then US Ambassador to the UN later Us Secretary of STate Madeleine Albright was quoted as saying [3]:
> "We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima," Stahl said. "And, you know, is the price worth it?"
> "I think that is a very hard choice," Albright answered, "but the price, we think, the price is worth it."
The author then goes on to argue (which again is surprising) that sanctions are largely ineffective and will continue to be so in the case of Russia. 100% agree, which is why that even though Putin was and is the bad guy for an unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine, US policy towards Ukraine was completely reckless because we have no effective way to counter an opponent with a nuclear arsenal in armed conflict.
All of this was warned about in 2015 [4].
[1]: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blu...
[2]: https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/52/hodes.php
[3]: https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying-ira...
You cannot, the Prussian victories against Austria and France during the latter half of the 19th century were achieved on the back of their very efficient use of (military-designed) railways.
