At the same time, sanctions also work in other ways: they punish governments that break international norms, they send a signal to the world about what’s considered unacceptable, and they reaffirm shared values. That’s why they’re still used despite the harsh effects on ordinary people. They aren’t a perfect solution, but in Western thinking their role is to combine pressure, deterrence and symbolism, rather than just collective punishment for its own sake.
So, you either take personal responsibility for enforcing sanctions yourself, or you admit that sanctions are a form of collective punishment for no reason. You can't have it both ways.
Maybe the government will do this because the sanctions hurt their people enough to the point where things are too unstable for their liking. Maybe their economy becomes so trashed that the quality of the leaders' lives is impacted too much. Etc.
I don't think anyone in the West genuinely believes that sanctions will lead to citizen uprisings and overthrown governments. At least not after decades where no such successful uprisings have taken place in long-sanctioned countries like Iran.
But it should also be pretty clear that sanctions on countries like Iran aren't causing their governments to choose to change their behavior either. But I think arguably sanctions on Russia since they invaded Ukraine have had a useful effect. While the war hasn't stopped, it's possible that sanctions have slowed down Russia's progress quite a bit.
Not sure what the alternative is, though, aside from just giving up, lifting sanctions, and letting things develop where they may.
They did slow down all kinds of progress in Russia except the progress towards the full blown fascism and the progress of the military complex at the expence of its citizens
Like, democratic elections obviously give the elected legitimacy to govern the populace that just elected them. But sanctions (or military interventions or wars) by their very definition are enacted on a different population, that had no democratic means to influence that decision.
UN sanctions are at least somewhat different because they are supposed to be decided by vote of the constituent countries.
But US sanctions are essentially "some people elected the President because they liked his views on domestic tax policy or trans people, therefore he gains the right to call airstrikes on some place halfway across the world or forbid the entire world from doing business with that place".
It makes no sense.
However, sanctions do have a symbolic value. And I also can't think of anything else short of military action to express displeasure.
Counterpoint: South Africa.
> If the West is expecting any revolution due to sanctions, I have not seen it.
You have now.
I can certainly understand, as a matter of foreign policy, not wanting our companies to be propping up or supplying such regimes, but I don't really get how anyone can think that sanctions are effective at promoting change.
And many more similar examples. Sanctions will hurt Russia in long term but not now. Because good sanctions requires to understand the country culture + execute only that hurt countries, which didn't do western countries.
Trying to use sanctions against another major power isn't guaranteed to work as they can take the hit and pivot to internal industry(which happened), or trading with other major powers that do not sanction them(China).
Or some countries get around sanctions - like buying Russian gas/petroleum products through India - in a way this bypasses sanctions making them worthless.
Is it better than doing nothing? yes, of course. But Russia unfortunately is a major power - just due to sheer access to natural resources - and you can't just bully it into submission with weak sanctions that some EU countries ignore(petroleum case).
I would say it is a bit more realpolitik than that. An "Evil" leader doesn't care about the common good, but all leaders need subordinates to carry out their orders, security forces to carry out their rules, etc. Sanctions are meant to put pressure on all those people. So either A; the leader changes their actions so as not to risk losing the people that turn their will into action, or B; those subordinates put someone else in charge that will play ball.
