Why Haven’t Sanctions on Russia Stopped the War? The Money Is Still Flowing.

8 comments

1. It’s not like that. Russia trades with many countries. You cant cut Russia off without antagonising all their trading partners, most of whom care as much about Ukraine as the average Ukrainian does about the Sahel.

   It’s is easy to argue to cut them off Swift or whatever else. That would only accelerate the development and adoption of alternatives.

   The US could stop trading with them. They’ll find other partners to trade with. At the end of the day, the Ukraine conflict is not as significant to much of the world as some would like to believe. It’s not pragmatic to throw one’s weight around incessantly. It makes the weight lighter. There are many that root for Russia simply because it stands up to the Americans/capitalists/imperialists. They couldn’t care less about the Ukraine or the Donbas republics.

2. In my layman understanding it was 3 big factors.

   1. America didn’t want to target their biggest money makers for some reason.
   2. Europe handwrung about following along since they’re leashed by Russias oil exports
   3. Russia got China to subsidize them to the point where they’re essentially a vassal(Think America and UK)

3. The existing of the BRICS is to counter potential western sanctions, and it is doing exactly that.

4. They didn’t collapse Russia’s economy like some were hoping, but they certainly worked. Russia’s ability to finance its war effort has been hampered. They’re mainly using gas revenue, but it’s not enough, so they’re draining their sovereign wealth fund instead.

5. Here we go with the idiots showing the world that they are idiots. There are some people who just can’t seem to understand that sanctions do not **compel** a belligerent to stop fighting. They just can’t understand someone willingly choosing to accept economic pain to achieve some goal. I remember all the idiots during the Persian Gulf war who thought that sanctions alone would be enough to get Saddam Hussein to leave Kuwait and were flabbergasted when he just ignored the sanctions. “But, but…we’ve told him we don’t like him doing that, why doesn’t he listen?”

   Sanctions can never compel a belligerent to do anything. They can potentially *persuade*, but the most important role they play is to weaken, and generally their biggest impact is a cumulative one over *generations* – like [this](https://www.38north.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Fig2-Nightlights-23-0403-scaled.jpg) (notice that even so, North Korea isn’t **compelled** to do anything)..

   In the context of Russia, sanction could **never** compel a Russian withdrawal. Russia is a major producer and exporter of all the basic commodities that a nation needs to provide for its own people and to wage war; food, petroleum products, metals, nitrates (for both explosives AND fertilizer), potash, etc., etc. They don’t have to buy any of those basic necessities on the world market so any external sanctions don’t have much impact on those basics. If you have steel, nitrates, oil, manpower, and food, you can keep fighting indefinitely until and unless you run out of one of those things. What sanctions can do is to make the things that Russia does have to import (semiconductors, some machine tools, etc.) more expensive, which economically weakens Russia. That’s about it.

6. It is just a matter of time. think chemistry class, drop drop drop, turnd to blue.

   This month alone Ukraine hit 20% of their refinery production. You don’t massive action to stop a mine from operations, or destroy a refinery.

   The sanctions have an effect, everything would turn out very well if the US wasn’t off.

7. There is a _wealth_ of literature on state sanctions and economic warfare. Issues arise over what goalpost people think of when determining success, what opportunity costs are accrued, how do sanctions change decision calculus for the sanctioned party, and when they are just a bad idea (ie: Saddam starving his population by shifting the cost of sanctions onto them).

   Sanctions have increased the cost of the invasion and war effort a lot, but it’s not enough

8. Because the bank account has to hit zero for them to work (as the Western leaders wanted them to).

   The sanctions have done massive damage, but they never going to collapse Russia.

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