America and its allies now face the question of how much further to go with sanctions on Russia, and when
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskEconomic measures to cut Russia off from the world’s financial arteries are the most powerful implements a West unwilling to meet a nuclear adversary on the battlefield has dared wield in response to the invasion of Ukraine. But it has wielded them savagely. No major economy in the modern world has ever been hit so hard by such weapons.
Within hours of the sanctions taking effect, the central bank raised its main interest rate from 9.5% to 20% in an attempt to shore up the currency. It ordered companies with foreign-currency revenues to convert most of them into roubles, and told Russian banks to reject instructions by foreign clients to liquidate Russian securities. Mr Putin later banned anyone from taking more than $10,000 in foreign currency out of the country.
Measuring sanctions’ success is hard, not least because of the difficulty of disentangling their effects from other economic, and on occasion military, forces, but there have been few outright successes. Perhaps the quickest, though some time ago, was America’s threat to dump sterling bonds and block Britain’s access tocredit during the Suez crisis in 1956: the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt was abandoned weeks later.
Sanctions can also push countries they target into each other’s arms. Russia and China—hit with American sanctions over its mistreatment of Uyghurs as well as its suspected tech-spying—are enjoying their friendliest relations for decades. Russia was already by far the biggest beneficiary of Chinese overseas lending and assistance between 2000 and 2017, receiving up to $151bn, according to AidData, a research group.
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