Tuesday’s Great Decisions lecture at Williamsburg’s library featured Dr. Bruce Jentleson, the William Preston Few Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University, as well as a 2022 Distinguished Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He received the 2018 American Political Science Association (APSA) International Security Section Joseph J. Kruzel Award for Distinguished Public Service. He has served in such US foreign policy positions as Senior Advisor to the State Department Policy Planning Director (2009-11). His is the author of Sanctions: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2022).
I wasn’t able to attend this lecture, but here are a few things I was able to glean from Foreign Policy Association’s 2023 Briefing Book essay. This essay begins by giving a definition of economic warfare:
Waging economic warfare consists of a variety of measures from implementing sanctions to fomenting labor strikes. Such tools are utilized by states to hinder their enemies, and in the case of the United States have been used as far back as the early 19th century. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, economic warfare has been the main means for the west to challenge Russia. How effective will these sanctions be at convincing Russia to cease its war?
The author of this essay, Jonathan Chantis, is well-positioned and qualified to summarize these complicated and important issues. He has worked in investment management, emerging markets finance, and commodities trading for over 25 years. Currently, he manages New Tide Asset Management, a company focused on global and resource trading. He previously worked at Citigroup and Caxton Associates where he traded energy and emerging market equities, commodities and currencies. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on political economy, public policy, international politics, and other subjects at several educational institutions including Columbia University.
The primary rationale for using economic warfare is that it is a “better alternative than going to war.”
States can engage in hostilities that constitute low-intensity warfare while minimizing the risk of escalating violence.
This being said, economic sanctions are not benign. It makes little difference to a country’s people if someone dies of hunger or inadequate medical care rather than from a bullet or bomb.
The longest US economic warfare program was the effort to restrict the acquisition of products and technologies by the Soviet Union and its allies during the Cold War.(Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls or CoCom)
Since 9/11, economic and financial sanctions have become a “tool of first resort” that “allow US policymakers to impose a material cost on adversaries.”
The US imposed more than 35% of all global sanctions between 1950 and 2019.
Empirical evidence of sanctions’ effectiveness is ambiguous. One study showed that the objectives were achieved approximately
35% of the time and partially 14% of the time. In 22% of the cases, the sanctions failed totally, and the remaining 29% have yet to generate an outcome.
Sanctions with the highest probability of success were those related to promoting democracy and human rights, while the less successful sanctions related to combating terrorism, destabilizing a regime, and resolving a territorial conflict.
US and global sanctions on Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine constituted a third option between using military force and doing nothing.
Four decades of increasing sanctions use have conditioned the US to use sanctions as a “first resort.”
With a low level of international trade relative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the costs of sanctions to the US economy have been marginal.
This graph shows the geographic focus on US sanctions over the years.
As the following graphs illustrate, while the number of US sanctions has grown since 2000, the focus has also changed:
We’re talking about sanctions now because of the reaction of democracies around the world to last year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine. This table summaries the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia:
How effective have the sanctions on Russia been? The latest estimates for Russian’s 2022 GDP see a decline of 4-8%, with inflation at approximately 15%. While increased consumer shortages and an inability to source critical parts for military equipment and civilian production, it is hard to see this as a catastrophic economic collapse.
The briefing book suggests discussion questions addressing this topic:
How effective has US use of economic warfare been in achieving US foreign policy goals? Have the civilian deaths caused by sanctions been justified?
Has the sanctions process become unaccountable to the American public and the congress? Is it in need of reform?
Are sanctions the best policy tool the US has to use against Russia? If not sanctions, what policy should the US pursue in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
Should the US design a covert program (like the CoCom, referenced above) to deal with China? If yes, should it be limited to military product applications, or more expansive to retard China’s growing economic power?
Should the US take a more assertive role in limiting outbound US investment to China?
If you want to know more about all of this, here are some suggested readings;
Boyle, Andrew, Checking the President’s Sanctions Power. Brennan Center, June 10, 2021. A comprehensive look at the libertarian and humanitarian problems with US sanctions policy.
Funakoshi, Minami and Hugh Lawson and Kannaki Deka, Tracking sanctions against Russia. Reuters, Updated periodically. A comprehensive timeline of sanctions against Russia broken down by initiating country.
Gordon, Joy, The Hidden Power of the New Economic Sanctions. Current History, January 2019. The moral case against sanctions.
Hufbauer, Gary, Jeffrey Schott, Kimberly Ann Elliot, and Barbara Oegg, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered. Washington DC: The Peterson Institute for International Economics, June 15, 2009. The definitive empirical analysis of the efficacy of almost 200 economic sanctions cases.
Kirilakha, A. and C. Felbermayr, C. Syropoulos, E. Yalcin, and Yotov, The Global Sanctions Data Base: An Update the includes the Years of the Trump Presidency. Drexel University. A comprehensive review of over 700 sanctions cases.
Lambert, Nicholas, What Real Economic Warfare Looked Like. Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2022. A prescient first take on the Russia sanctions enthusiasm.
Hanemann, Thilo, Mark Witzke, Carlis Vest, Lauren Dudley, and Ryan Featherston. Two Way Street – an Outbound Investment Screening Regime for the United States? Rodium Group. Jan. 26, 2022. A deep dive into the merits of outbound investment restrictions.
Phew!
Another mess. Sigh.
Very interesting. I thought we continued to use sanctions because they worked so well. Seems like it's time to redefine the word or think of another tactic. But not war. I appreciate that sanctions are an alternative to war, but how do we ramp up our game a bit?