by Patrick Appel
Ioffe sizes up the sanctions announced yesterday:
These sanctions will not just ban travel to the U.S. or freeze assets (most of which these guys keep in Europe and in various tax shelters around the world), but will effectively bar them from participation in the world financial system. That is going to sting and it’s going to hurt, and it’s going to hurt in the exact right places. Sources inside the administration say that Europe’s list of sanctions, which is forthcoming, overlaps very significantly with the American one. The administration is also discussing whether to distribute the sanctions to family members, given that these men officially may own very little themselves, but have stashed their wealth in shell companies, and wives and children who function as shell companies. But just having a last name that’s on the U.S. Treasury sanctions list may be hurt enough. And, as the White House has emphasized repeatedly, this is only the beginning.
But there are people who are not on the list who are already cringing at the anticipation of the blow: Russian liberals. They were largely horrified by their country’s invasion of Ukraine and are happy to see Putin’s cronies punished by the West, but they know that the Kremlin, unable to lash out at Washington, will take its fury out on them.
Bershidsky doubts Europe’s sanctions will be as harsh as America’s:
Most of the Putin cronies on the list have known assets in Europe and Caribbean offshore areas. They will suffer serious damage only if the European Union puts them on its list of sanctioned individuals — which is doubtful because of the U.K.’s desire to avoid damage to London banks and the city’s reputation as an international financial center. The U.S. sanctions are also designed to cause minimum economic damage: They don’t touch Russia’s major government-owned companies, such as Gazprom or Rosneft, headed by long-time Putin associate Igor Sechin. Keeping them out of the U.S. would be a heavy blow.
The sanctions’ intent is easily readable to Putin. Even if he is not as close to the men on the list as their history and the government contract breakdown suggest, he will know Obama wanted to strike at those who are, to the best of his knowledge, his best friends, possibly even the keepers of his personal fortune.
Charlemagne also looks at Europe’s response:
In the bureaucratic jargon of Brussels, the annexation of Crimea merits only “Stage 2” sanctions: visa bans, asset freezes and political wrist-slapping. The latter includes suspending G8 meetings, halting formal bilateral summits and stopping negotiations on Russia’s membership of the OECD, a rich-world think-tank, and the International Energy Agency. Stage 3 sanctions, comprising unspecified “far-reaching consequences for relations on a broad range of economic areas”, would be triggered by further Russian actions “to destabilise the situation in Ukraine”.
Larison asks about the purpose of America’s sanctions:
One thing that the administration should have also learned by now is that it gets little or no credit from its critics for its hawkish measures, and most of its critics will continue to condemn its response as “weak” no matter what it does. It won’t matter to those critics how much the U.S. tries to punish Russia, because it will never be seen as good enough. Meanwhile, punitive measures can inflict damage on Russia, but there is no good reason to believe that sanctions will ever cause it to change its behavior in the way that Washington wants. Punitive measures have to be aimed at forcing Russia to give up Crimea, and if they’re not then they don’t serve much of a purpose other than riling Moscow and provoking retaliation. Since that goal seems entirely fanciful, what are these punitive measures supposed to be achieving?
Anne Applebaum calls the new sanctions “only a signal”:
Far more important, now, are the deeper strategic changes that should flow from our new understanding of Russia. We need to reimagine NATO, to move its forces from Germany to the alliance’s eastern borders. We need to re-examine the presence of Russian money in international financial markets, given that so much “private” Russian money is in fact controlled by the state. We need to look again at our tax shelters and money-laundering laws, given that Russia uses corruption as a tool of foreign policy. Above all we need to examine the West’s energy strategy, given that Russia’s oil and gas assets are also used to manipulate European politics and politicians, and find ways to reduce our dependence.
The Dish 