Sanctions May Achieve the Opposite of Biden's Stated Long-Term Goals

During a visit to Brussels for the NATO summit on Thursday, President Joe Biden unveiled his latest Russia sanctions package. Biden told reporters that the U.S. and the European Union had agreed to sanction more than 300 Russian lawmakers and oligarchs, as well as several Russian defense companies. 

Over the past month, Russia has overtaken both Iran and North Korea to become the most sanctioned country in the world. Some of the measures adopted by the U.S. and its European allies include the freezing nearly half of the Russian central bank’s $640 billion financial reserves, expelling several of Russia’s largest banks from the SWIFT global payment system, imposing export controls aimed at limiting Russia’s access to advanced technologies, closing down their airspace and ports to Russian planes and ships, and instituting personal sanctions against senior Russian officials and high-profile tycoons. 

Multinational corporations have joined Western governments in cutting economic ties with Russia. Since the start of the Kremlin’s military campaign in Ukraine on February 24, more than 450 companies ranging from Apple to McDonalds have shut down their operations in Russia, according to a database compiled by Yale University’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute. 

But what exactly are the goals of the new sanctions regime against Moscow? Biden has stated that its primary objectives are “to impose severe costs on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time” and to turn Russian President Vladimir Putin into a “pariah on the international stage.” The New York Times has reported, citing current and former U.S. officials, that another aim is to “create domestic pressure on Putin to halt his war in Ukraine.”