Maximum Pressure Sanctions Won’t Work Against Russia: By failing to offer clarity on the aims of its sanctions and the possibility of them being lifted, the United States risks weakening the sanctions’ coercive power.
I would like tentatively to share the analysis and insights dated April 8, of Mr. Will Smith, the assistant editor of the National Interest.
After the United States entered the twenty-first century with expanded global ambitions and an unrivaled position in the global financial system, sanctions became, as the Biden administration’s sanctions review put it, “a tool of first resort to address a range of threats.”
Since 2000, the number of U.S. sanctions designations has increased almost 1,000 percent, and as the use of sanctions has expanded, so too has the scope of their aims.
Although sanctions have crippled national economies, they have rarely achieved their maximalist objectives, and causing economic pain has become an end in itself.
