While pundits on all sides will engage in a never-ending
debate over who is to blame for igniting the biggest military conflict Europe
has seen since World War II, the more pertinent question is: How and when will
President Vladimir Putin’s war on neighboring Ukraine end? The West made it
clear to Russia even before last week’s invasion that while it will not send
troops to defend Ukraine, it will roll out a wide-ranging and unforgiving set
of economic sanctions, the likes of which the world has never seen before.
اضافة اعلان
Had Putin known that the US and its European allies would
unleash such unprecedented economic and financial sanctions, would he have
given the order to march into Ukraine? That we will not know anytime soon. But
what is clear is that, aside from arming Kyiv with sophisticated weapons, the
West appears to be determined to isolate the Russian leader politically and
strangulate his country economically. By all accounts, this is a world war of a
new kind.
The question, then, is: Will biting sanctions work and make
Putin regret his decision to invade, or will his isolation push him to raise
the ante and venture deeper into an adventure whose final outcome remains open
to all possible scenarios, including an apocalyptic one?
The track record of economic sanctions is mixed at best.
Most recently, there have been US sanctions against Iran and Venezuela. The
sanctions had little or no effect on these two regimes’ political stance, And
in both cases, the sanctions, serious as they are, were being applied by one
country. Iran continues to sell its oil, albeit with difficulty, and is doing
business with many countries in the region and beyond.
Iraq came under UN sanctions after its invasion of Kuwait in
1990. While millions of Iraqis suffered, the regime survived even after the
bulk of its army was debilitated in the first Gulf War. Saddam Hussein’s
survival under the sanctions irked president George W. Bush so much that he
decided to invade Iraq under flimsy pretexts.
Iraq continues to struggle to this day as a result of the
2003 invasion.
While Putin is being made accountable for his invasion of
Ukraine, no one dares to point the finger at the US and Britain for starting a
war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and destroyed much of
the country.
Syria, too, is under international sanctions following the
bloody clampdown on a popular uprising in 2011. Yet, even though much of the
country has been ravaged by war, and millions of Syrians became displaced or
sought refuge outside Syria, the regime survived and is now coming out slowly
from its regional isolation.
Historically, the small island nation of Cuba had endured
decades of US sanctions and the Castro regime withstood many attempts by the
CIA and Cuban exiles to topple or liquidate him. Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi’s
regime also dealt with various sanctions and if it had not been for western
military intervention in 2011, he have would probably been able to quash the
popular uprising against his dictatorship.
North Korea’s regime has managed to stay intact despite
western sanctions and, with China and Russia aiding it, appears to be
emboldened by Putin’s latest move. Economic sanctions have failed to persuade
its leader, Kim Jong-un, from suspending his dangerous nuclear program.
And lastly, there is Putin’s Russia itself, which came under
a very diluted set of sanctions when the Kremlin unilaterally annexed Crimea in
2014. Russia’s economy faltered for a couple of years and then slowly
recovered.
But nothing like what the West imposed on Russia this week
has happened before. The sanctions aim at removing Russia completely from the
global economic map. The enormity of the sanctions regime means that the rest
of the world will be affected as well; Europe, in terms of crucial Russian
energy supplies, as well as many countries dependent on Russia and Ukraine for
essential grains like wheat, corn and barley, and countries that depend on
Russia for sophisticated military hardware, to name a few.
The global supply chain will be further affected as well.
European companies that did business in Russia will soon depart. The entire
global financial system will be altered. Even the worlds of sports and culture
will be affected.
Has Putin bitten more than he can chew? It is ordinary
Russians who will suffer the most as the ruble tumbles and inflation spikes.
Even if his forces take Kyiv and control most of the country, his occupation
army will face a long and costly war of attrition. No economy in the world can
handle multifaceted challenges internally and externally all at once. But
Russia is a huge country, with ample resources and a few key allies, and it may
still adapt to the economic shockwaves, at least initially. And even savvy China
will be wary of doing business with a regime that has now become an
international pariah.
What is clear, though, is that without a peaceful diplomatic
solution the sanctions will remain and Russia’s isolation will increase. Does
Putin have a suitable response to this new reality?
The writer is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.
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