RANT: HERE WE GO AGAIN! AND AGAIN!

THESE DAYS, it seems we’re hellbent on shooting ourselves in the foot while driving full-bore into a brick wall. Reality keeps smacking us up the side of the head with a wet fish but we’re too busy beetling along in our clown cars toward the abyss to notice or even care. Like good hominids, we’re so busy watching for dangers coming at us from the side that we don't see what’s right in front of our nose. 

 

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, but that war in Ukraine is darn confusing! WHY is it happening? WHAT’s going on? WHEN will it end? A muddle for one and all!

 

“Who can look on’t sir, and fairly tell a man ‘tis not a muddle?” (Charles Dickens, Hard Times.)

 

LIKE DICKENS’ “OLD STEPHEN”, who depends on his beloved Rachel to help him understand the ways of the world, we turn to those wiser than ourselves to help us understand this latest conflict on the world's stage. Political analysis ranges from Putin as an unhinged autocrat determined to reinstall the Russian Empire to its former glory, to a view, on the other hand, that Russia acted out of self-defence, preventing further NATO encroachments along its borders. It sent troops into Ukraine to end attacks by the Ukrainian government on two break-away (and ethnically Russian) Donbass provinces.  And for those of us a few months ago who couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if our lives depended on it, we’ve become experts on that embattled country's geography and follow the ebb and flow of troop movements and battles, as well as that clusterfuk called "sanctions" (that I'll discuss in the second half of this post) like we were veteran military tacticians and skilled politicos.  

 

MY OWN TAKE tends toward the assessment that Russia was provoked into this war, as Ukraine stubbornly moved ever closer to becoming a member of NATO. For Russia, the possibility of troops and missile emplacements against its border was an existential threat, a “red line”, something the collective West knew, yet chose to ignore. 

 

I think Russia’s show of force in February—remember that line of tanks on the road to Kiev? —was a demonstration to the Zelensky government that now was the time for negotiations. They waited while Kiev prevaricated and until Washington gave Zelensky his marching orders which had “No Negotiations” at the top of the list. And so today there is war. * 

 

DO I THINK Russia had the right to invade Ukraine? No, I don’t. It violated international law as laid out in the United Nations Charter. And while some justification for its invasion could be made, in that Russia acted on the request of the Donbass provinces for military assistance, to my mind, it's a rather flimsy legal argument, and one that has yet to be tested in the International Court of Justice. [Dontesk and Luhansk were recognized as independent states by Russia with an accompanying “mutual assistance” pact shortly before the invasion.--Ed.] COULD RUSSIA have used other means to insist the Europeans and Americans acknowledge its security concerns around an eastward expanding NATO? Possibly. 

 

BUT THIS PROBLEM has existed since the fall of the USSR in 1991. American hubris and an ugly triumphalism within the councils and legislatures of the collective West promoted increasingly threatening policies that defined the West’s relationship with the Russian Federation. “Colour revolutions”, sanctions, trade embargoes, NATO expansion, and the proximal cause: Ukraine’s Maiden Revolution of 2014 that was effectively a coup engineered by the US State Department whereby the democratically elected (if Russian-leaning) government was overthrown and a pro-West one installed. Such tactics backed Russia into a corner, with Ukraine becoming an increasingly hostile neighbour on its borders. Should Russia have invaded?

 

Were there other options besides war that would have addressed its security concerns? I don’t know. But I think we in the West are too well trained not to listen to Russian appeals and arguments, no matter how compelling. Why that is, exactly, is a good question and the subject for another essay, methinks.  

MEANWHILE, the fighting continues, with the ebb and flow of troop movements, territory lost and gained, the debit and credit of death and carnage—all the expected and unexpected developments of a battlefield—they remain front page news and trending social media click-bait. THIS WAR needn’t have happened. It is a war whose end is nowhere in sight and where all the off-ramps are closed.¹ So it goes.

 

ANOTHER COMPONENT TO THE CONFLICT, and in a sense a more important one, is the economic sanctions regime imposed on Russia by the collective West in a bid to cripple its economy and make it incapable of continuing militarily in Ukraine. And here, I’d like to discuss what I’ll call the Curious Case of the Backfiring Sanctions.

 

ANOTHER THING we’ve all become armchair experts in are sanctions  Currently, Canada sanctions some 21 countries, including Ukraine (ones restricting economic relations with entities in the disputed Crimea region), as well as a hodgepodge of “terrorist” organizations. The United States has sanctions on 39 countries directly. Worldwide, the number of sanctions imposed on countries, organizations, businesses, and individuals is around twenty thousand! Most are American initiatives.

 

SO SANCTIONS, THEY WORK, RIGHT? Things are on track to bring Cuba Russia to its knees, aren't they? Not according to Nicholas Mulder in his timely new book, The Economic Weapon, in which he presents the modern history of sanctions from their beginnings during World War One until 1945. In his conclusions [Might as well cut to the chase! —Ed.] Mulder says:

 

“This brings us to a final point about sanctions: the difference between economic effects and political outcomes. The policy debate about sanctions has been repeated almost every decade since the League [League of Nations—Ed.] was created in the wake of World War I. At its core has been the perennial question: do economic sanctions work? While the success rate differs depending on the objective, the historical record is relatively clear: most economic sanctions have not worked. [Italics mine] In the twentieth century, only one in three uses of sanctions was at least partially successful.” (295)

 

For example, THE DECADES of sanctions imposed by America on Cuba since the 1950s have not crippled the Caribbean nation’s economy nor brought about, as was hoped, regime change. While its people chafe under the American “embargo” as the sanctions package is termed, Cuban society has made its way in the world, some say with a good deal of success and zeal. In the United Nations, only the United States, Israel and Palau voted against lifting sanctions on Cuba, in a 186-2 vote with 3 abstentions. TRADE EMBARGOES have been used for centuries, denying exports to, or imports from, certain countries. Blockades—the use of naval forces to interdict shipping directly—were increasingly used as navies grew in strength and scope, and where cities under siege could be cut off from their vital maritime network.

 

IMAGES COME TO MIND from WWI, of naval vessels and gunboats pinching off maritime trade, turning back cargo ships, closing coaling stations to the merchant marines and navies of enemy combatants, blockading shipments of raw materials, foodstuffs, oil, etc. The term blockade was used to describe the type of economic warfare practised by the Allied forces against the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria) during World War One. The rise of German U-boat patrols in 1915-16 in the Baltic, North Sea, English Strait, and Mediterranean affected commercial shipping to the extent that levels of Allied food, supplies, and armaments were being impacted.

 
THE USE OF CONVOYS and other practices, as well sourcing vast quantities of materiel from the (then neutral) United States grew alongside Allied attempts to limit, in turn, German trade and shipping, as well as access to continental and overseas banking, insurance and other services. These latter interdictions entailed the development of new ministries and organizations such as the Allied Blockade Committee in England and the Commission inter-ministérielle in France. These new bureaucracies were given remits to gather data on enemy combatants’ trade and shipping, and to devise policies that would undermine the economies of the Central Powers and create unrest among their populations. These wartime organizations might be considered the “grandparents” of today's sanction regimes.       

 

MODERN SANCTIONS ARE MORE LIKELY to involve “denial of service”, be it in the banking sector, in commercial relations or commodities and services provision, or through restrictive immigration/emigration policies, denial of political recognition, limiting access to international trade and development organizations, new technologies, and so on. CURRENTLY, VENEZUELA, hit hard by American-led sanctioning, is one such example.² Its people suffer from a lack of imports that include medicines and food, resulting in increased levels of ill-health, premature deaths, and impoverishment. Yet the South American government remains defiant and has won a new mandate in recent federal elections.

 

A HANDY ARTICLE from the Financial Crime Academy web site reminds us that: “Sanctions are currently imposed by three main bodies: the United Nations, the European Union, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe” using non-military means. (Individual countries also impose sanctions on other countries, on businesses, organizations, criminal enterprises, and on individuals.)

 

“More often than not, sanctions are imposed by larger, wealthier states against smaller, developing states. Sanctions have also been found to be more effective when carried out by countries that are geographically and economically close to the target but that have a GDP at least 10 times larger than that of the target. In other words, larger, more powerful countries “win” when it comes to sanctions.”

 

And the key to success, the article adds:

 

“…is often determined by the number of participating countries. This is especially true due to globalization. Globalization weakens sanctions because a globalized market makes it easier to replace and reroute trade channels.” (Financial Crime)

 

In The Economic Weapon, Nicholas Mulder shows how, during WWI,  Allied governments and administrative bodies refined their data-gathering machinery, embargo lists and analyses of enemy combatants’ economies, and one method they used was “estimating” the import requirements of “neutral” countries such as Holland and Switzerland based on pre-war levels. This was done to prevent surplus contraband like raw materials and food from being trans-shipped to Germany and Austria-Hungary. The point being, that neutral countries, uninvolved in the fighting, were made to feel the pinch, along with the Central Powers, all of whom acquired a wary respect for the blockades that Allied militaries enforced. They noted well the effects blockades had on their economies and populations. And this fear continued long after the war ended. 

 

MULDER’S FASCINATING INVESTIGATION of post-WWI sanctions is critical for our  understanding of the complete dog’s breakfast that’s been made of the sanctions regime the  Western powers are attempting to impose on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in February. 

In a NUTSHELL, in the post WWI era, it was the memory of the blockades used against Germany and Austria-Hungary, and the difficulties they created, that made the mere threat of sanctions enough to goad belligerents to peacefully arbitrate their disputes. 

FOR EXAMPLE, in 1925 the League of Nations (the forerunner of today’s United Nations) threatened to impose sanctions unless a border dispute between Greece and Bulgaria was resolved. The two parties quickly sought the League’s help in negotiating a political settlement.

IT MUST BE REMEMBERED that the League had no standing armies or naval forces. It had to rely on member states (which did not include the United States) for enforcement of its sanctions³, with all the negotiating and herding of cats that such a process entails.⁴ Yet the threat of sanctions remained a potent one, conflated as it was with memories of wartime blockades. (Thousands of Germans had died from malnutrition and disease because of them, after all.) AND HERE’S THE CRITICAL PART. Mulder asks: What effects did League sanctions have on countries deemed intransigent? Were they made to change their ways and conform to the demands of the international body? In other words, could the political aims of sanctions (prevention of war; peaceful resolutions to conflicts) be achieved through their use or the threat of their use? 

The answer is: sort of. (But mostly, no).

 
THE CURIOUS CASE OF FASCIST ITALY’S invasion of Ethiopia (Abyssinia) in 1935 is a case in point. Prime Minister of Italy, Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, desired to expand his country's domains and make it a significant player on the world scene.  He came to covet the fertile lands and resources and strategic location of the North African country of Ethiopia. 

 

But Mussolini knew that if he engaged in hostile, expansionist activities, the League of Nations would move to impose sanctions on him.

 

BLOCKADES, as I have said before, were a real spectre in the minds of revanchist politicians in the years following WWI. It should be noted the League was created during the 1919 Paris Peace Talks and its main enforcement mechanism was its ability to call for and co-ordinate sanctions, boycotts, and blockades of countries that warred against their neighbours, other than in self-defence. 

 

PROVISIONS FOR UPPING-THE-ANTE and using member states’ militaries and navies to enforce sanction protocols were possible—on paper at least—though how feasible such a request might be remained a good question. Most countries had demobilized after the war and military budgets were greatly reduced so finding the forces to do the job was always an issue. Thus, the use of League-sponsored military enforcement of sanctions was never seriously put to the test in the years following France’s withdrawal of its troops from Germany in the 1920s.

 

In that instance, UNDER LEAGUE AUSPICES, France had garrisoned Germany’s Rhineland from 1923-25 to enforce German compliance in making war reparations, as per their obligations as signatories to the Paris Peace Treaty.⁵ MULDER makes the point that sanctions—even those contemplated by the glorified “talk-shop” that the League of Nations became—carried weight, with threats of their use looming larger in the imagination than what was possible in reality. As a flexible, enforceable mechanism for gaining the compliance of transgressors to League charter rules, when push came to shove, they weren’t up to the job. League enforcers focused on financial sanctions to prevent aggression. Timing and intensity of their protocols was critical. Mulder quotes the 1936 report issued by the Advisory Committee on Trading and Blockade in Time of War (UK):

 

 “…the deterrent effects upon Italy of the sanctions policy adopted were negligible, chiefly because the Ethiopian resistance collapsed before the sanctions had attained their full effect and also because Italy was able, by anticipatory accumulation and evasion of the economic pressure placed upon her, to find sufficient stocks to meet her military requirements.” (ATB)

 

MUSSOLINI, wary of blockades and what they could do to the Italian economy and war effort, sought to find alternative sources of raw materials and food. He decided Ethiopia was where he could acquire both, allowing him to remain economically independent should the global system turn against him. THEREFORE, he moved to invade the North African country as quickly as possible before League sanctions began to bite. And he was successful.

 

BOTH JAPAN AND GERMANY IN THE 1930s were conscious of the threat of League sanctions, and Mulder tells us how both countries developed alternative sources for raw materials and food. For example, German scientists developed the Haber-Bosch process to produce synthetic ammonia, used in making fertilizer, which would allow Germany to be self-sufficient in food.

 

UP UNTIL THEN, naturally occurring fertilizers, like South American shorebird guano deposits, were used in world agriculture. Meanwhile in Asia, JAPAN made plans to shift its dependence on American oil to Indonesia so it would be protected from future sanctions when the Americans turned off the spigot.

MULDER SUGGESTS the threat of sanctions themselves had the unexpected effect of—not deterring aggression, but rather—prompting countries targeted for sanctions to prepare for war by first insulating their economies from the impact of sanctions. Expansionist states like Italy, Germany, and Japan, all autarchic now with the rise of nativist, authoritarian governments in the post-war era, increasingly desired to be self-sufficient and free from treaty constraints and international obligations that challenged their autocracies and imperialist agendas. 

 

AS THEIR AMBITIONS GREW, so did the threat of looming sanctions. Future interruptions of their supply-chains, their imports and exports, finance, insurance, trade, and manufacturing prompted them to seek self-sufficiency as quickly as possible, so they would have the resources to launch their military campaigns. Such societies are called "autarkies."⁶ Thus,  fascist regimes of the 1930s went from mandates of  self-rule and authoritarianism to ones of self-sufficiency and independence from the world community, largely prompted by threats of sanctions from the League of Nations. One might consider this a kind of "boomerang" effect, with tragic consequences for everyone in the end.

 

AND I WILL END THIS POST HERE, as I’ve gone on much longer than I intended. In his conclusions, Mulder makes the case for a type of conflict resolution mechanism that doesn’t rely on coercive methods (i.e., negative sanctions), be they military interventions or financial penalties to prevent wars or to end them. The use of financial sanctions by the League of Nations in the post-WWI era did not prevent Italy from invading Ethiopia in 1935. Nor did they prevent Germany and Japan from later launching their own wars of aggression. MULDER MAKES THE CASE that it was the threat of sanctions that persuaded the militarist, revanchist regimes of the 1930s to pursue a dangerous, autarkic course of self-sufficiency and territorial conquest. Or at least to act sooner than they might have otherwise.

IN ADDITION, he adds, sanctions can have the effect of rallying target populations against those wielding “the big stick”, by goading them into much stronger support for their governments, however authoritarian they may be. While blockades, financial sanctions and so on obviously did affect the belligerents' ability to conduct their wars, they neither prevented the wars from starting nor were their effects on the Germany and Japan during Second World War  as effective as planners envisioned. 

 

TODAY, ANYONE LOOKING with a clear eye upon the current spate of sanctions madness must wonder how we've reached the point where the inmates are now running the asylum! With thousands of sanctions on individuals, organizations, and states, what do we have to show for it? Have they prevented wars or ended aggression?

The American neoconservative think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations states that economic sanctions are used to:   

 

“…to coerce, deter, punish, or shame entities that endanger their interests or violate international norms of behavior. Sanctions have been used to advance a range of foreign policy goals, including counterterrorism, counternarcotics, non-proliferation, democracy and human rights promotion, conflict resolution, and cybersecurity.” (J. Masters. 12/08/19) 

 

WHEN THE RUBBER HIT THE ROAD, when they needed most to count, financial sanctions after the First World War did not prevent Italy from going to war with Ethiopia. And they likely spurred Germany and Japan into arming and “fire-walling” their economies more quickly. WITH NO EFFECTIVE TOOLS to manage conflict and ease tensions among large, competing nations, war became all but inevitable. While the threat of sanctions might have been enough to cower smaller countries, powerful nations like Italy were not so constrained. And Germany and Japan? ‘Nuff said.

 

TODAY, Russia is too large, has too many resources, too many ways to fight off financial sanctions. It is hubris on the part of European and American elites to think that sanctions will work to significantly alter Russia from its course of action. The West’s sanctions war with Russia is failing miserably. Instead, it’s boomeranging around to cripple “allied” economies in ways that seem right out of a Keystone Kops car chase scene! Furthermore, how does sanctioning Russia into the next millennium provide any kind of off-ramp, politically? Years prior to its war in Ukraine, Russia was already one of the most sanctioned countries on earth. Pray tell: What on Gaia's good green earth did that accomplish?! Was Russia supposed to just fold up its tent and vamoose? Where was the diplomacy in all that time?  Where were the diplomats? 

 

And where are the voices of reason today? All I see is a long line of clown cars going round and round! (And since I’m from Canada, I note one of the loudest, most obnoxious of them has a red maple leaf painted on the hood!)

WHERE ARE THE POSITIVE SANCTIONS Mulder talks about? Where is the aid? The trade? In particular, the diplomatic engagements? They’re MIA and have been for some time. I'LL END IT HERE with Mulder’s closing remarks because he says it better than I can:

 

“The economic weapon may be a form of politics by other means. But ultimately, stitching animosity [Italics mine--Ed.] into the fabric of international affairs and human exchange is of limited use in changing the world” (297)

 

 

Cheers, Jake.

___________________________   

  

* It's a war that could have been avoided if the Minsk Accords had been honored by Ukraine and its European “guarantors”. The 2014-15 agreement had as its main component a promise by Ukraine that it would not seek NATO membership. Additionally, Ukraine would grant two Donbass provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk, greater autonomy within a federated state system. Ukraine failed to live up to its side of the bargain and instead began a lengthy campaign of shelling the (ethnically Russian) provinces to break their independence movements. Ukrainian troop deployments along the Donbas region borders suggested to Russia that Ukraine meant to invade the breakaway provinces, thus prompting Russia’s February 2022 “Special Military Operation (SOP)” to protect the predominately Russian speaking enclaves. [A further development that bears watching are referendums currently being held in the two breakaway provinces and two other regions. Up for debate is whether to join Russia. If they declare for joining the Federation--and many commentators think they will--then the "gloves come off", so to speak, with Russia now defending its own territory if Ukraine attacks against the Donbass region continue. 

More than ever, we need the intercession of calm, thoughtful diplomacy on all sides. Where are the “A” teams?]

       

1.   AS OF THIS WRITING, Russian President Putin has announced a partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists to increase troop levels in Ukraine.

2.   ONE is reminded of the INFAMOUS comments made by Madeline Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State (1997-2001) during the Clinton administration who in a 1998 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl said the following, in reference to the decade long sanctioning of Iraq after the First Gulf War of 1990:  

LS: “We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”

MA: “I think that is a very hard choice," Albright answered, "but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”

3.   AND THE QUESTION WE ALL MUST DECIDE is whether it was indeed worth it. Did the sanctions succeed? How’s Iraq today? Or Libya? Or Ukraine, for that matter? Success stories one and all, surely? Stable and prosperous nations? Or something else?

4.   I HAVEN’T MENTIONED the role “positive” sanctions made in dispute resolution i.e., supplying one side of a conflict with military, financial, political, etc. supports. My general impression of sanctions’ history is one of: "stick first, then carrot". I believe Mulder would say the use of positive sanctions has been under-utilized. Though to my mind, the massive amount of weapons supplied to Ukraine by NATO and the West seems counter-productive. How does keeping this bloody conflict going benefit anyone? (Except for the MIC and Neocon politicos in the United States and their familars, of course.

5.   IN THIS CASE, France 'blockaded' German coal and iron ore mines. (They militarily occupied the Ruhr Valley.) Shipments from there would normally have gone to German industries or for export. Instead, the French army sent the raw materials into France, as payment in kind for overdue war reparations.

6.   THOSE GREEKS! They had a word for just about every dang thing!

 

 

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times, Oxford Publications. London, 2008. Print.

Mulder, Nicholas. The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War. Yale University Press. New Haven, CT. 2022. Print.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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