STUART HAYWARD: Western sanctions are a pyrrhic victory

Western sanctions against Russia for its Ukraine war have caused misery for the man in the street, and have done nothing to hinder or deter president Vladimir Putin.

In early March the US government, Visa and MasterCard, as well as the EU parliament, imposed the harshest economic restrictions on Russia in living memory. The imposition thereof was reckless in that these decisions took no heed of historical fact; sanctions do nothing to deter bad actors at the top — and have a devastating effect on the poor and middle class.

Millions of Russians who have saved in roubles have seen their wealth nearly halve overnight. At the time of writing the rouble has devalued by 45% against the dollar since the imposition of sanctions. Spot crude oil prices have soared 15%-25% since the Swift and US import ban sanctions, and this has had a profound detrimental effect on an oil-dependent planet.

The West usually imposes sanctions on small rogue state economies like North Korea, with little to no effect on their own citizens. However, Russia Inc is not an insignificant backwater. It is the 11th largest economy in the world, with a 2021 GDP of $1.79-trillion. It produces 11% of the world’s wheat, 10% and 12.5% of international oil and natural gas production respectively, and is the fifth-largest iron ore producer. Draconian sanctions would thus necessarily upset the global order.

Russia is also by far the largest country on earth, making up 11% of the world’s land mass, so a weakened Russia is thus of major detriment to geopolitical stability. The imposition of sanctions by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) countries is thus a pyrrhic victory in that it achieves a moral purpose but causes more economic and political harm to Nato countries and the entire world than it does to Putin’s war effort.

There is no disputing that Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine deserves censure, but it is pointless to impose sanctions when this remedy has in the past proven toothless against Putin. Think back to Russia’s invasions of Crimea, Georgia and Chechnya, where Western sanctions had little to no impact. Sanctions designed to deter Putin have only ever harmed everyday Russians, and for the first time in history are severe enough to harm the entire planet.

The malicious elite like Putin are not affected because they don’t play by the rules that would allow sanctions to cause hindrance. We have seen this movie before in the brutal Zimbabwean and Venezuelan dictatorships. Emmerson Mnangagwa and Nicolas Maduro’s vicious regimes have brought on toothless Western sanctions that did nothing to force reform, to the detriment of only their citizens. It is always the man in the street who suffers most, and yet this blunt morality sword is repeatedly swung by the West in the naive belief that tyrannical dictators will magically change course when sanctions impoverish the people they so callously subjugate anyway.

There is scant evidence that Nato’s drastic sanctions have had any effect on Putin’s war machine. The West would be naive to think Putin did not consider harsh sanctions a possibility, he is clearly sanction-resistant because the bombs keep dropping as his troops advance towards Kyiv. The sanctions have ironically also likely boosted the Kremlin domestically by confirming Russian state media propaganda that Nato is the aggressor. After all, it is Nato’s sanctions that are impoverishing everyday Russians by causing the rouble to sink and crippling banks and businesses.

Uncensored free media and Facebook and Twitter were banned as of March 4. With ordinary Russians cut off from Western media they are more likely to believe the lies on state TV, cementing Putin’s popularity and vindicating his two decade long position that Nato is the villain. Most importantly, sanctions will justify his decision to invade Ukraine due to the fabricated threat posed by Ukraine joining Nato. The question is thus whether it was worth sanctioning Russia at all in this situation. I think not, particularly considering that Russia is a big economic player and possesses a vast nuclear warhead arsenal.

Nato is (sensibly) not willing to risk nuclear holocaust over Ukraine by putting boots on the ground, but it is not out of the question that sanctions may embolden Putin towards a nuclear confrontation anyway. It was incredibly naive of Nato and the West to assume sanctions would deter him. He is an iron-fisted dictator; it doesn’t matter if his local Russian support wanes (which it hasn’t) because Russia is a democracy only in name. Mad Vlad will remain in power irrespective.

Nato has at least done something right by intelligently interfering in the war via the supply of weapons to Ukraine. This makes sense because it is in the entire planet’s interests for Ukraine to humiliate Russia in military defeat. Supplying weapons to Ukraine also does not harm the common man; it only stands to humiliate Putin, which is exactly the sort of message that must be sent to autocrats such as China’s Xi Jinping regarding Taiwan. The annexation of sovereign nations should not be tolerated. If wealthy nations do not militarily support invaded countries it would set a dangerous precedent. In the context of the Ukraine invasion sanctions have made a bad situation far worse, as they almost always do.

Western politicians and corporations are today elected and supported on a woke left-wing ticket, where decisions are based on a perverse obsession with the moral high-ground — without caring for consequence. Sanctions are an effective way for politicians and corporations to appear to be taking tough, morally upstanding measures, when in fact they do nothing to deter or stop the tyrants at the top. Their moral posturing is in fact wholly immoral, because it brings misery on people who have nothing to do with the conduct deserving of sanction.

In this case it is the democratic voter and consumer base of Nato countries who have pressured leaders and corporations to implement sanctions, without realising that their morality crusade will hurt them more than Putin. Winston Churchill was spot on: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter”

• Hayward is an advocate at the Johannesburg Bar.