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Stephen Rodriguez's avatar

This reminds me of an old adage about government. It goes something like this.

“Oh my god that thing that’s happening is terrible. We should do something!! Well, this is something, so let’s do this!” Without putting in much more thought than that.

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Matt Osborne's avatar

As a means to change regimes, sanctions don't work on their own, much as air power cannot win wars all by itself. But that is not what's happening here. Wartime economic sanctions are VERY different from peacetime sanctions. None of your examples are the one I would use.

I would look instead at Germany 1914-1918, which is the *original* economic sanction program. It took four years to work -- in fact, it took until 1916 for the British Foreign Office to even make the blockade effective -- but it did work as intended. Germany eventually ran out of ammo.

Although there were people who sold it as a way to make Germans overthrow their own leaders, that is not what the blockade was designed to do. Putin, like Kaiser Wilhelm II, now has a limited window to invade his neighbors with modern weapons. No such limits will apply to Ukraine. THAT is what sanctions are supposed to accomplish.

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