Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

I used to believe strongly in financial sanctions over war but I'm becoming more skeptical. Markets and industry are a very hard thing to constrain at a global scale. To do it effectively you basically encourage a giant financial surveillance state and need put huge pressure on partner countries - who often don't even implement it meaningfully. You make business harder for everyone and create lucrative black market organize crime business.

Military action is appearing more preferable to that.

For example:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxk454kxz8o

> In the wake of the February 2022 invasion, Ukraine's allies imposed sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons. The US and UK banned Russian oil and gas, while the EU banned Russian seaborne crude imports, but not gas.

> Despite this, by 29 May, Russia had made more than €883bn ($973bn; £740bn) in revenue from fossil fuel exports since the start of the full-scale invasion, including €228bn from the sanctioning countries, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

> The lion's share of that amount, €209bn, came from EU member states.

Meaning 3 years into the war Europe is still sending more $$ to Russia for gas than they send Ukraine in aid

25 years ago, IR scholar Dan Drezner wrote the book _The Sanctions Paradox_ which tried to explain, in an IR theory sort of way, why sanctions are used so often and achieve so little- they don't overthrow governments, they rarely even manage to make governments stop doing the things we don't like.

He recently revisited that in FP magazine (https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/09/10/sanctions-paradox-russi...) arguing for keeping sanctions on Russia even though they clearly aren't going to coerce Russia into abandoning their war in Ukraine. The first reason is to re-enforce the global norm against territorial expansion. We've managed to go 80-odd years with a reasonable global norm against redrawing borders, and it is worth a lot to demonstrate that we- the global community- do not acquiesce. And the other reason is to weaken their economy for the grinding war of attrition that is currently happening, and not make territorial expansion easy for them.

Yeah, it seems hard to say military intervention is preferable to increased accounting and recordkeeping requirements. Or maybe sheltered is a better way to put. Which is a good thing! For most people alive on Earth right now haven't had to deal with wars of territorial expansion. Yes wars exist, and yes territorial expansion by military might conitnues, and military occupations from the US certainly don't help. But overall we're in a point of relative stability.

The thing is, sanctions damage both the sanctioned nation and the sanctioner.

I'm not really optimistic about western Europe's willingness to absorb damage in it economy in order to damage Russia. France's government expenditures are 55% of GDP, much of it financed by borrowing. That's the level maintained by major powers in the world wars. Can the French state demand more from a private sector that's funding the equivalent of a total war?

Worse yet, western European politics gives you the strong impression all these expenditures are necessary to prevent the election of a pro-Russian government or a bloody revolution.

Hence why sanctions seem to be something of a joke.

Military operations would do that as well. Ukraine is destroying Russia's oil and gas industry right now. Sanctions or not, that oil and gas is becoming unavailable. Either way, preventing innocent Ukrainians being slaughtered with your money will do harm to your economy; continuing to get cheap oil from Russia inevitably pays for evil.

Might as well do whatever is most effective, which is likely to be harsh sanctions followed by military action to fully enforce them.

The same Dan Dexter that pushed for the Iraq war? Should we treat his opinions as such?

I was thinking the same thing. The entire war in Iraq seems to contradict any putatively held ideals around the idea of not redrawing borders.

While an incompetent failure and eventually downright vile, it was hardly an annexation.

> 25 years ago, IR scholar Dan Drezner wrote the book _The Sanctions Paradox_ which tried to explain, in an IR theory sort of way, why sanctions are used so often and achieve so little- they don't overthrow governments, they rarely even manage to make governments stop doing the things we don't like.

Sanctions are a negative-rate compounding system. Sarah Paine from the US Naval War College:

> People look at sanctions and go, “Oh, they don't work because you don't make whoever's annoying you change whatever they're doing.” What they do is they suppress growth so that whoever's annoying you over time, you're stronger and they're weaker. And the example of the impact of sanctions is compare North and South Korea. It's powerful over several generations.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcVSgYz5SJ8&t=29m03s

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_C._M._Paine

And what difference have North Korean sanctions made geopolitically? North and South Korea are nowhere near a peaceful resolution, and North Korea has advanced its nuclear arsenal significantly, with a repertoire that could even hit US coastal cities.

North Korean citizens have now normalized to poverty and destitution after generations of sanctions. There are quite a few of them working alongside the South Asian labour force in the Middle East, engaged in slavish labour that the Gulf nations are often criticized for.

SK has a stronger military than NK and twice the population. Of course a large part of that is internal economic failure due to central planning.

The stronger military doesn't matter when NK has nuclear weapons, which deter any "unification efforts". Sure, South Koreans are doing great, but what difference did sanctions make to the lives of North Koreans?

You seem to be looking for some other outcome. NK with the economy of SK would have been a nuclear threat decades ago and would be stockpiling more nuclear weapons than the US has given their relative GDP allocations..

Would it be nice if sanctions were equivalent to invasion and does that matter to the argument that they are better to implement than do nothing?

North Korea has no dearth of access to nuclear weapons. They get enough raw material from countries other than Canada and the tech they need from China, Pakistan and now Russia. So no, sanctions have not harmed their nuclear programme.

But what they've done is worsen the lot for the layman North Korean.

North Korea was already a nuclear threat decades ago. Where they were lagging behind was in ICBMs that could reach the continental United States.

North Korea's nuclear program has been slow and you give financial ability as a way out of it.. Decades ago is still decades late, then there is the dollar short aspect of their program.

I still have no idea what you think is an alternative that would have made a North Korea with South Korea's economy a great thing for arms control.

Keeping North Korea poor has all been waste of time unless our goal was to have 75 years of "wasted time" before a potentially uncontrollable escalation with China.

> We've managed to go 80-odd years with a reasonable global norm against redrawing borders, and it is worth a lot to demonstrate that we- the global community- do not acquiesce

The previous Russian imperial project, the Soviet Union, ended 35 years ago, not 80. It's easy to overlook that they forcibly redrew borders and kept them redrawn for decades (and still to this day do keep some territories they conquered in imperialist wars when they were still allied with Nazi Germany).

It's not like ww2 where you have increasingly fewer people who were old enough to consciously experience it. It's very likely that most people on this forum were around for the fall of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe from Russian imperialism.

The USSR split up into 15 smaller states 35 years ago. But those 15 smaller states combined are exactly the same territory as the former USSR- none of her (many, many) neighbors took the opportunity to reach in and fiddle with borders, to redraw this or that boundary that they had wanted, to try and take back parts of their former country that Stalin had stolen back in 1945.

No one is saying that states will never collapse, will never split up, will never secede. But the fact that no existing state tried to take advantage of the confusion in the USSR and gain revenge for an ancient wrong? That was the result of this global norm, which held up even as the USSR (and Yugoslavia) fell apart. And that is a very good thing.

> We've managed to go 80-odd years with a reasonable global norm against redrawing borders, and it is worth a lot to demonstrate that we- the global community- do not acquiesce.

Cool story bro. Almost like Kosovo never happened.

>> We've managed to go 80-odd years with a reasonable global norm against redrawing borders

What are the current borders of Yugoslavia?

Did anybody in the west argue that redrawing the borders of Yugoslavia was against global norms?

Did you?

Or British India for that matter.

The federal entity Yugoslavia ceased to exists, but the borders are actually the same as they were in socialist Yugoslavia.

There is no 80-year norm against redrawing borders. 80 years ago, Crimea was a part of the Russian SSR - now it's part of a free and independent Ukraine.

Eastern Europe looks a heck of a lot different, as did British India.

In all fairness, 80 years ago, the world was on the cusp of a massive border redraw, but the Phillipine Islands were still a US territory.

> and it is worth a lot to demonstrate that we- the global community- do not acquiesce

The “global community” you’re referring to consists of America and its client states—only around 1/8th of the world’s population.

I don't know what the situation is now. but one of the more surreal aspects of the war was how the gas pipelines through Ukraine were kept open. Ukraine desperately needed the transit fees. and Russia desperately needed to sell it's gas. So here they were, in the middle of a war, still doing business with each other.

They also could not anger donor EU countries sucking on the far end of the pipe. So time was provided for them to switch to LNG from the US and Qatar.

The reason for that is simple - Russia started its invasion _after_ making Europe dependent on its gas. In Ukraine a lot of people predicted that the war is inevitable after the latest north stream is finished.

The reduction of purchase of gas from Russia did significantly impacted energy prices across EU to the point of populist far-right pro-russia governments rising in popularity (even though that is not the only reason).

So Russia and China has a long term strategy of subverting the west and we are just reacting when there are no good options available.

But, sanctions do work. The problem is that the economic power of the west is comparable these days to "global north".

Russia did not make Europe dependent on them for gas. Europe freely made that choice, even going so far as to do away with existing alternatives like nuclear in Germany. Trump even warned them. They had a wonderful time laughing at him while proclaiming the ignorant orange buffoon didn't understand Europe. Then Russia invaded Ukraine. Everyone then pretended Europe didn't make itself vulnerable while also ridiculing anyone who dared sound an alarm about the potential danger.

Europe wasn't forced. Europe chose and chose freely. Europe chose poorly.

If you're referring to the Nordstream pipeline, then Biden approved to have it blown as a calendestine operation. The EU parliament has admitted this.

Europe did choose poorly, but it's not like the U.S. is an amicable partner. They want to sell their gas at their preferred prices as well.

The EU parliament has "admitted" no such thing. But it would be great if the US provided some clandestine support for destroying Russian infrastructure. Burn it all.

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explos...

Yes, but if you remember, the consensus was that countries with economic ties don't go to wars. There were no illusions about Russia, but the idea was to tame it by making it prosper through trade with "rich EU".

A lot of people were calling this strategy stupid, but that was the consensus for multiple decades.

You can also tell that the strategy with China failed in exactly the same way.

So I think the world will be a very different place in the next millennia.

>Military action is appearing more preferable to that.

Great call. Feel free to head to the front lines and put your life on the line. Or should only other people do that?

Or encourage buying from alternative hydrocarbon suppliers, like Canada, Australia and the U.S.

Russia is the third largest oil producing country, this plan was never going to work because oil is a fungible resource. Sure you can stop buying from Russia and buy from someone else, but that just kicks off a game of musical chairs where everyone is backfilling from someone else and eventually _someone_ is buying from Russia to make everything whole. If Russia was some insignificant player the world could have frozen them out entirely but they simply produce too much oil for the world to absorb the loss of all of it.

Everyone is aware that Russian crude oil will still enter the market through various channels regardless of sanctions. The point of sanctions is just to slightly reduce Russian government revenue. In combination with other measures this provides some leverage in negotiations over a peace settlement.

> The point of sanctions is just to slightly reduce Russian government revenue. In combination with other measures this provides some leverage in negotiations over a peace settlement.

How's that working out? Apparently someone miscalculated.

Great. Russian revenue from gas and oil fell considerably since the start of the war.

How many years does it typically take for crippling sanctions to bring a country crawling to the bargaining table?

> The point of sanctions is just to slightly reduce Russian government revenue. In combination with other measures this provides some leverage in negotiations over a peace settlement.

The words you apparently missed from what GP wrote are: "slightly reduce" and "some leverage". Nobody said that sanctions end wars or bring about peace negotiations on their own.

Be careful of the goal. Sanctions are unlikely to directly bring someone to the bargaining table. Sanctions make is harder to get the things Russia needs to fight way. It will take years to catch up, but Russia has a smaller economy. Russia has mostly stopped using tanks because they can only make a few of them (1-3 per day depending on what source you ask), and they have no ability to make more, sanctions are part of this.

The real question is what if there were none - Russia would have more money and thus have done a lot more damage to Ukraine - but there is no way to measure damage they could have done.

The idea is to incessantly put pressure on their economy until it breaks or adapts. At which point you put more pressure until they become the DPRK or Iran.

Right, that would be a good outcome. North Korea and Iran are annoyances but not existential threats and they have minimal capability to project power far outside their borders. The goal should be to cripple and impoverish Russia through a sustained policy of maximum cruelty that includes everything short of kinetic attacks.

De-sanction Iran and Venezuela too, before sanctioning Russian oil.

The only other options are psychological or kinetic.

Why not tariffs? Basically the continuous version of discrete sanctions, that wouldn't encourage as much routing around. Tax Russian oil/gas at the max point in the Laffer (-esque) curve, with all the revenue flowing as direct aid to Ukraine.

(I know 'tariff' has become a dirty word these days to due the obvious abuse, but I swear I'm making this comment in good faith)

Europe kept buying Russian oil and gas, because other sources could not come online quickly enough. Tariffs would have only made energy even more expensive than it already was. Now it's mostly Hungary and Slovakia buying Russian energy, as well as some LNG imports. Those two countries are not too keen on sanctioning Russia, especially in ways that would hurt their economy. Any attempts to impose tariffs on energy imports from Russia would have led to a major internal crisis in the EU.

> Europe kept buying Russian oil and gas, because other sources could not come online quickly enough

They did do sanctions, so I don't know what you're trying to argue.

> Tariffs would have only made energy even more expensive than it already was.

Not as expensive as outright sanctions, of course.

As I said - sanctions are discrete (yes or no), whereas tariffs are a continuous knob.

There were essentially no sanctions impacting Russian energy exports to Europe. Those would have hurt Europe much more than Russia. If you can't export something, the damage is proportional to the volume of the exports. But if you don't have enough energy, your entire economy suffers.

The increases in energy prices mostly came from voluntary attempts to find alternatives to Russian energy and from Russia constraining the supply.

Why would Russia voluntarily give up money by constraining the supply during the war? That makes absolutely no sense.

Coersion. A comparatively small amount of revenue being given up could scare Europe away from supplying Ukraine with materiel. The Russians put out ads about how Europe would be freezing through winter.

The US already started to pressure these two. We'll see how it goes. Ukraine could always blow up or sabotage the pipelines or some of the pumping stations if they think it's appropriate, either in Russia or on their own territory.

It’s frankly a pretty bold bet to count on these pipelines existing for years to come. It might have been smarter for Hungary and Slovakia to scramble for other sources of energy, starting March 2022.

> Why not tariffs? Basically the continuous version of discrete sanctions

There are still some qualitative differences: With sanctions, you'll know something dodgy has occurred when you find a pallet of My Little Putin dolls traveling through the port, you don't need to call up a bunch of lawyers and accountants.

That said, I readily admit that oil is a lot more disguise-able and fungible.

Because suddenly the oil isn't Russian anymore but Indian or something like that. Here's[1] an article going into how after the 2014 sanctions suddenly a lot of tropical fruits started growing in Belarussia, or how the landlocked country suddenly started exporting tons of Belarusian shrimp.

[1]: https://east-center.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Belarus-E...

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