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Comment by Keirmot | Hacker News Reader

Sanctions have a theoretical basis behind them. In the Western Political Philosophical Canon, leaders and elites are expected to strive for the Common Good. From that perspective, sanctions aren’t meant as “torture for fun,” (as you put it) but as a way of creating pressure so governments change their behavior without having to resort to war. They’re basically a tool to raise the cost of bad actions and make it more attractive to adjust course.

At the same time, sanctions also work in other ways: they punish governments that break international norms, they send a signal to the world about what’s considered unacceptable, and they reaffirm shared values. That’s why they’re still used despite the harsh effects on ordinary people. They aren’t a perfect solution, but in Western thinking their role is to combine pressure, deterrence and symbolism, rather than just collective punishment for its own sake.

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The poster above was pointing out that this is a double standard. You don't expect a US citizen to risk their livelihood to help an Iranian, but you then expect an Iranian citizen to risk their livelihood AND life to topple a regime that is doing things that the USA doesn't like.

So, you either take personal responsibility for enforcing sanctions yourself, or you admit that sanctions are a form of collective punishment for no reason. You can't have it both ways.

This goes into what is meant by "expected". There isn't a strong expectation on any one Iranian citizen to risk their livelihood and life. There is small encouragement, that they may choose to act on or ignore.

I don't think that's the premise, though. The idea is that the sanctioned government will, under pressure from the sanctions, change without the need for regular citizens to start some sort of armed uprising. (Though certainly an armed uprising is a possible outcome.)

Maybe the government will do this because the sanctions hurt their people enough to the point where things are too unstable for their liking. Maybe their economy becomes so trashed that the quality of the leaders' lives is impacted too much. Etc.

I don't think anyone in the West genuinely believes that sanctions will lead to citizen uprisings and overthrown governments. At least not after decades where no such successful uprisings have taken place in long-sanctioned countries like Iran.

But it should also be pretty clear that sanctions on countries like Iran aren't causing their governments to choose to change their behavior either. But I think arguably sanctions on Russia since they invaded Ukraine have had a useful effect. While the war hasn't stopped, it's possible that sanctions have slowed down Russia's progress quite a bit.

Not sure what the alternative is, though, aside from just giving up, lifting sanctions, and letting things develop where they may.

>It's possible that sanctions have slowed down Russia's progress quite a bit.

They did slow down all kinds of progress in Russia except the progress towards the full blown fascism and the progress of the military complex at the expence of its citizens

It is far less of double standard than what you think. The key question is the legitimacy and mandate of the government. Western governments can claim legitimacy and mandate through democratic process (even if it is not perfect), which forms a social contract for their citizens to follow their laws. But if government is tyrannical and does not enjoy legitimacy then it's very different situation

I've never understood how that legitimacy extends to foreign policy though, especially the "coercive" kind.

Like, democratic elections obviously give the elected legitimacy to govern the populace that just elected them. But sanctions (or military interventions or wars) by their very definition are enacted on a different population, that had no democratic means to influence that decision.

UN sanctions are at least somewhat different because they are supposed to be decided by vote of the constituent countries.

But US sanctions are essentially "some people elected the President because they liked his views on domestic tax policy or trans people, therefore he gains the right to call airstrikes on some place halfway across the world or forbid the entire world from doing business with that place".

It makes no sense.

I think Western leaders are clear headed enough to understand that sanctions do not cause people to raise against their leaders. This has been known since bombing Germany and Japan in WWII (a different, more violent kind of sanctions). However sanctions weaken the adversary technologically, economically, and ultimately militarily. This is a pragmatic reason to enforce sanctions on the adversary.

That's reasonable for a "short term" military conflict, but if you keep a country under sanctions for decade and deliberately reduce the quality of life in that country, that's essentially a message to the population that they don't count.

The leadership of countries under sanctions rarely change their behavior due to sanctions. However the effect on the population of the countries is that they turn against the countries applying the sanctions. It becomes easier for the leaders to sell the sanctions to their populace as the enemy action. If the West is expecting any revolution due to sanctions, I have not seen it.

However, sanctions do have a symbolic value. And I also can't think of anything else short of military action to express displeasure.

Sanctions diminish a counties capacity to wage war.

Cite? Russia and Iran seem to not be giving too much of a shit. NK became a nuclear power under sanctions.

Would Russia perhaps have already conquered Ukraine without sanctions? Would Iran have destroyed Israel by now without sanctions? Would NK have become a nuclear power much earlier, and have a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons today, were it not for sanctions?

I don't know the answers to those questions, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was "yes".

Russia lost (in a real sense), when their blitzkrieg of Kiev failed. From that point on, it’s just how much they turn the crank on the meat grinder that is trench warfare. It’s the nature of the bet that is inherent in Blitzkrieg. Ukraine/Russia is about who is going to lose more after that, not who can win. No one can win anymore.

Sanctions or lack thereof definitely impacts quality of life, but Putin put everything on a war economy footing pretty quickly anyway, and in that environment (especially in Russia), it’s suffering all the way down. And Russia excels at Suffering. Russia has oil too, and plenty of minerals, so if anything I expect by now they’re just getting stronger (economically), barring Ukraine wrecking their shit from time to time with a well placed drone strike.

Iran/Israel is an interesting question, but near as I can tell, Iran doesn’t really want to destroy Israel. They just want to make them as miserable as possible, and show they can ‘do harm’ to them when they need to prop up domestic support among the hardliners.

Israel provides a good scapegoat for the Iranian leadership.

With Israel gone, who is the Ayatollah going to use as the big bad? The Great Satan (USA) isn’t as tractable a target when they don’t have a designated ‘local’ they can go after, and if Iran actually meaningfully hurt the US (nuked the White House?), Iran is glass regardless of how otherwise strong they are.

NK got sanctions because they love playing the crazy-dude-with-a-gun-that-just-wants-a-handout, which is also why they eventually got nukes. They might have gotten nukes a little faster without sanctions, but sanctions definitely gave the hardliners huge leverage in the country. Hard to be friendly with the west (as a civilian!) when the west is literally openly starving the country, even if the leadership of your country is egging them on eh?

Near as I can tell, the USSR fell because of jeans and rock and roll. So yes, I think the ‘good guy’ sanctions BS is ultimately self defeating.

It can work if someone is either a) in a tenuous economic position, and b) the ‘sanctioningish’ behavior is not existential.

But any good authoritarian would rather throw their entire population under the bus ‘for the greater good’ than give in on something important for them…

And countries know how to deal with being at war (generally), even if it’s a weird only-semi-economic one.

The USSR fell because its economic model didn't work and was a society steered by corrupt principles. Jeans and rock and roll "envy" was just a symptom. After having seen the effect of communism/russianism on post-soviet countries I'd rather take a nuclear bomb, it's better in the long term. Sanctions work but it depends what you are min-maxing because obviously some sanctions may hurt your own country/block.

Russia has had to sell oil at a steep discount, which has cut into their revenue significantly. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been frozen/seized that can't be used to fund the war effort. Modern war is not just "beans and bullets”, and Russia pays upwards of 10 times the price for key components it needs for missiles, aviation, UAVs, tanks, artillery, air defense, etc. as well as quality manufacturing equipment needed.

Russian industry is operating at only 81% capacity, largely due to labor shortages, which make sense considering that about 1% of its labor force join the military every other month. Russia is losing tank barrels, artillery barrels, and infantry fighting vehicles more than 10 times faster than it can manufacture new ones. It will likely never be able to obtain a third rotary forge, required for barrel manufacture, to expand its capacity. It has almost entirely cannibalized its old, defunct Soviet era stock. They are being kept afloat by China, NK, and Iran, but with a much-reduced capacity, and often much lower quality. For example, Russia relies on China for 70-80% of its microchips, but China is dumping defective microchips on them with a 40% failure rate.

Sanctions have absolutely had significant, direct, measurable impacts on Russia’s ability to wage war and sustain war.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/11/21/half-of-russias-ai... https://jamestown.org/program/russia-exhausts-soviet-era-arm... https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-where-are-russias-... https://archive.ph/c17pk https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/is-202... https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-sanctions-have-reshaped-ru... https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/comme... https://osintforukraine.com/publications/microchips https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/18/russia_china_semicond...

I’m not saying the sanctions haven’t hurt, rather that when the war was at its decisive point (the first few days) they did not exist/were immaterial. Now they’re just doing more damage in an already damaging (and unwinnable) situation.

The biggest sanctions were adopted after the war started (and then the West kept piling up new sanctions every few months).

Are you suggesting the West should have put these harsh sanctions before the war? My recollection of Dec 2021 and Jan/Feb 2022 were that the West was trying to avoid inciting the crazy Russian dictator: Biden had two tele conferences with Putin in December, there were three meetings in Jan (OSCE - Russia, NATO - Russia, Lavrov - Blinken)

And I do not think the situation is unwinnable for the West (it is probably unwinnable for Ukraine as it will not be able to get its territory back). Russia is getting weaker with every man it loses, every tank is destroyed, every young man/woman who decides to leave. I would be surprised if Western Europe will want to do business with Russia for a generation - which basically makes Russia China's vassal for the same period of time.

Russia will be in bad shape for decades. The West will be just fine.

The west is screwed too, because Russia is (and has been) doing everything it can to poison that well too - and widely succeeding.

Or do you think all this authoritarianism sprouting everything is just random coincidence?

It’s classic crabs in a bucket, which Russia has always been good at.

The West should have put boots on the ground in Ukraine before Russia invaded. That was the one thing that would have prevented the war. Hell, they should have had EU peacekeepers along the line of contact back in 2015.

The kind of sanctions that we've seen since then seem to be mostly about appearances, with EU trying to pretend that it "really cares" despite this epic failure of foreign policy.

I have seen no serious analysis saying that Russia losing the war has been basically inevitable since the first few weeks of the war. Russia is fighting a war of attrition now and has been for most of the war. Most analysis still assess Russia can attrite it's way to victory. Sanctions are important because even if Putin is willing to throw wave after wave of his own men to the slaughter (a million Russian casualties and counting), if they run out of vehicles or artillery barrels, they are kind of screwed.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-battlefield-woes-ukrai...

Russia is hollowing out its male population which was already under severe strain.

Even if Russia ‘wins’ the Ukraine war (takes all Ukrainian territory), it’s even more fucked than when it started demographically.

It’s also spent pretty much all of it’s currency reserves and destroyed it’s normal economy destroying all that ‘new’ land in a way it will be incredibly hostile to productive use for a generation+. Not counting insurgencies and rebellions.

The well is solidly poisoned, regardless of who ends up owning it.

Also known as a pyrrhic victory. Russia winning the war and Russia coming out on top, or coming out better than it started, are not the same thing.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think one aspect of sanctions that you are missing a bit is that they stifle growth (especially long-term) by forcing the victim to waste ressources on unwanted/inefficient industries or convoluted procurement.

Basically, you are hurting your own economy (non negligibly in the EU-Russia case for example!) to make sure that you outgrow the sanctioned opponent, making any future conflict more favorable for yourself.

There is a lot of evidence that this aspect works pretty well; even if you can sidestep the sanctions with middle-men or substitute local industry, this always comes with additional friction/costs (just consider German synth fuel industry during WW2-- that was an insane amount of ressources that could've gone into planes or tanks or somesuch instead).

For an example of sanctions directly effecting diplomatic outcomes, just consider Jordan over the Gulf wars: They stayed neutral during the first one (which Bush did NOT like), got sanctioned (without western citizens even noticing too much), suffered a lot from that, then during the second Iraq war they basically cooperated with the US (grudgingly!).

I think it is difficult to find many clear examples for this because sanctions typically mostly work as a threat, and being put in place is a kind of failure mode for them already.

How can Russia be economically stronger under sanctions? Before the war they were able to manufacture some goods (Volkswagen had a couple of factories. I think Unilever was making some washers/ dryers). This is all replaced by manufacturing of some weapons (which proven themselves so shitty in the war that no outside buyers want to buy them).

Russia went from selling their oil on the world market at competitive prices to selling to mostly 2 customers at heavily discounted prices. And Russia is going to use barter now because of financial sanctions on Russian oil buyers.

All Russian currency reserves are frozen, and the interest these reserves generate are given to Ukraine to buy weapons.

How is Russia economically better now than before Feb 2022?

It depends entirely on what you mean by ‘strength’, and ‘better’. Russia is ramping up its military industrial complex like no one’s business, for instance.

Manufacturing in general, actually.

Something which had essentially collapsed previously. Also, mining and other resource extraction - they’re necessarily rebuilding domestic production and becoming more independent.

Well, yeah, sure, they are building lots of shitty weapons. Meanwhile they cannot take over an adversary a third of its size. About resource extraction - the West stopped giving Russia extraction technology. Which means Russia is coasting on what they had up to 2022. Meaning in a few years Russia will do what it did in the 70s: over-extract its most productive fields. To see how that movie ended read Gaidar's Collapse of an Empire.

> Iran is not the only example in which sanctions have resulted in unintended consequences. Since 1970, unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. have achieved foreign policy goals in just about 13% of cases, according to one study. A recent Congressional Research report evaluating U.S. sanctions in Venezuela found that sanctions “exacerbated an ongoing economic and humanitarian crisis caused by government mismanagement and corruption that has promoted 7.7 million Venezuelans to flee.” U.S. sanctions also exacerbated humanitarian crises in North Korea, reported UNICEF, putting 60,000 vulnerable children at risk of starvation due to limited humanitarian aid.

https://washingtondc.jhu.edu/news/do-sanctions-actually-work...

Russia have gas shortages right now because their plants keep getting blown up and the needed spare parts are often western.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...

Main reason being that there are large and powerful countries that do not give a damn about sanctions.

Name one

China?

Russia?

No. Countries just will take money from their people. It diminishes people capacity to survive.

Both are true. Less access to materials, components, IP, and skilled labor all diminish a country's war fighting ability. There aren't unlimited funds you can take from citizens, and money you do take has effects on your labor force and talent pool.

Can't wage war effectively if you're starving.

On the whole, I’m inclined to agree, but didn’t South Africa eventually end apartheid because of sanctions?

Sanctions from individuals. The US did the opposite, and supported South Africa no matter what. Just like Israel - In both ways. Israel supported South Africa, and the US supported Israel. The dramatic sanctions against US citizens for refusing to buy from Israel and endorsing that people not buy from Israel are meant to prevent such a horrible thing as the fall of Apartheid from ever happening again.

This comment is mistaken. Many countries, including Japan from 1964, and eventually the US and UK, sanctioned SA officially. I doubt whether any boycott from individual US citizens had a serious economic effect compared to this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during...

You think sanctions on Russia are not working?

Honestly, their effect is diminished. After speaking with Russians living in there, day to day life hasn't been affected that much, after initial shock.

Trying to use sanctions against another major power isn't guaranteed to work as they can take the hit and pivot to internal industry(which happened), or trading with other major powers that do not sanction them(China).

Or some countries get around sanctions - like buying Russian gas/petroleum products through India - in a way this bypasses sanctions making them worthless.

Is it better than doing nothing? yes, of course. But Russia unfortunately is a major power - just due to sheer access to natural resources - and you can't just bully it into submission with weak sanctions that some EU countries ignore(petroleum case).

> After speaking with Russians living in there, day to day life hasn't been affected that much, after initial shock.

That sounds like a positive, though: if Russia's advance into Ukraine has been slowed by sanctions, but everyday Russians aren't affected too much, I'd consider that a huge win. We shouldn't be punishing regular people for the actions of a their dictatorship government that they can't control.

Problem is that ever since the sanctions from EU, our prices of EVERYTHING has increased by 3-6x. We are in an economic crisis, thanks to EU's sanctions.

Russia has had billions in oil money banked. It's mostly gone now.

It's working all right. These things take decades. Look at North Korea (first few years they grew faster than South Korea, and they had the more wealthy parts). Now their GDP per capita is around 600-1700 USD vs 33 000 USD in South Korea.

> After speaking with Russians living in there, day to day life hasn't been affected that much

Did you speak with folks from Moscow or St Petersburg or from different regions? Life in the top 2 cities is kept as normal as possible at all costs; that is part of the Putin's approach to handling the elites (you can keep living your comfortable lives as long as you stay out of politics).

But elsewhere the quality of life took a big hit. Even in second tier cities. At least that is what I am hearing. My 2c.

different regions, outside of Moscow. basically a second tier city.

I have friends and relatives living in various regions in central and south Russia, and most of them don't feel like their quality of life took a big hit. The main frustrations that I hear are from drone attacks and associated inconveniences, not so much anything economic.

Anecdotally I have also heard that many factory towns are booming because the factories are re-opened or expanded to fulfill all those military orders.

Sanctions have absolutely had significant, direct, measurable impacts on Russia’s ability to wage war and sustain war. As for regular people, it is hard to think it hasn't affected then, given that last year inflation was 9%, interest rates are 21%, and disposable income is down 20-30%. That feels like a lot of belt tightening.

As an russians who moved abroad I think sanctions positively affect Puttin so far. Because, he got a lot what he wanted but couldn't get without sanctions: - russian companies replaced majority of international companies. Many of IT companies growed 20-40% year by year - sanctions locked money inside of the country which help to build new everything - sanctions made boost of internal culture and patriotism. Which also increased popularity of government and reduced any alternative options.

And many more similar examples. Sanctions will hurt Russia in long term but not now. Because good sanctions requires to understand the country culture + execute only that hurt countries, which didn't do western countries.

Sanctions also helped them sell the "all the bad guys are ganging up on us, so we need tough measures" schtick.

> The leadership of countries under sanctions rarely change their behavior due to sanctions. However the effect on the population of the countries is that they turn against the countries applying the sanctions. It becomes easier for the leaders to sell the sanctions to their populace as the enemy action.

Counterpoint: South Africa.

> If the West is expecting any revolution due to sanctions, I have not seen it.

You have now.

Isn't South Africa the exception? There have been sanctions on many more countries who have not changed at all, or even doubled down on bad behavior as a result.

I can certainly understand, as a matter of foreign policy, not wanting our companies to be propping up or supplying such regimes, but I don't really get how anyone can think that sanctions are effective at promoting change.

>Sanctions have a theoretical basis behind them. In the Western Political Philosophical Canon, leaders and elites are expected to strive for the Common Good.

I would say it is a bit more realpolitik than that. An "Evil" leader doesn't care about the common good, but all leaders need subordinates to carry out their orders, security forces to carry out their rules, etc. Sanctions are meant to put pressure on all those people. So either A; the leader changes their actions so as not to risk losing the people that turn their will into action, or B; those subordinates put someone else in charge that will play ball.

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