Western sanctions boomerang as Europe freeze

Western sanctions against Russia are the most ill-conceived and counterproductive policy in recent international history.

The economic war is ineffective against Russia, and devastating for its unintended targets. World energy prices are rocketing, inflation is soaring, supply chains are chaotic and millions are being starved of gas, grain and fertiliser.

To criticise Western sanctions is close to anathema. Defence analysts are dumb on the subject. Strategy thinktanks are silent. Britain's putative leaders, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, compete in belligerent rhetoric, promising ever tougher sanctions without a word of purpose. Yet, hint at scepticism on the subject and you will be excoriated as "pro-Putin" and anti-Ukraine. Sanctions are the war cry of the west's crusade.

The reality of sanctions on Russia is that they invite retaliation. President Vladimir Putin is free to freeze Europe this winter. He has slashed supply from major pipelines such as Nord Stream 1 by up to 80percent.. World oil prices have surged and eastern Europe's flow of wheat and other foodstuffs to Africa and Asia has been all but suspended.

Britain's domestic gas bills face tripling inside a year. The chief beneficiary is none other than Russia, whose energy exports to Asia have soared, driving its balance of payments into unprecedented surplus.

The rouble is one of the world's strongest currencies this year, having strengthened since January by nearly 50 percent. Moscow's overseas assets have been frozen and its oligarchs have relocated their yachts, but there is no sign that Putin cares. He has no electorate to worry him.

The interdependence of the world's economies, so long seen as an instrument of peace, has been made a weapon of war. Politicians around the Nato table have been wisely cautious about escalating military aid to Ukraine. They understand military deterrence. Yet they appear total ingenues on economics. Here they all parrot Dr Strangelove. They want to bomb Russia's economy "back to the stone age".

I would be intrigued to know if any paper was ever submitted to Boris Johnson's cabinet forecasting the likely outcome for Britain of Russian sanctions. The assumption seems to be that if trade embargoes hurt they are working. As they do not directly kill people, they are somehow an acceptable form of aggression. They are based on a neo-imperial assumption that western countries are entitled to order the world as they wish. They are enforced, if not through gunboats, then through capitalist muscle in a globalised economy. Since they are mostly imposed on small, weak states soon out of the headlines, their purpose has largely been of "feel-good" symbolism.

A rare student of this subject is the American economic historian Nicholas Mulder, who points out that more than 30 sanctions "wars" in the past 50 years have had minimal if not counterproductive impact. They are meant to "intimidate peoples into restraining their princes". If anything they have had the opposite effect. From Cuba to Korea, Myanmar to Iran, Venezuela to Russia, sanctions seem to instil stability and self-reliance on even their weakest victim. Almost all these countries have benefited from Western sanctions.