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“President Joe Biden hit Russia with a wave of sanctions on Thursday after Moscow invaded Ukraine, measures that impede Russia's ability to do business in major currencies along with sanctions against banks and state-owned enterprises… But he held back from imposing sanctions on Putin himself and from disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT international banking system, amid differences with Western allies over how far to go at this juncture.” Reuters
The right is generally supportive of additional sanctions on Russia.
“[Russian] oligarchs have bought up mansions, sports teams and businesses outside Russia while sending their children to study and party abroad. Many Western capitals looked the other way as money poured in and financiers, accountants, lawyers and real-estate agents also cashed in. Yet on Thursday the U.S. Treasury sanctioned only seven more Russians: three sons of Mr. Putin’s cronies, a wife, and three bankers. Serious sanctions would bar every Russian connected to the regime from entering the U.S., Europe and the U.K., and seize their foreign holdings…
“Mr. Biden ducked a question at his Thursday press conference about why the U.S. hasn’t sanctioned Mr. Putin personally but said it’s still possible. The press should keep asking.
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“The Biden administration should introduce massive sanctions on the Russian economy and military. This should include sanctions against all nations that purchase Russian military equipment, sanctions against Russia's energy export sector and companies that service it (Russia lacks sufficient indigenous capacity), and a full ban of Russian banks from the SWIFT banking system, which will deny them access to Western financial markets…
“[In addition] the Biden administration should unleash the U.S. energy export market in order to check skyrocketing energy prices and ease Europe's reliance on Russian natural gas exports. Regulations should be cut, export grants expedited, and domestic extraction of natural gas expanded…
“The time has now come for Europe to abandon dramatically and systemically the delusion that Russia under Putin can be an energy partner. Recent decisions by France to restart its nuclear energy program, and by Germany to suspend the Nord Stream 2 energy pipeline, are welcome. But both efforts must be permanent.”
Editorial Board, Washington Examiner
Some, however, argue, “Sanctions are an emotionally satisfying way to punish someone like Vladimir Putin, who clearly does deserve to be punished. No one's really against sanctions, but the question is: Do they work? Clearly, multiple sanctions did not prevent the invasion of Ukraine. Let's start there. At the same time, sanctions give Russia and many other countries across the world a strong incentive to dump the U.S. dollar, which is the means by which we enforce sanctions…
“[Last summer] Russia, in response to sanctions, completely removed the U.S. dollar, its assets from its sovereign wealth fund, its national wealth fund. The Chinese noticed. They understand exactly how this works and in their effort to displace the United States, they are strongly in favor of it. China is trying to become the first major country in the world to [offer] central bank-issued sovereign digital currency… If at the end of this conflict, whenever that is, countries around the world have come to see the Chinese Yuan as a stronger, more stable currency than the U.S. dollar, then this country will have lost more than we understand.”
Tucker Carlson, Fox News
The left is supportive of additional sanctions on Russia.
The left is supportive of additional sanctions on Russia.
“In his appearance Thursday afternoon, Biden said he believed that Putin would ‘test the resolve of the West to see if we stay together,’ and vowed, ‘we will.’ But the fissures, in fact, were there to see in the measures he proposed—and those he did not. In the weeks leading up to the invasion, officials had pledged retaliatory measures, including possibly cutting Russia off from the swift international banking system, but Reuters reported that Europeans were still refusing to take this step, even with Kyiv now under attack…
“When he appeared to announce sanctions, Biden confirmed that the Europeans had in fact balked. ‘That’s not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take,’ he said. Plenty of other measures have been left untaken, as well, including sanctioning Putin himself, which Biden said he was considering. What, exactly, is the President waiting for? He did not say.”
Susan B. Glasser, New Yorker
“SWIFT recorded an average of 42 million messages per day in 2021. Russia accounted for 1.5 percent of transactions in 2020. Losing access to SWIFT would mean cutting Russia off from most international financial transactions, and hamper its ability to obtain profits from oil and gas exports, which account for more than 40 percent of its revenue. When European allies mulled cutting Russia off from SWIFT in 2014, Russia’s then-finance minister guessed that it could cause the country’s GDP to shrink by 5 percent. While Russia is heavily reliant on SWIFT, it has also taken steps to minimize the damage to its economy should it be excluded…
“Nonetheless, cutting Russia off from SWIFT would make international transactions far more expensive and difficult, devastating its economy in the short-term… Although SWIFT is subject to Belgian and EU law, not American law, the U.S. could still act unilaterally to force its hand by threatening or imposing sanctions on SWIFT… The U.S. previously persuaded SWIFT to kick out Iran in 2012. The Federal Reserve could also block Russia from accessing the U.S. dollar on its own.”
Grace Segers, New Republic
“Over the past three decades, most of the countries that were part of the Soviet bloc have chosen one by one to become more open, liberal, democratic and capitalist… Putin’s reaction is a bloody, brutal effort to stem this tide of democratization… I don’t want to minimize the troubles that democracy and liberalism face. Almost 25 years ago I noted with alarm the rise of ‘illiberal democracy’ and spotlighted in particular the nasty turn that Russia (among other countries) was taking…
“But what the backlash shows is that liberal democracy and the rules-based international order need to be defended — robustly, even aggressively. With the voices of nationalism and populism so loud, it seems that liberal values have few willing to defend them unabashedly. To those who dwell on liberal democracy’s problems rather than its promise, I say, ‘Let them go to Ukraine.’ The people of Ukraine are showing us that those values — of an open society and a free world — can be worth fighting for and even dying for. The question for all of us is, what will we do to help them?”
Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post
