Foreign-Policy Experts: Russia Sanctions Unlikely to Alter Behavior

After sailing through the Senate 98-2, a bill to hit Russia with sanctions in retaliation for 2016 election meddling appears headed toward a similarly lopsided margin Tuesday in the House of Representatives.

There’s just one problem, according to some foreign policy experts — the penalties are unlikely to achieve their stated purpose.

“None whatsoever,” said retired CIA agent Gene Coyle, when asked to assess the impact of sanctions on Russian policy. “This makes Congress feel like they’re doing something.”

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Coyle, who spent 30 years with the spy agency, including 14 working undercover in Russia and other countries, said sanctions slapped on the country after its 2014 intervention in the Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to reverse course.

Coyle said that if the House passes the sanctions bill — and works out differences with the Senate version — Russia’s response likely will be to point to U.S meddling, such as the CIA’s intervention in Chile to prevent leftist candidate Salvador Allende from becoming president in the 1950s and 1960s.

“The Russians will look at it as such hypocrisy,” he said.

Like the Senate bill, the House legislation would write into law several existing economic restrictions and impose new ones. It targets Russians who violate human rights, supply weapons to the regime in Syria, or who are involved in the Russian defense and intelligence industries. In addition, mining, shipping, railway and other industries would face new restrictions.

New sanctions against Iran and North Korea are included in the bill, which also would make it harder for the president to withdraw sanctions unilaterally.

Senate Version Passed Overwhelmingly
The Senate version passed overwhelmingly. An amendment to include Russia in a broader sanctions bill passed 98-2, with only Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) opposed. The underlying bill passed 97-2, with Paul and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) voting “no.” Sanders said he was concerned that new sanctions against Iran would undermine the deal negotiated by former President Barack Obama to freeze that nation’s nuclear weapons.

There appears to be little to slow down the sanctions train in the House, too.

“This is the right thing to do, to say, ‘Russia, you do not meddle in our elections. You don’t meddle in the elections of our allies,'” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) told CNN on Monday.

Despite misgivings, President Donald Trump is likely to sign the bill, aides indicated over the weekend. He has little choice; a veto almost surely would be overridden.

Whether the sanctions would have much impact is a separate question. Even if they work, it is imprudent to expect a quick result, one Russia expert said.

“Sanctions, as we learned with South Africa and others, are something that is a long-term tool,” said Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “It’s not something that happens tomorrow.”

Sanctions eventually prodded South Africa to abandon its apartheid policies of racial separation. But it took years and only after the country became an international pariah. Virtually the entire world enforced the wide-ranging restrictions on the South African economy.

Much Depends on Global Oil Prices
It is highly unlikely to replicate that level of international cooperation in punishing Russia, Cohen said.

“It’s a different mode, and there are many countries that won’t participate in these sanctions,” he said.

Much will depend on global oil prices, Cohen said. He said that if OPEC succeeds in cutting production and prices shoot up, that will provide a steady flow of cash that would cushion of the blow of new penalties from the United States. If not — or if increased production of shale oil in North America blunts the impact of any OPEC move — Russia will feel the pain.

“It’s too early to tell right now,” Cohen said. “These are the most significant, most serious sanctions imposed on Russia, ever.”

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Even some experts who favor sanctions against Russia argue there is a danger they may be overused. Robert Kahn, a senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, pondered Monday whether sanctions have become “the Swiss army knife of U.S. foreign policy.” In a blog post on the think tank’s website, he wrote that sanctions have become a “policy of first resort,” increasing the difficulty of striking a proper balance.

“But looking forward, we should be concerned that the pendulum will swing too far, that sanctions become too easy an option,” he wrote. “There are some things for which a Swiss army knife is the perfect tool, but for appendicitis I’d rather see a doctor.”

Coyle, the retired CIA agent — who recently wrapped up a teaching career at Indiana University — said sanctions might even be counterproductive because they will make cooperation with Russia on other issues harder. He said getting the penalties lifted would require Russia to admit to conduct that it has denied at the highest levels of government.

“No, the Russians don’t care,” he said. “It’s a matter of national pride.”