Opinion | The U.S. Is the Only Sanctions Superpower. It Must Use That Power Wisely. - T... - 0 views
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As much as we talk about multipolar politics, when it comes to global networks, there is just one superpower: the United States. Many global networks have centralized economic chokepoints, and the United States is able to seize these, turning them into tools of coercion. No other country can match this ability. America can now redeploy global networks to entangle and suffocate oligarchs, banks and even entire countries, as Russia has painfully discovered.
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It is now up to the United States to determine how to steward this enormous power. If it overreaches, it might provoke a military response or create the incentive for its adversaries to create and foster their own alternative networks
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Will we end up with a fragmented world economy where military and economic conflict become two sides of the same coin?
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While there are substitutes for Russian nickel, there’s no good substitute for the U.S. dollar and U.S. technology. It is very hard to get paid for things you sell if you can’t use SWIFT messaging and have been cut off by the U.S. regulated financial institutions that “clear” transactions in dollars. And it’s hard to build sophisticated machines without semiconductors that are made with U.S. intellectual property.
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The barrier isn’t just that the payment networks of Russia and China are three or four decades behind. Others also fear how they would abuse these networks if they controlled them. The United States has its problems, but it at least provides some legal protections to businesses and countries that have fallen afoul of its harsh measures.
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Often, U.S. officials treat these rules as an obstacle preventing them from taking strong actions. Yet these restrictions provide America with a strategic advantage: They give foreign countries and businesses some reason for trust.
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they illustrate a deeper danger. As a new book by the historian Nicholas Mulder emphasizes, the “economic weapon” of sanctions and blockades doesn’t work nearly as predictably or effectively as its proponents imagine. The more powerful sanctions are, the greater the danger that they will lead to an unpredictable response. As Mr. Mulder demonstrates, fears of sanctions helped propel Nazi Germany’s territorial ambitions
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measures should be just harsh enough to reach specific goals: to protect Ukrainian independence and to limit, to the greatest extent possible, Russia’s aggressive gains.
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The United States should also explicitly lay out the circumstances under which the executive branch will apply such economic measures, the range of permissible goals that they can accomplish, the review procedures that will ensure they are proportionate and the circumstances under which they will be withdrawn.