January 07, 2022
What It Will Take to Deter Russia
Nearly eight years after Russia invaded Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea, triggering a raft of international sanctions, the United States and its allies find themselves again trying to figure out how to deter Moscow from menacing Ukraine—if not launching a full-scale invasion—in hopes of gaining new Western concessions. Talks between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin have begun in earnest, with Putin putting forth maximalist demands that could become either the starting point for protracted negotiations that meet somewhere in the middle or, if left unmet, the pretext for a major escalation in the ongoing conflict.
Economic sanctions alone, no matter how personally painful they may be to Putin and his cronies, will not be enough
U.S. and European leaders have warned Putin publicly and privately that should he again launch military forces into Ukraine, they will not hesitate to expand sanctions against Russia. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan reported that during a two-hour videoconference with Putin on December 7, Biden warned the Russian leader that “things we did not do in 2014 we are prepared to do now.” Biden’s threat to his Russian interlocutors left little room for misunderstanding.
Yet economic sanctions alone, no matter how personally painful they may be to Putin and his cronies, will not be enough to prevent the Kremlin from using tactics that have proved effective in the past.
Read the full article from Foreign Affairs.
More from CNAS
-
Strange Debacle: Misadventures In Assessing Russian Military Power
Commentary
Russia’s botched invasion of Ukraine has befuddled most defense analysts and Russia experts....
By Chris Dougherty
-
Sharper: The Authoritarianism Challenge
Commentary
Autocratic leadership is on the rise globally. Even in democratic nations, leaders are eroding checks on their power and weakening institutions. The use of illiberal technolog...
By Anna Pederson
-
Can Ukraine’s Military Keep Winning?
Commentary
Ukraine’s military has undergone a radical transformation over the past eight years, thanks to intensive reorganization and reform efforts and billions of dollars in Western s...
By Margarita "Rita" Konaev & Polina Beliakova
-
Is Russia Better Off Without Putin? The Answer is Changing.
Commentary
To figure out whether we would be better off without Putin, though, we first need to weigh something else: How would Putin’s departure from power affect Russia? Would a leader...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Erica Frantz
