Noah Feldman, Columnist

Sanctions Test Faith in the Power of Economics

Financial weapons have the best chance to work when leaders can be moved by bread-and-butter self-interest. Maybe Putin can’t.

March 6, 2022 at 1:00 PM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Weapons of war.
Photographer: Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images

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The European-American response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine represents a watershed in the contemporary understanding of how nation-states behave and what motivates their leaders to act. It pits two leading theories of international affairs against each other. The difference between the two theories may even explain why there is a war going on at all.

The post-Cold War belief prevalent especially in Western Europe is that states and leaders are motivated by rational economic self-interest. By this reasoning, squeezing Russia economically will bring Russian President Vladimir Putin to a breaking point. Either he will back down and leave Ukraine, or Russia will collapse. In other words, economic warfare is a form of warfare as effective as bombs and guns.