How to Make Sanctions Bite Russia Even Harder
A Q&A with financial counterterrorism expert Juan Zarate on the surprising impact of the global economic blitz against the Putin regime and some ways to make it even more punishing.
Fast and furious.
Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesIt’s become pretty reflexive in the media these days to say that the sanctions being imposed by the U.S. and its allies on Russia are “unprecedented.” Even the Treasury Department is letting the superlatives fly. But as the wise man once said (in my case, the wise man was Allan M. Siegal, the legendary standards editor of the New York Times): Nothing is unprecedented.
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Niall Ferguson feels similarly: “I have heard it said that the breadth and depth of the sanctions imposed on Russia make them unprecedented. I disagree. The way in which the U.S. and the European Union have severed financial ties with Russia … recalls but does not quite match the sanctions that Britain and its allies imposed on Germany at the outbreak of World War I.”