Countries Should Return to More Targeted Sanctions Regimes, Researcher Says
Sanctions regimes over the last 20 years have become broader and more comprehensive, which has created unintended consequences for industry and “ordinary people,” said Erica Moret, a senior researcher at the Geneva Graduate Institute, speaking during a June 16 virtual conference hosted by the Center for a New American Security. She said countries should look to narrow their sanctions measures and provide clear exemptions or risk further over-compliance.
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Broad international sanctions against Russia have caused an unprecedented “mass voluntary boycott” of the Russian economy, she said, beyond what’s required by financial and trade restrictions. “This is where we start to lose control a little bit, I would argue, of the impacts of the sanctions and their intended or unintended consequences,” Moret said.
She said more countries, especially in the last decade, have turned to “embargoes or de facto comprehensive sanctions regimes” -- as opposed to more targeted sanctions -- to protect their “strategically important industries.” Sanctions have also grown more complicated, Moret said, especially as companies try to deal with the “multi-layering of different autonomous sanctions regimes.”
These regimes “were very much based on the idea that by inflicting really serious economic damage on a country, it might translate to some kind of political gain,” Moret said. “The reality, however, is that when we look at cases across the world, there's really not that much evidence of this coming about.”
Not only have these broader regimes led to over-compliance, but many of the regimes also lack clear guidance and exemptions, Moret said. She said humanitarian organizations are pushing for better alignment of sanctions exemptions across the EU, the U.S., the U.K., Canada and elsewhere.
“I think it's really important to come back … to as targeted as possible a use of these measures to really try and pinpoint areas where political change can be brought,” Moret said.