Economic and Technological Statecraft

Economic sanctions have long served as an instrument short of war for states seeking to influence the behavior of rivals, with an early precedent in the League of Nations' largely ineffective 1935 sanctions against Italy following its invasion of Ethiopia. Russia faced a first wave of Western sanctions after its 2014 annexation of Crimea, followed by a far larger set of measures after the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including the exclusion of major Russian banks from the SWIFT international payments messaging system, the freezing of a substantial share of the Russian central bank's foreign currency reserves, and export controls on advanced technology. Economists and policy analysts have offered differing assessments of the sanctions' effectiveness: some point to Russia's recorded economic resilience and its ability to reroute trade through China, India, and other partners, while others emphasize that the measures have meaningfully constrained Russian access to Western components needed for advanced military production.