Follow us on social

Shutterstock_2088086626-1-scaled

Can sanctions help win peace? According to this report, not likely

Not only does economic warfare not work because it ends up hurting the people it claims to help, but it can stand in the way of diplomacy.

Analysis | Europe

 

Economic sanctions —an increasingly popular tool for policymakers in Washington — can hinder peacemaking efforts, according to a report published on Monday by the International Crisis Group. 

The key questions of when to impose sanctions, how to use them as leverage, and when to lift them have never been as salient, after the U.S. and the West imposed the harshest global embargoes on Russia in history after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022 — yet an end to the war, much less a diplomatic course, is as elusive as ever.

A review of U.S. sanctions policy, released by the Treasury Department in October 2021, showed that over the last two decades, the use of sanctions by Washington had increased by 933 percent. As the Crisis Group report notes, the rationale for implementing these sanctions typically includes cutting off adversaries’ resources, punishing individuals or governments for human rights abuses, or trying to push warring parties toward negotiations.

Yet, the report finds, “sanctions sometimes hinder conflict resolution efforts. They can inhibit peace processes and post-conflict recovery, constrain peace organisations, undercut negotiations and entrench divisions between conflict parties.” 

Criticism of Washington’s use of sanctions is nothing new. But past critiques have often focused on the humanitarian consequences of this kind of economic warfare and its unsatisfactory track record when it comes to altering the behavior of targeted individuals or governments. 

The report, which adds to the growing critique, is based on three years worth of interviews with officials, foreign diplomats, members of civil society, conflict parties, and individuals in countries affected by sanctions, like Afghanistan, Colombia, Syria and elsewhere.

“While sanctions have found favour as a tool that allows the U.S. government to pursue policy objectives in conflict settings without the blood and treasure required for military campaigns, these tools are not cost-free,” the report reads. “Some of the downsides manifest themselves as impediments to peacemaking priorities, including Washington’s own.”

The unclear parameters when sanctions are imposed, and the uncertainty over the conditions under which they will be lifted or eased can impair Washington’s leverage in conflict resolution. “The U.S. does not always make clear what parties can do that will lead to sanctions relief. In some cases, Washington has not laid out any such steps or it has outlined steps that are unrealistic,” writes the Crisis Group. The report continues:

“In others, the U.S. was never willing to lift sanctions in the first place. Elsewhere, Washington’s communication on sanctions has been vague, leaving targets in the dark about what might lead to reversal. (...) Without clarity on why they were sanctioned and what they can do to be delisted, targets have little incentive to make concessions in exchange for relief. For U.S. officials, negotiating without the ability to lift sanctions is, according to one diplomat, like ‘playing poker with someone else’s money.’”

Another problem is that due to bureaucratic inertia, fear of being labeled “weak,” or other considerations, Washington is slow to lift or ease sanctions. In Colombia, for example, Crisis Group found, “[s]ome former combatants who had laid down their weapons were so disillusioned by the daily hurdles they faced in integrating into civilian life that, in the words of a former FARC commander, they ‘decided to go to war again.’” This happened because, even after signing a peace deal with Colombian authorities, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were still subject to U.S. sanctions, making it difficult for former rebels to integrate back into Colombian society. 

The most ambitious of Washington’s current sanction projects are those currently placed on Russia, which the Biden administration has consistently referred to as “unprecedented.” The report points out that these are a large part of why, despite early signs that his administration was aware of the shortcomings of sanctions, “in his second year in office, President Biden designated nearly 2,500 new groups and individuals, almost double the listings the Trump administration had made at the peak in 2018 (1,474).” 

The goal of these sanctions was to punish the Putin government in Moscow for its invasion and to make it rethink its its aggressive military goals in Ukraine by starving it of money and resources. Washington and the West have also gone after oligarchs in hopes of threatening Putin’s backdoor access to funds and elite support. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way, a clear example of what Crisis Group warns about in its report today, says QI’s Director of Strategy George Beebe.

“The Biden administration has hoped that sanctions would force Putin to recognize that the costs of invading Ukraine outweigh the benefits,” Beebe says.

“But this hope was based on the mistaken belief that Putin saw the invasion as an ambition rather than as something vital to protecting Russia from NATO encirclement.  Sanctions rarely dissuade states from defending what they regard as their vital interests regardless of the costs,” he added. “They could in principle be useful as leverage in negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine, but Washington has given the Russians little reason to believe it would lift or ease sanctions even if Putin were to end the invasion tomorrow.” 


Zwiebackesser/Shutterstock
Analysis | Europe
Daniel Noboa, Xi Jinping
Top photo credit: Beijing, China.- In the photos, Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) and his Ecuadorian counterpart, Daniel Noboa (left), during a meeting in the Great Hall of the People, the venue for the main protocol events of the Chinese government on June 26, 2025 (Isaac Castillo/Pool / Latin America News Agency via Reuters Connect)

Why Ecuador went straight to China for relief

Latin America

Marco Rubio is visiting Mexico and Ecuador this week, his third visit as Secretary of State to Latin America.

While his sojourn in Mexico is likely to grab the most headlines given all the attention the Trump administration has devoted to immigration and Mexican drug cartels, the one to Ecuador is primarily designed to “counter malign extra continental actors,” according to a State Department press release.The reference appears to be China, an increasingly important trading and investment partner for Ecuador.

keep readingShow less
US Capitol
Top image credit: Lucky-photographer via shutterstock.com

Why does peace cost a trillion dollars?

Washington Politics

As Congress returns from its summer recess, Washington’s attention is turning towards a possible government shutdown.

While much of the focus will be on a showdown between Senate Democrats and Donald Trump, a subplot is brewing as the House and Senate, led by Republicans but supported by far too many Democrats, fight over how big the Pentagon’s budget should be. The House voted to give Trump his requested trillion dollar budget, while the Senate is demanding $22 billion more.

keep readingShow less
Yemen Ahmed al-Rahawi
Top image credit: Funeral in Sana a for senior Houthi officials killed in Israeli strikes Honor guard hold up a portraits of Houthi government s the Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi and other officials killed in Israeli airstrikes on Thursday, during a funeral ceremony at the Shaab Mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, 01 September 2025. IMAGO/ via REUTERS

Israel playing with fire in Yemen

Middle East

“The war has entered a new phase,” declared Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior official in Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, after Israeli jets streaked across the Arabian Peninsula to kill the group’s prime minister and a swathe of his cabinet in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.

The senior official from Ansar Allah, the movement commonly known as the Houthis, was not wrong. The strike, which Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz promised was “just the beginning,” signaled a fundamental shift in the cartography of a two-year war of attrition between the region’s most technologically advanced military and its most resilient guerrilla force.

The retaliation was swift, if militarily ineffective: missiles launched towards Israel disintegrated over Saudi Arabia. Internally, a paranoid crackdown ensued on perceived spies. Houthi security forces stormed the offices of the World Food Programme and UNICEF, detaining at least 11 U.N. personnel in a sweep immediately condemned by the U.N. Secretary General.

The catalyst for this confrontation was the war in Gaza, unleashed by Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, which provided the Houthis with the ideological fuel and political opportunity to transform themselves. Seizing the mantle of Palestinian solidarity — a cause their leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, frames as a “sacrifice in the cause of God Almighty ” — they graduated from a menacing regional actor into a global disruptor, launching missiles toward Israel just weeks after Hamas’s attacks and holding one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes hostage.

The chessboard was dangerously rearranged in May, when the Trump administration, eager for an off-ramp from a costly and ineffective air campaign, brokered a surprise truce with the Houthis. Mediated by Oman, the deal was simple: the U.S. would stop bombing Houthi targets, and the Houthis would stop attacking American ships. President Trump, in his characteristic style, claimed the Houthis had “capitulated” while also praising their “bravery.”

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.