Sanctions have long been an important component of the foreign relations toolkit, \u00a0but the global landscape in which they operate is changing.\u00a0 The response to Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine has involved a complex set of economic statecraft measures\u2014spanning energy, finance, and export controls\u2014and has highlighted both the power and the limits of sanctions in an era of major-power competition and rapid technological change. In this piece, Brookings experts weigh in on how sanctions are being used today, what their effects have been, and how shifts in geopolitics and global markets are shaping their future. In short: Can sanctions change the course of conflict?<\/p>\n
For more expert analyses on the efficacy of sanctions, watch this recent Brookings event.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n Robin Brooks and Ben Harris<\/p>\n Oil market sanctions are pressuring Russia\u2019s revenues<\/p>\n Sanctions can undoubtedly disrupt an economy. Consider the array of sanctions levied against the Russian oil trade in response to its illegal invasion of Ukraine. These actions substantially lowered the profitability of Russia\u2019s export of crude oil and refined petroleum products, reducing the associated government revenues in the process. Whether these and other sanctions changed the course of the conflict is unknowable, but it is without question that sanctions can impose higher costs on countries that violate international law.<\/p>\n The key Western energy sanctions against Russia are an EU ban on the import of seaborne Russian oil and the imposition of price caps on all transactions involving Russian oil that use G7-based services such as insurance or financing. The U.S. Treasury Department\u2019s January 2025 order<\/a> to sanction 183 Russian vessels and October 2025<\/a> ban on trading with major Russian energy companies Rosneft and Lukoil were also significant moves against Russia. The EU import ban dramatically reshaped trading routes<\/a> for Russian oil, shifting export destinations away from Europe and toward Asia\u2014with a notable rise in transportation costs. More importantly, these various actions appear to have preserved an unprecedented spread between the market price of oil and the price received by Russia for its exports, starkly lowering Russian revenue.<\/p>\n As shown in the charts below, immediately following the invasion of Ukraine the Urals oil price (Russia\u2019s main oil benchmark) fell sharply relative to the market price (represented by the Brent global benchmark). This spread remained high until Russia began amassing a \u201cshadow fleet\u201d of oil tankers and then fell sharply again with the news of the sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil. Importantly, too, the sanctioning of shadow fleet tankers by the U.S. Treasury\u2019s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) appears to have had a negative effect<\/a> on export volumes.<\/p>\n \n Figure 1a\n <\/p>\n \n Figure 1b\n <\/p>\n While these measures have been effective in preserving the oil price spread and thus curbing Russia\u2019s oil revenues, Russia\u2019s deployment of its shadow fleet demands further countermeasures. These should include additional tanker sanctions by OFAC and increased pressure on flag states to comply with maritime law\u2014namely by requiring that ships flying their flags carry adequate insurance. These additional steps will weaken the shadow fleet and force Russia to comply with the terms of the price cap.<\/p>\n Suzanne Maloney<\/p>\n Sanctions are no silver bullet<\/p>\n Sanctions have long had an important place in the American toolkit for addressing national security threats. However, their track record in achieving the most ambitious policy outcomes\u2014such as conflict resolution\u2014is\u00a0decidedly mixed<\/a>. The long history and vast labyrinth of American and international measures targeting Iran illustrates both the opportunities and the limitations of sanctions.<\/p>\n The 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran prompted the\u00a0first use<\/a>\u00a0of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA<\/a>) to freeze all Iranian state assets held in U.S. financial institutions. That step, together with a ban on U.S. imports of Iranian oil and an embargo on U.S. weapons and military spare parts, ultimately\u00a0forced Tehran<\/a>\u00a0to negotiate and free the American hostages after 14 months.<\/p>\n The 2015 Iran nuclear deal is another example of sanctions\u2019 success. Beginning in 2006, Washington pioneered new measures that progressively constricted Iran\u2019s access to the international financial system and used that leverage to decrease global imports of Iranian oil. Iranian leaders\u00a0acknowledged<\/a>\u00a0the key role of economic imperatives in their decision to accept restrictions on their nuclear program after years of resistance to any compromise.<\/p>\n But these few breakthroughs punctuated decades of economic coercion, with ultimately limited effect on generating a durable end of Tehran\u2019s threats to its neighbors or its citizens. The long history of sanctioning Iran has repeatedly exposed that these measures are no silver bullet: They present\u00a0challenges to reverse<\/a>, inspire creative\u00a0adaptation<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0circumvention<\/a>, instigate\u00a0unintended consequences<\/a>\u00a0for U.S. interests, and wreak collateral damage on\u00a0vulnerable societies<\/a>. And the rare successes have not proven\u00a0replicable<\/a>\u00a0for other crises. Today, Iranians are enduring a second round of the Trump administration\u2019s\u00a0\u201dmaximum pressure\u201d<\/a>\u00a0sanctions, with the\u00a0costs<\/a>\u00a0borne mostly by the ordinary Iranians who are least able to affect the outcome of their government\u2019s standoff with Washington.<\/p>\n Pavel Baev<\/p>\n Sanctions are squeezing Russia\u2019s recruitment model<\/p>\n Military analysts tend to view the impact of sanctions as irrelevant to the course of combat operations, but they may now find economists\u2019 assessments useful, as each round of tightening of the U.S. and the EU sanction regimes provides new data on the unique experiment in curtailing the trade and investment flows of a major world power. What makes these sustained and expanding Western efforts to punish the aggressor relevant to analyzing the progress of battles that are both static and fluid is Russia\u2019s own experiment in compensating for heavy military casualties not through traditional mobilization but through paid recruitment. Launched after the turmoil in Russian society caused by the partial mobilization<\/a> in autumn 2022, this experiment delivered results the high command deemed satisfactory over the next three years of the war of attrition. Regional authorities responsible for producing the required manpower have managed to fulfil this task by offering contract-signing bonuses many times larger than annual salaries. But the deepening crisis in state finances is cutting this \u201cgenerosity\u201d short, as the large federal budget<\/a> deficit has led to severe reductions of transfers to regional budgets<\/a>. Every measure aimed at curtailing Russia\u2019s oil export revenues aggravates the funding shortage and changes the parameters of the recruitment experiment, which could suddenly collapse. \u00a0<\/p>\n Dan Hamilton<\/p>\n Sanctions’ success depends on context<\/p>\n Sanctions can alter the course of conflict under certain circumstances. They are particularly effective if imposed by a broad coalition and as part of a wider array of policy actions, ranging from diplomatic pressure to military coercion. For instance, Iran\u00a0negotiated<\/a>\u00a0limits on its nuclear program in 2015 under pressure of international sanctions. Libya\u00a0abandoned<\/a>\u00a0its nuclear program in 2003 in the face of a concerted international campaign of sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and security assurances. South Africa\u2019s apartheid regime\u00a0buckled<\/a>\u00a0in the early 1990s under the weight of determined domestic resistance, supported by international sanctions, arms embargoes, and cultural boycotts. There are\u00a0many other examples<\/a>.<\/p>\n The mere threat of sanctions can also have an effect. President George H.W. Bush\u2019s\u00a0delay<\/a>\u00a0of $3 billion in loan guarantees in 1991 pushed Israel to join the Madrid Peace Conference. President Eisenhower\u2019s\u00a0threat<\/a>\u00a0to block IMF loans to Great Britain and to withdraw U.S. support for the pound sterling in 1956, together with international condemnation, compelled the U.K., France, and Israel to end their war against Egypt. The League of Nations\u00a0used<\/a>\u00a0sanctions threats to defuse a Yugoslav-Albanian conflict in 1921 and a Greece-Bulgaria dispute in 1925.<\/p>\n International sanctions have not forced Russia to stop its war against Ukraine, but they have changed the course of the conflict by weakening the Russian economy and making it harder for Moscow to advance its aggressive plans. Tighter sanctions would impose even higher costs.<\/p>\n There are of course countless cases where sanctions have had no effect. One should neither exaggerate their effectiveness nor doubt their occasional utility.<\/p>\n Samantha Gross<\/p>\n Enforcement is key to making oil sanctions work<\/p>\n Sanctions on Russian energy products are intended to make the war in Ukraine more painful for Moscow, forcing it to re-think its aggressions. This focus makes sense, as oil and gas revenues have made up 30 to 50% of Russian federal government revenues<\/a> over the last decade. However, the West has been playing a game of cat and mouse with Russia. The West tries new strategies and the Russians find ways around them. That seems likely to continue.<\/p>\n The oil price cap, which entered into force in December 2022<\/a>, was intended to reduce revenues from Russian oil exports without removing them from the market. But the Russians turned to a \u201cshadow fleet<\/a>\u201d of tankers with obfuscated ownership and without Western insurance to get around the price cap. New sanctions prevent U.S. companies from doing business with Rosneft or Lukoil, who together make up about half of Russia\u2019s oil production<\/a>. Secondary sanctions<\/a> allow the U.S. to block access to its financial system for non-U.S. entities that do business with the two companies. This is a much stricter regime on paper, enabled by a supply glut in global oil markets<\/a>. But enforcement is the key to success.<\/p>\n The most important question is whether the U.S. will force China to comply.\u00a0 In the first 10 months of 2025, China imported an average of 2 million barrels per day<\/a> of Russian crude oil, compared to total imports of around 11 million barrels per day<\/a>. The Trump administration has many issues in its relationship with China, including ensuring access to rare earth materials and keeping trade negotiations open. China and Russia will undoubtedly try to push the envelope on sanctions\u2014how will the Trump administration react? Chinese imports from Russia have dropped recently, but some inefficient Chinese refineries rely on discounted oil<\/a>, often from sanctioned countries, for their survival. President Trump did not discuss oil sanctions<\/a> in his meeting with Chinese President Xi during their meeting on October 30, an ominous sign for the sanctions\u2019 effectiveness.<\/p>\n Scott R. Anderson<\/p>\n Addressing major power conflict requires smart(er) sanctions<\/p>\n Economic (and particularly financial) sanctions have proven to be an effective tool for addressing the sorts of asymmetric threats\u2014terrorism, transnational crime, rogue states\u2014that have dominated post-Cold War policy concerns. But the same may not be true of the very different challenges presented by the emerging era of major power competition.<\/p>\n The focus on asymmetric threats has contributed to several pathologies in sanctions policies, particularly in the United States. The ease with which economic sanctions can be imposed on foreign targets has made them a foreign policy tool of first resort<\/a>, resulting in overbroad application. As sanctioned entities are often highly stigmatized, there is little incentive to reconsider sanctions once imposed. By identifying sanctioned entities without clarifying permitted activities, conventional list-based sanction regimes contribute to excess de-risking by the private sector. Similarly, as financial institutions are unlikely to favor business with sanctioned entities over the U.S. economy, enforcement is administratively easy. Even unilateral sanctions can have high rates of compliance, limiting the incentive for multilateral cooperation.<\/p>\n These tendencies cause problems, however, when sanctions target entities with their own substantial economic power, like other major powers. Cutting economic relations with such targets can be costly for both private sector entities and the broader global economy, requiring more tailored application. Some private actors may be more willing to risk sanctions penalties to avoid disengagement\u2014especially if the targeted entity has developed strategies for evading sanctions, as China<\/a> and Russia<\/a> have. By increasing the perceived cost of compliance, excess derisking can also increase the risk of private sector defection. Even where it does not, it can amplify sanctions\u2019 effects in unintended and counterproductive ways. And because of the relative parity in economic power, unilateral sanctions are far less likely to be effective than multilateral ones.<\/p>\n Adapting to the new challenges of major power competition means addressing these pathologies. Application should be selective and targeted, while periodic review should facilitate removal and provide an incentive to return to compliance. Sanctions lists should incorporate both restricted entities and permissive licenses with relative parity in order to limit the inclination towards excess derisking. Investments need to be made in agencies that monitor for and enforce compliance. And states need to align their standards of evidence, procedural protections, and domestic legal authorities to facilitate easier multilateral application outside of the U.N. system, which is likely to be hamstrung by Chinese and Russian vetoes.<\/p>\n To its credit, the Biden administration anticipated many of these issue in a 2021 strategic review<\/a> and made some progress, most notably in the context of excess derisking and humanitarian relief<\/a>. But the Trump administration has since moved in the wrong direction, including by wielding<\/a> sanctions<\/a> capriciously<\/a>, weakening relevant<\/a> agencies<\/a>, and alienating<\/a> key<\/a> allies<\/a>. That said, its adept handling of sanctions on post-Assad Syria<\/a> suggests some appreciation for the complex policy tradeoffs sanctions can entail in this new era of geopolitics. Whether this will ultimately lead it to change tack remains to be seen.<\/p>\n Kari Heerman<\/p>\n Effective sanctions anticipate and address evasion<\/p>\n Sanctions rarely determine the outcome of a conflict outright, but they can meaningfully alter its course by imposing costs, creating friction, and constraining an aggressor\u2019s options. These constraints matter even when evasion occurs. Evasion may shift how pressure is felt, but it does not erase it; even forcing an aggressor to work through costlier or riskier channels can hinder its ability to sustain conflict. Policymakers will have to get used to this reality: Evasion is inevitable and will become easier as technology advances and China chooses to provide viable economic and logistical alternatives. What matters is responding with the right tools.<\/p>\n Evasion follows two subtly distinct pathways. Circumvention is the more familiar form: The illegal acquisition of restricted goods or financial flows from jurisdictions that are, in principle, part of a sanctions regime. In the war in Ukraine, Russia has gained access to export-controlled goods that sanctioning governments intended to restrict through a range of illicit channels. Because this activity occurs within the coalition\u2019s jurisdiction, circumvention is an enforcement issue. Governments have responded by tightening export controls, sharing information, and strengthening compliance accordingly.<\/p>\n Avoidance, by contrast, operates outside the sanctioning government\u2019s reach. It is a manifestation of trade diversion\u2014a core concept in international trade theory. In the sanctions context, as the cost of accessing restricted goods or financial channels from compliant partners rises, targeted actors reroute activity to states, firms, or networks willing to serve as substitutes. These channels are less efficient, more opaque, or more expensive, meaning that even successful avoidance still imposes costs and frictions on the sanctioned actor. Russia\u2019s \u201cshadow fleet\u201d<\/a> of tankers and its pivot to renminbi-denominated financing<\/a> fit this pattern.<\/p>\n Avoidance arises not from gaps in enforcement but from the availability of external alternatives, making it a fundamentally geopolitical and technological challenge.\u00a0 The presence of large economies outside the sanctions coalition, the strategic choices of hedging states, and the incentives of commercial actors shape the degree to which avoidance is viable. Today, technologies such as cryptocurrencies<\/a> and China\u2019s willingness to serve as an alternative economic partner are dramatically expanding these possibilities. These shifts mean avoidance will increasingly erode sanctions\u2019 leverage unless policymakers use diplomacy and broader strategic choices to close off these pathways.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ultimately, policymakers must recognize when sanctions are weakened by circumvention, which enforcement can constrain, and when they are weakened by avoidance, which signals a broader strategic challenge. Treating all evasion as an enforcement problem will lead the U.S. to over-invest in legal remedies and under-invest in the diplomatic and geopolitical tools needed to shape the environment in which avoidance occurs. Sanctions will retain their power only if policymakers adapt to this reality.<\/p>\n The Brookings Institution is committed to quality, independence, and impact.
We are supported by a diverse array of funders<\/a>. In line with our values and policies<\/a>, each Brookings publication represents the sole views of its author(s).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sanctions have long been an important component of the foreign relations toolkit, \u00a0but the global landscape in which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[127,6781,6650,109052,48208,8861,42,43,40,38,41,39,4316,109053],"class_list":["post-189714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-article","tag-climate-energy","tag-commentary","tag-energy-markets-governance","tag-global-economy-development","tag-global-trade","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-u-s-economy","tag-u-s-trade-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}