Here we have to say that The Expert mostly works as a think tank, while the magazine it publishes is only a by-product, and, to add, that’s the way any decent mass media outlet should work. Anyway, The Expert’s experts began from collecting material on what the Americans are saying about their sanctions. That makes sense, since it’s the US that is the world leader in imposing economic limitations on nations, companies and individuals worldwide.
The scope of limitations and bans is impressive. The US is trying to enforce three times more of sanctions than all the rest of nations and organizations do together. We are talking about 15 400 current bans that cover about 60% of individual companies or whole countries of the world, mostly from the Global South. Such is the July 2024 data of the Washington-based Center of Strategic and International Studies. That was point one.
Point two: the process accelerates. Joe Biden’s administration has imposed 3500 sanctions, and that’s not counting the ones on Russia, that is the current world leader in that regard. Donald Trump’s reign saw 2500 sanctions. Barak Obama’s count is only 1000, and don’t forget, that president has served two terms.
Acceleration of the process devalues the basic idea of sanctions, the reason for those being stated as some unbearably bad behavior of these or that company or a state. If everyone is been proclaimed a criminal, then you have to look again at a definition of crimes. Oversupply of sanctions makes them less effective, and that’s the words of Jack Lew, the White House advisor in 2016.
Point three: the US is becoming a sanctions junkie, with economy increasingly unable to function without bans and restrictions on competitors. There is a whole army of lobbyists working in Washington and soliciting restrictions on this or that competitor, be it a nation or a company. The pretexts can be any. If the lobbyists stop doing that, a lot of American businesses will crumble down. That, again, is a part of The Expert’s collection of statements and other data from the US, no more than that.
There are two ways to utilize these discoveries. One way is to see what the whole world economy will look like, if the process goes on or even stays as it is. The other way is to have a look at what really happens with nations, hit by “sanctions from hell” or from any other unsavory location.
And here the real economic debate begins. Only an era ago any economist would have told you that protectionism is bad for individual economies, and it also stops all the global trade. If that American and generally Western habit of slapping sanctions is not stopped, all the trade in the world will grind to a standstill, right? There is a huge power, called the World Trade Organization, together with regional groupings like APEC or ASEAN, devoted to removing all kind of trade barriers, isn’t that so?
But then, the people from The Expert are saying: look at Russia, to repeat – the global leader in being hit with sanctions, with China close on its heels. The problem is, Russia loves these sanctions and wants them to go on forever. Is Russia wrong about it?
August is just the right time to assess the results of the process, that started exactly ten years ago (while some sanctions have hit Russia even earlier). The thing is, any kind of sanctions do not go unanswered, in most cases the victim of these hits back with counter-sanctions. And that’s what Russia did ten years ago in at least one vast area, in agriculture, severely limiting imports of agriproducts from the EU, and the US, and from other places, following Western sanctions.
The result is, Russia has turned itself into an agricultural superpower. There is that familiar topic of Indian cows being the most heavily subsidized cows in the world, but let us leave these particular cows in peace. Let’s just list several facts, following the recent press-conference of the Minister of Agriculture Ms. Oksana Lut.
In these ten years, our nation has become a net exporter of foodstuffs after being its net importer, breaking the Western monopoly on these markets, says she. General agricultural production went up by 33.2 per cent, while in foodstuffs it is 42.9 per cent. The export went up 2.6 times, and that is 260 per cent.
The happy Oksana went further, calling Russia a global guarantor of food security. Which is just the fact, since it sells relevant production to about 160 countries and leads the world in exporting wheat, linen, fish, peas, barley and other things. While only ten years ago our supermarkets were dominated by imported foodstuffs from heavily subsidized agroindustry of Europe or the US (hello to Indian cows).
But figures are just figures, while stories may be more illuminating. It so happened that at the turn of the century I became one of the first Russian wine writers and analysts, immersing myself in that wonderful world of best wines on the planet. I wrote two books about that, not to mention the regular columns and features, and the last thing that I thought of, was “Russian wines”. There simply was no such thing worth mentioning. Shelves of wine boutiques looked like similar shelves anywhere in the world, with products of Italy, France or Spain leading the ball.
But, recently, Moscow has slapped yet another round of counter-sanctions on wines from “unfriendly” countries, making them yet more expensive. Nobody had any doubts that a local wine lobby was behind it. But, wait, what kind of lobby is that? Thing is, we have developed a huge and wonderful wine industry of our own in these ten years. Wineries are all around our South, from Crimea to Rostov. They experiment with totally endemic varieties, they fight with each other, they collectively managed to wean Russians away from our national drink, vodka. And, no, you cannot deceive a wine analyst, even with an “ex” prefix. I taste the local products regularly, and we are talking about real wines. They have future ahead of them.
Finally, there was supposed to be a moral component of sanctions, like in bad guys will be deprived of real American jeans or Italian shirts. And that’s where Russians are laughing their heads off. This August news tell us that, while 365 known international brands decided to leave Russia in 2022, 1647 has stayed, many just changing their names, and today dozens are flocking back. Meaning that the good thing about sanctions is, they’re not always working.
All that says that the global economy is in for a serious reset of rules in the approaching after-sanctions era. That reset may take years, but at least that’ll be fun.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com