Key points – in our brief, #UkraineWorldAnalysis
When analysing the current system of international sanctions against Russia in connection with its aggression against Ukraine, the closest historical parallels that emerge are the "Afghan" sanctions imposed on the USSR in the 1980s.
The Soviet invasion of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in late December 1979 was condemned by the United States and its NATO and non-NATO allies, China, most Muslim states and members of the Non-Aligned Movement; in total 104 countries condemned the presence of Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
It was an unprecedented foreign policy 'slap in the face' to the Kremlin, the biggest in the USSR's history. The system of sanctions imposed on the USSR in connection with its actions in Afghanistan was equally unprecedented.
The sanctions were initiated by the United States. Zbigniew Brzezinski, then National Security Adviser to President Carter, repeatedly stated that"the USSR must pay the highest possible price for Afghanistan" and that this Asian country should become a "Soviet Vietnam". One of the ways to achieve this goal was to provide financial and military-technical support to the Afghan opposition (the Mujahideen), which would increase the losses of Soviet troops and complicate their stay in Afghanistan.
However, because the US did not believe the Afghan insurgents could defeat the superpower's army militarily, the White House resorted to economic warfare.
In early January 1980, the United States prohibited the sale of American grain to the USSR (the Soviet Union was the world's largest importer of milling wheat at the time), amounting to approximately 17 million tonnes, and other goods, particularly high-tech goods such as machinery and equipment. Other countries joined the US sanctions against the USSR: the UK suspended loans already agreed with Moscow in the amount of almost 2 billion francs, Portugal banned fishing in its territorial waters, and more.
These first sanctions were tangible, but the USSR was able to compensate for these risks rather quickly, without too much-ado.
For example, in 1980, American wheat was replaced by Canadian wheat (almost 5 million tonnes, compared to 2 million tonnes previously purchased) and Argentine wheat (over 13 million tonnes). In addition, the ban on grain sales to the Soviet Union hit American farmers hard (they lost an estimated $5 billion per year), so the new Reagan administration gradually abandoned the grain embargo. However, this did not mean that the idea of sanctioning the USSR for Afghanistan was abandoned.
The Secretary of Defence in the Reagan administration, K. Weinberger later said that the United States decided to "bet on our strength and their weakness." The latter consisted of two strategic aspects: The USSR was dependent on Western advanced technologies, which it purchased mainly with the funds received from the sale of energy carriers (oil and gas). Therefore, during Reagan's presidency, the US consistently tightened the technological and energy noose around the Kremlin's neck.
Thus, at the end of 1981, Reagan imposed a ban on the export of oil and gas equipment to the USSR in order to disrupt the construction of the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhhorod gas pipeline. This ban was soon extended to US companies operating outside the US, as well as companies from other countries that produced the equipment in collaboration with US firms or under US licences.
Despite the fact that these measures affected nearly 60 US companies, the USSR suffered far greater losses. Additional mechanisms for controlling the export of technology, such as engineering products, industrial equipment, electronic computers, and so on, were also introduced. Scientific exchanges between the USSR and the West were severely curtailed, to a minimum.
Another effective means of putting pressure on the USSR was a significant increase in interest rates on loans to the USSR, which reached 17%.
The USSR's problem was the impossibility of circumventing these restrictions (Western technologies could not be replaced by equivalents from Eastern European satellite states or the Third World, as was the case with wheat) or imposing mirror sanctions (the only adequate step was the boycott by the USSR and its satellites of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles). All attempts to circumvent the sanctions by purchasing the necessary technologies on the black market or even through "spy" schemes failed to solve the problem, and they were also organisationally complex and expensive.
As a result, the USSR's technological gap with the developed world widened. For example, in the early 1980s, the USSR exported about 119 million tonnes of crude oil, 43 million tonnes of petroleum products and 35 billion cubic metres of gas per year, totalling $40 billion. The share of energy in the country's exports reached 47% (while machinery, equipment, etc., which were uncompetitive on world markets, accounted for 16%).
This ratio shifted in the mid-1980s, from 54% to 14%. In other words, the USSR was turning into a "third world" economy, which corresponded to the phrase attributed to M. Thatcher about "a big petrol station with a nuclear bomb".
At a time when the world was experiencing a "computer revolution", the USSR was completely dependent on raw materials, primarily oil and gas exports.
Everything in the USSR depended on it: food security (in 1984, the USSR purchased a record 46 million tonnes of grain). The USSR purchased a record 46 million tonnes of wheat (almost 15% of the world's grain imports!), defence capabilities were enhanced, and the ability to support its satellites with weapons and cheap loans. And then, the war in Afghanistan...
The very fact that the USSR was "stuck" in that country dispelled the myth of the military greatness of the state and the effectiveness of Soviet weapons. The situation became catastrophic when, due to a significant increase in oil production by Saudi Arabia in mid-1986, world oil prices collapsed: in 1985, high-quality Arabian Light oil cost 27.5 US dollars per barrel, but only 13 US dollars in 1986. The price of "heavy" Soviet oil was around $10 per barrel. This had disastrous consequences for the USSR, which lost between 10 and 20 billion US dollars per year, according to experts.
The "Afghan" sanctions were ultimately disastrous for the USSR. They not only made the Kremlin's Afghan adventure the most expensive in its history, but they also depleted its resource-dependent economy, shook its socio-political system, and made maintaining loyal regimes in satellite states difficult. They pushed Mikhail Gorbachev to seek compromises with the West, without which "perestroika" would be impossible, and forced him to practice "glasnost" in part.
All of this weakened the totalitarian government's ability to maintain control. Therefore, one of the factors that contributed to the crisis and subsequent collapse of the USSR was the "Afghanistan" sanctions imposed by the US and its allies.
Russia today draws on Soviet experience while also developing its own mechanisms for circumventing sanctions. Compared to today's Russia, the USSR was still more self-sufficient, at least in the military-industrial sphere. In addition, the Soviet Union had many satellites and allies among the states of Eastern Europe, countries of "socialist orientation" in Asia and Africa, and allies or at least friendly regimes in Latin America.
Despite the burden of sanctions, the Soviet regime lasted another 10 years, and internal processes were more important factors in its collapse. In today's environment, it is possible to obtain the necessary Western products from states that do not support sanctions, either through re-export systems or by locating production facilities on their territory of companies whose headquarters are registered in the sanctions-imposing states.
The actions of Iran or the DPRK, as well as the desire of many states, such as China, India, Brazil or South Africa, to play their own role in world politics and position themselves as new centres of influence, make it much easier for Russia to circumvent sanctions.
It can be said that the Russian Federation partially uses the Soviet experience of propaganda to justify its actions, including in the area of sanctions, but it often does so in a more cynical and brazen manner.
The Soviet Union positioned itself as a world leader opposing the onslaught of US-led "world imperialism" and defending the ideals of socialism, "bright future", "proletarian brotherhood" and "peaceful policy". At least in words and slogans, the USSR has always promoted peace, disarmament, mutually beneficial cooperation, etc.
The Russian Federation also portrays its war as a fight against the expansion of the "collective West", but appeals to force. For example, the slogan of the futility of US sanctions against the USSR was "Your sanctions are a pipe". That is, despite all the restrictions, we will persevere and complete the gas pipeline - the "pipe"!
After the "Crimean sanctions" were imposed in 2014, Russians wore T-shirts with screenshots of "Iskanders are not afraid of sanctions", and over the past two years they have repeatedly called sanctions a war and threatened "nuclear retaliation" in response. It is worth noting that, up until now, no Soviet politician had threatened the world with a nuclear strike since Khrushchev in 1962.
At first glance, there is logic in this. In the 1980s, the USSR, together with its satellites, looked much more powerful than today's Russia, and the sanctions were far too damaging for it. However, as previously stated, it was not the sanctions themselves that destroyed the USSR, but the growing public discontent, exacerbated economic difficulties caused by the sanctions.
In addition, we should not forget that during the years of perestroika, under the influence of glasnost, dissatisfaction with the system and the authorities grew in the USSR: exposés in the media, the gradual disclosure of "white spots" and "black pages" of Soviet history and reality, the rise of national identity in the Soviet republics, open criticism of the authorities' actions, for example, in Afghanistan or in connection with the Chernobyl disaster, etc.
In other words, in the Soviet Union, in the context of a systemic crisis, opposition to the regime and the authorities was growing, and the CPSU's attempts to ease the totalitarian grip only fuelled an opposition sentiment.
The population did not protest against the sanctions; instead, they blamed the authorities for, among other things, mismanagement, deficits, economic difficulties, etc. In today's Russia, the situation is fundamentally different. At least for now.
Over the last two decades, we have seen how the Putin regime has eliminated relatively independent media; destroyed, imprisoned, silenced or exiled politicians, public and cultural figures who dared to criticise the system; and brought the influence of the ideological and propaganda product on the population to a grotesque absolute.
And the majority of Russians attribute the deterioration of the economy and living standards to the sanctions imposed by the "hostile West" rather than the government's policies. Moreover, the aggression in Ukraine and the resulting sanctions against Russia have actually united a large portion of the population behind the Kremlin.
We can draw several conclusions from the experience of sanctions against the USSR 40 years ago.
First, to be effective, sanctions must be systemic, with subsequent "packages" reinforcing the previous ones, and it is important to emphasise why restrictions have been imposed and how long they will remain in place.
Second, it is important to monitor compliance with sanctions and develop punitive mechanisms for their violators. In the mid-1980s, the United States created a special interagency body to monitor sanctions against the USSR (CoCom), which was empowered to impose even quite high fines on companies that violated the restrictions. It was an effective mechanism, but under current national and international law, it is difficult to replicate.
It could be worthwhile to look for other mechanisms that could work in this direction. In general, both the quantitative (actually imposing more and more restrictions that would make it more difficult for Russia to circumvent them) and qualitative (monitoring compliance, possibly imposing or strengthening sanctions against states that allow Russia to circumvent them) components of sanctions pressure on the aggressor state should be strengthened.
However, in my opinion, sanctions alone are unlikely to stop it.
