#505 | Stephanie Baker: Why Sanctions Failed to Stop Putin in Ukraine - The Realignment Podcast

Stephanie Baker, Bloomberg News reporter and author of Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Stephanie discuss the impact of the sanctions placed on Russia following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, why initial claims of their impact on Russia's economy were overblown, the long-term costs of economic warfare on Russia's war machine, and the impact of the sanctions debate on a possible conflict over Taiwan.

0:00 - Introduction
1:01 - Economic statecraft
3:56 - 2014 vs. 2022 sanctions
6:41 - Are sanctions effective?
12:26 - Oil
17:02 - Semiconductors & Chinese
23:13 - Use of sanctions
28:33 - Where would Russia be without sanctions?
31:04 - Waging war as an autocrat
36:01 - Deglobalization
44:17 - Deterrence
46:41 - Russia in the 21st century

[davidschlageter]

Russia manufactures more than credit default swaps and has the largest number of graduating engineers they have abundant natural resources. The sanctions boomeranged on the west.

[joewilder]

What wasn't addressed is whether sanctions undermine faith in the dollar. And is the US risking having the dollar lose its reserve status?

[mcgilcol]

There's a profound macroeconomic ignorance at play among those who speak of Russia "paying for the war" from oil sales. The vast bulk of Russian war expenses are paid for in Rubles used to pay its soldiers and to operate its domestic armaments industry which provides the vast bulk of its weaponry and ammunition. Russia has all of the food, metals and fossil fuels it needs to conduct the war right inside its own borders -- what is it that these people suppose it is buying from outside with its oil revenues? Maybe some Chinese machinery, Iranian drones and North Korean shells -- that's about it.

[Jeremy-WC]

kind of disturbing how a business reporter who went to Ukraine can have such a distorted view of reality. The defensive lines are shattering in Ukraine and many retired US military experts say that that there is no way Russia can lose now.

[rulsrejouis]

The world has changed, to simplify why sanctions failed,

[anarasi]

Sad to see Malcolm just regurgitating neocon talking points

[ai._m]

Why does Saagar associate with an aspiring neocon?