Edward Fishman

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Currency exchange rates, Saint Petersburg, Russia, February 2022. Anton Vaganov / Reuters / Foreign Affairs illustration

In his 2022 State of the Union address, delivered less than a week after the invasion of Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden touted the “powerful economic sanctions” that the West had imposed on Russia, measures that had instantly crushed the ruble and laid waste to the Moscow stock exchange. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden warned, “has no idea what’s coming”.

This year, by contrast, Biden did not even mention sanctions in his State of the Union speech. His silence was understandable. After edging toward the brink of collapse, Russia’s financial system stabilized. ATM lines dissipated, and the ruble bounced back. The biggest Russian banks lost access to SWIFT, the financial messaging system, and Visa and MasterCard pulled out of the country.…  Seguir leyendo »

Western sanctions are beginning to hit Russia where it hurts most: its energy exports. Over the last few weeks, the European Union, the biggest buyer of Russian oil, has been working on a plan to ban imports by the end of this year, although objections by Viktor Orban of Hungary have slowed progress.

For energy sanctions to work, however, they must be carefully designed to hurt Russia more than they hurt Western states. Their primary goal should not be to cut the volume of oil and gas leaving Russia, which would further drive up world energy prices and endanger domestic support, but to reduce the dollars and euros flowing into Russia.…  Seguir leyendo »

The economic sanctions that the West has imposed on Russia have been unprecedented in their speed, scale, and scope. Within just a week of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine in February, the United States and its allies prohibited their people and companies from doing business with the Central Bank of Russia, the largest entity targeted since U.S. sanctions against Japan before Pearl Harbor. They also levied an array of other penalties, including sanctions on state-owned Russian banks and controls on critical technology exports to Russia. By any measure, the West delivered on the “swift and severe consequences” that U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

A couple showing off their 'I Voted' sticker after casting their ballot in the 2016 US presidential election. Photo by George Frey/Getty Images.

‘Democracy is on the ballot’ was a common refrain by supporters of Joe Biden during the US presidential campaign, supporting the claim Donald Trump posed a grave threat to American democracy as well as promising to discard his affinity for autocrats and to restore democracy as a guiding light for America’s approach to the world.

Joe Biden will hardly be the first president to emphasize democracy in US foreign policy but he has the chance to do so in a fundamentally new way – by bringing together major democratic powers to focus on fixing problems in their own societies.

Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall, policy experts have explored ideas for making cooperation among democracies a more integral part of US foreign policy.…  Seguir leyendo »