More on "the economic weapon"

Preparing to write my previous post about sanctions in international affairs, I came across two contemporary commentaries that seem worth amplifying.

That always interesting commentator Jane Coaston wants nothing to do with feel-good ejections of individual Russians as protest of the Ukraine invasion. 

Banning Russian Tennis Players Won’t Stop the War. ... the All England Lawn Tennis Club (better known as the venue for The Championships at Wimbledon) joined with the British Lawn Tennis Association in banning all Russian and Belarusian players from competing at its event ...

Sports writer including Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post argue the ban is a right move. But not Coaston.

... limiting Russian influence by banning Russian and Belarusian tennis players from Wimbledon is unlikely to bring about a swifter end to the war in Ukraine or concretely damage Putin’s regime. ... feeling strong isn’t the same thing as doing the right thing, or even doing something that makes sense. Russian tennis players didn’t invade Ukraine. And punishing Russian tennis players won’t stop the war in Ukraine. But apparently the ban makes the governing bodies running Wimbledon and the L.T.A. feel as if they have done something. And seemingly, that’s good enough for them.

I'm with Coaston. The horrible reality of the invasion is too awful to be appropriated for a podium by performing sports administrators, in my view especially snotty English ones.

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I almost never read editorial board opinions. I don't get the genre -- how can a publication have an opinion? But "the New York Times editorial board" actually added something essential to discussion of the current economic punishment being visited on Russia. 

... although Russia’s invasion proves that economic integration is no cure for war, economic isolation is also not a recipe for peace. Sanctions are often sold as an alternative to war. But they can also be a precursor to war, as seen with the institution of the American oil embargo against Japan and the freezing of Japanese assets about five months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

So, while sanctions can hobble economies, they rarely compel the kinds of wholesale political changes that American officials would like to see. ... Change is unlikely to occur when sanctions are imposed without communicating the steps that must be taken for them to be rolled back.

All the more reason that the United States should have a clear plan for how and under what circumstances it would be appropriate to roll back these latest sanctions. Right now, this has been left deliberately vague to allow the Ukrainians to directly negotiate with Russia. It is laudable to give deference to Ukrainians whose lives are on the line in this terrible war. But creating clear goals and communicating benchmarks for sanctions relief are important factors in successful sanctions. Too often, sanctions are left in place for decades, without evaluation of whether or not they are achieving what they were put in place to do.

Exactly. My emphasis. The Ukrainians will determine how this horrible war ends and at what cost to themselves. But Russia has to know what, if anything, would allow economic reintegration with the parts of the world economy which have cut that country off. Otherwise you get ineffectual stupidity -- like U.S. sanctions on Cuba and Iran.