There is a lot happening. On the Iran front, the negotiations to return Iran and the United States to compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) are going not according to the administration’s plans—but according to the predictions of everybody who hasn’t been asking for a unicorn for the holidays since 1979. The United States has threatened to exert additional pressure on Iran—other than enforcing the already-existing sanctions, the only additional measure left is pretty much either military action or, okay that’s the only one left. There was an explosion in the city of Natanz, wherein Iran has nuclear facilities. Was it the Israelis? Was it a test? Or, as Iran has claimed, was it an air defense drill? Nobody knows. But it was the Israelis. Asked if it were Israel, the deputy minister of defense of Israel, Alon Schuster, said that “we don’t ask a man what he did at night.” It’s funnier if you read it in Israeli accent. But also, I need a comment from his wife!
On the Russian front, Vladimir Putin is going out of his way to convince us that he wants to annex eastern Ukraine. President Joe Biden had an encouraging call with him—I’m grading on a curve here—but there is so much left to be desired. I have no problem with imposing sanctions on our enemies. I am happy that that, short of putting Ali Khamenei’s beard up for auction—the regime might actually agree to it given how desperate for cash it is—we have imposed all sanctions at hand on Iran. Against Russia, on the other hand, there is plenty left. The big prizes are, of course, sanctions against Russia’s sovereign debt, oil, and central bank—which relates to sovereign debt—and kicking Russia out of the SWIFT, so it cannot anymore engage in financial transactions. Believe it or not, there really is not a significant sanctions policy against Russia. Its economy, unlike Iran’s, remains free to operate internationally.
But sanctions against Russia after the fact are useless. Sanctions are great in changing the behavior of democracies—the only time they had an immediate effect was when the United States imposed sanctions on the United Kingdom during the Suez Crisis—but not the behaviors of autocracies. Once an autocrat turns on the war switch, he will turn it off only if he loses that war. But sanctions could be a strong deterrent. President Biden could impose all the sanctions he wants on Russia should Putin invade Ukraine, and it won’t change Putin’s mind the day after. But, while one cannot use sanctions to convince an autocrat to turn the war switch off once it is one, it is possible to use the threat of sanctions to convince an autocrat not to start a war. What’s the difference? Humiliation. Think of the word “autocrat.” Auto- means self, and -crat means the rule of. It refers to an individual. Of course, autocracies are no more monarchies, aka the rule of one, but they are far closer to self-rule than democracies. In autocracies, the egoes of the rulers matter far, far, far more, which is why they avoid humiliation like the plague. (By the way, even democratic leaders hate humiliation like the plague. But multiply it by a million to get a sense of how autocrats feel.) So they would do anything to avoid the appearance of succumbing to the pressure of their enemies—the United States, in most cases. So the Biden administration cannot rely on after-the-fact sanctions. It needs to be clear to Putin about what it would do should Putin give the order: Military supplies to Ukraine, taking the sanctions from 3 to 10, and transparency.
What is transparency?
Autocrats have been quite good at exploiting the vulnerabilities of open societies. Our liberal regime in America—or in Sweden or in Germany, for that matter—is better than any other type of regime, but it has its weaknesses. Our illiberal enemies have been using our vulnerabilities to weaken us.