Baz Ratner via Creative Commons
A Russian soldier at the Ukraine border.
As Russia continues a massive military build-up along the Ukrainian border, planning what could be a military incursion into Ukraine early next year, U.S. officials are threatening Russia with economic sanctions that could take down the Russian economy.
At a closed-door meeting on December 6 in Washington, D.C., Congressional leaders met with State Department officials to discuss the possibility of sanctioning Russia. U.S. leaders considered embargoing entire sectors of the Russian economy and blocking Russia’s access to the Western financial system. The sanctions under consideration are so severe that they would not only harm the Russian people but create significant economic disruptions in Europe as well.
“What is being discussed is at the maximum end of the spectrum, or as I have called it, ‘the mother of all sanctions,’ ” U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, disclosed at a Congressional hearing the next day.
Some critics see the U.S. economic threat as hypocritical, particularly since the United States also relies on Russia for a significant proportion of its energy needs.
Russia and Ukraine have been at war for nearly a decade. Following the collapse of a Russian-backed Ukrainian government in 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, and backed separatist forces in the country’s eastern provinces. Since then, the war has left more than 14,000 Ukrainians dead.
U.S. officials have supported the post-2014 Ukrainian government with economic and military support. This year alone, the United States has provided the Ukrainian army with more than $400 million in assistance, bringing its total military support to $2.5 billion since the war began.
More than 150 U.S. military advisers are on the ground in Ukraine, participating in what U.S. officials call “train and equip” efforts. As part of this support, the United States has provided Ukrainian military forces with armed patrol boats and hundreds of anti-tank Javelin missiles.
“The Ukrainian military forces of 2021 are not the Ukrainian military forces of 2014,” Menendez said. “They are well-equipped, thanks to the United States and our allies.”
Across the broader region, the United States has directed its own military build-up, working through NATO to create a “forward presence” that includes thousands of soldiers who are spread across multiple countries in Eastern Europe. Over the summer, the United States led large military exercises to prepare for a major regional war.
“Our posture in the region continues to present a credible threat against Russia,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in October.
Critics of the U.S. approach argue that it’s raising the likelihood of a wider war in Eastern Europe. For years, they’ve warned that U.S. moves to prepare Ukraine for eventual incorporation into NATO feed into Russian fears about NATO expansion along Russia’s borders.
In Russia, “their perceptions are that we have been consistently moving against their interest and trying to encircle them and even trying to interfere in their internal politics,” former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock told Congress in 2016.
U.S. diplomatic cables, published by WikiLeaks in 2010 and 2011, show that U.S. officials have been well aware of Russian fears about Ukraine. Several cables warn that Russia considers Ukraine to be so important to its security that it would go to war to keep the country under its influence.
“Ukraine remains Russia’s brightest red line, with Russian officials positing that NATO membership and NATO bases in Ukraine means that Russia could lose a conventional war,” U.S. diplomats explained in one cable.
At the hearing last week, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, asked Victoria Nuland, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, if the United States would be willing to take Russian concerns into consideration by withdrawing NATO forces from the Russian border, ruling out Ukraine’s admission to NATO, or ending arms shipments to Ukraine. “Would the United States agree to any of those three?” Rubio asked.
“All of those would be unacceptable,” Nuland said.
Instead, U.S. leaders are reacting to the latest Russian moves with more threats. In a December 8 video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Joe Biden said that he would respond to a Russian invasion in ways that included sending more arms to Ukraine, fortifying NATO allies along Russian borders, and implementing strong economic measures against Russia.
“There will be severe consequences and economic consequences like none he’s ever seen,” Biden said.
The severe economic consequences, however, would do far more than weaken the Russian government. Imposing economic sanctions on Russia would have serious economic repercussions for Europe, which relies on Russia for much of its energy needs. The measures could also cause a great deal of harm to the Russian people.
It is important to know “how harmful it would be to Russia, unfortunately to Russian people,” said U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin.
Some critics see the U.S. economic threat as hypocritical, particularly since the United States also relies on Russia for a significant proportion of its energy needs. This past year, Russia became the second largest international supplier of oil to the United States, providing about 800,000 barrels per day, second only to Canada.
U.S. oil companies such as Valero, Chevron, and ExxonMobil are refining Russian oil for the U.S. oil market at a time when the Biden Administration is concerned about high gasoline prices. Administration officials seem determined to keep Russian oil flowing to the United States, even as they are threatening the country with sanctions.
At the December 7 hearing, U.S. Senator Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, asked Nuland if U.S. spending on Russian oil contributed to malign Russian activities, but Nuland largely deflected the question, suggesting that U.S. companies are free to make their own decisions in the global oil market.
“We ourselves have to square up our own domestic oil policy, since so much of the revenues that Putin gets comes from American consumers at the pump,” Markey said.
Regardless, U.S. officials are bent on a more confrontational approach. While they continue arming Ukraine and threatening Russia with sanctions, they hope to limit the potential economic fallout to the people of Russia and Europe.
“What we are talking about,” Nuland said, “would amount to essentially isolating Russia completely from the global financial system with all of the fallout that that would entail for Russian business, for the Russian people, for their ability to work and travel and trade.”