Obama Announces Sanctions Against Russia and Moscow Is Isolated from the World

“Targeted sanctions” against those responsible for the violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty. “Moscow is isolated in the world” and “recent events have isolated it even further.”* That is how Barack Obama described the crisis in relations with Russia; he announced a set of economic sanctions aimed at punishing the Kremlin and its allies, following the referendum in Crimea. The sanctions, decided by decree, include freezing assets and banning U.S. immigration visas to seven Russian citizens and four Ukrainian citizens, including ex-president Viktor Yanukovich. Among the Russians, there is businessman and Kremlin ideologist Vladislav Surkov and Duma member Leonid Slutsky. The first name on the list is that of Sergei Aksyonov, among some 13 Russians, three soldiers and Duma Vice President Sergei Zheleznyak.

Russian Vice President Dmitry Rogozin tweeted recently: “Comrade @BarackObama, what should do those who have neither accounts nor property abroad? Or U didn’t think about it?” He continued, “I think some prankster prepared the draft of this Act of the U.S. President.”

With the recent measures, the United States aims to hit Moscow’s economy, explained the White House. In particular, an appreciation of 3 percent is expected in the value of the dollar against the ruble. Obama has explained that these may well be the harshest sanctions since the end of the Cold War, but he is not closing the door completely on negotiations. “There is still a diplomatic route to resolving this crisis,” he explained.* Further to the recently announced measures, the administration and political leaders of America are nevertheless now reflecting on the future. What should be done in the face of the possible annexation of Crimea, which seems now to be so inevitable? How should the U.S. behave toward Russia; more generally, what methods should be adopted to rethink American foreign policy in the long term?

Up to this point, Republicans have staunchly contested the line hitherto followed by Obama, judging his approach to be too accommodating and flexible. Senator John McCain of Arizona has asked the U.S. to provide immediate military cooperation for Ukraine and to reconsider the development of a system of military defense in Eastern Europe. According to former Vice President Dick Cheney, the U.S. should have immediately launched its military presence in Poland when faced with the possibility of Crimea’s annexation. The White House’s response came via senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer told NBC, “You can expect sanctions designations in the coming days.”

Nevertheless, many of the discussions happening in Washington do have one common theme — regardless of whether or not their participants support Obama’s administration more generally. The Ukraine crisis has brought an end to a phase in American foreign politics and is now opening the way for a range of questions which, for the moment, appear difficult to answer. Indeed, Obama and his closest foreign affairs advisers are convinced that Crimea’s occupation and an expansionist Russian policy will have devastating consequences for Moscow’s power in the long term. “Russia is destined to become a corrupt and authoritarian regime, based on the exploitation of gas and petrol,” explained an anonymous source from the independent quarterly review The American Interest.* A regime of this style, always subjected to scruple from Obama and his advisers, will be a weak and naturally marginalized player on the global stage.

If this strategy will have results in the long term, it nevertheless remains to be seen what should be done in the medium term. The Republicans are undoubtedly exploiting the situation to make accusations. “Not intervening in Syria will give Putin the ‘green light’ in Crimea,” Sen. McCain said, “but the invasion of Iraq won’t stop Putin from going into war against Georgia.”* But their exploitation of the situation does not cancel out the essential point here. The fact is that Putin has got his hands on Crimea, probably definitively, and there is nothing that Obama’s administration can do to change this reality. The continual condemnations and threat of sanctions just risk proving American weakness and the potential for open mistrust from others as to Washington’s ambitions. “I worry when we begin to address the crisis, the first thing we do is take options off the table […]. We have created an image around the world, not just to the Russians, of weakness and indecisiveness,” explained Dick Cheney, himself one of the most determined supporters of U.S. military and political expansion.

Obama, however, has chosen a different path from the beginning. Faced with the failure of “dumb war” in Afghanistan and Iraq, the president has always invoked the need for a “light-footed” approach, weaving together international planning and consultation with allies, and considering military intervention only a last resort all the while making forward progress in collaboration with the international community. In this strategy, the main “military branch” of Obama’s administration has not been the Pentagon so much as the U.S. Treasury, which was instrumental in the imposition of fairly tough sanctions on the governors challenging Washington’s wishes. When force was used, they did not draw on the traditional weapons of military occupation, air raids and bombardments, but used drone raids, cyberattacks and actions by special operations units which silently demonstrated America’s technological superiority.

Obama’s soft hand of power, as opposed to the hard power of the Bush years and the neocons, has, however, not had the desired effects. Now Obama’s whole strategy has been called into question, more or less openly. Further to the open challenges to Washington’s power launched by Putin’s Russia, the results of the Syrian crisis were also inadequate. There, the modest amount of military aid given to rebels and the insufficient application of sanctions were not enough to end the carnage — and difficulties persisted for the U.S. administration now stuck in ongoing negotiations with Iran and North Korea. However, in some ways the case of Ukraine is even more serious for the administration because, as former national security adviser Thomas Donilon explained, “This is a challenge to the post-Cold War order in Europe, an order that we had a lot to do with in putting in place.”

Privately, it seems that Obama rejects many of these criticisms by explaining that his administration is overseeing an irreversible phase in the withdrawal of American power from the world stage. But this is a truth that has little chance of being made heard in public. In the meantime, doubts and questions about what should now be done in Crimea remain unanswered.

“The foreign affairs ministers of Europe have come to an agreement on sanctions and the denial of visas. It’s not that we wanted sanctions, but after the so-called referendum in Crimea, something needed to be done,” Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel said, following her meeting with Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. He added, “On the matter of Ukraine, Italy, Germany and the other EU countries have worked and continue to work keep a strong channel of communication open. But we maintain that the referendum in Crimea is illegal.”

*Editor’s Note: These quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.