40%

A signboard displays exchange rates in Moscow, on February 28th.Photograph by Pavel Pavlov / Getty

Thus far, WWWIII has not started as a no-fly zone over Ukraine has not been implemented nor have other nations directly confronted Russian military as the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine continues with increasingly brutal attacks on the civilian populace. What has happened is unprecedented sanctions placed on Russia with the intent to economically punish the nation enough for it to withdraw and end this atrocity once and for all but the chances of said sanctions working is not stellar as seen by an insightful New Yorker piece titled Why Sanctions too Often Fail.

To whit ...

Unwilling to invoke military might, President Joe Biden has orchestrated an astonishing array of sanctions on Russia and its power brokers with lightning speed. On Thursday, with the ruble worth only a cent, he claimed that they were working. “The severe economic sanctions on Putin and all those folks around him, choking off access to technology as well as cutting off access to the global financial system—it’s had a profound impact already,” he said, before a cabinet meeting. The tough reality, however, is that sanctions often fail to sufficiently or efficiently squeeze regimes, whether the goal is to end a war, stop genocide, limit the bomb, or undermine oppression. They have a long and mixed history, dating back to ancient Greece, when Pericles sanctioned other city-states. The obstacles are many. In 1806, Napoleon imposed sanctions to curtail European trade with Britain, but even his own brother, who assumed the Spanish throne, couldn’t enforce them. Sanctions were not wielded as an independent instrument of foreign policy until the twentieth century. Since the Second World War, they’ve become the most popular tool short of military intervention. Globalization has magnified the interdependence of nations, and sanctions provide a low-risk, high-profile response to aggression.

Why the 40% ...

Russia benefits from a similar carve-out—for now. Western sanctions allow it to keep selling energy, the largest source of Moscow’s revenues. Last year, Russia earned a hundred and nineteen billion dollars from oil-and-gas sales—when the price averaged only sixty-nine dollars a barrel. This month, prices soared to a hundred and fifteen dollars a barrel. Even if the West, under mounting pressure, does opt to sanction Russian energy resources, it could backfire—creating an oil crisis in the West and driving up prices globally, while Russia simply switches to other buyers. (Many countries, notably China, have not cut off trade with Russia.)

Russia has the world by the short hairs IMHO.