There’s another trade-off of sanctions that Washington must consider as it draws lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian war. While holding economic weapons in reserve can be helpful from a deterrence perspective, it does little good if deterrence is not a viable goal. Put differently, if it’s true that sanctions could never have deterred Putin, the West would have been better served by weakening Russia’s economy as much as possible before the invasion. The G7’s costliest error was to defer serious discussion of oil sanctions until after the war began, at which point it took nearly ten months to
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