‘Golden Sanction’ to Halt Putin in Ukraine Stays Elusive
By Alan Katz, Nicole Gaouette and Indira A.R. Lakshmanan August 28, 2014
As Russian-backed separatists advance in southeastern Ukraine, the U.S. and European Union are still searching for a sanction that can force Vladimir Putin to stop and think again.
More than 1,000 of the Russian president’s troops are operating inside Ukraine, manning sophisticated weaponry and advising local separatists, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said yesterday. The escalation, denied by Russia, prompted a warning of “consequences” from U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said EU leaders would discuss new sanctions this weekend.
The U.S. and EU have been trying since March to come up with measures that would impose sufficient costs to make Putin call off his effort to destabilize eastern Ukraine while causing only minimal harm to Russian citizens and European and U.S. economies and businesses.
“There have been many attempts over many years to find the silver bullet, or golden sanction, and I’m pretty convinced it doesn’t exist,” said Gary Hufbauer, a sanctions specialist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “What does exist are very, very heavy sanctions. That’s not what the U.S. and western Europe are doing.”
So far, the sanctions effort has failed, former U.S. Treasury and State Department officials say. New measures would have to strike more deeply and broadly, hitting Russia harder and bringing unavoidable economic pain to Europe, and to a lesser extent the U.S., they said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy deliberations.
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http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-08-28/golden-sanction-to-halt-putin-in-ukraine-stays-elusive
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