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Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.

Mostrando postagens com marcador sanções econômicas. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador sanções econômicas. Mostrar todas as postagens

segunda-feira, 14 de agosto de 2023

A Rússia a caminho de virar uma Argentina? Ainda não, mas perto - Foreign Policy

 Currency Crisis

Foreign Policy, August 14, 2023

A woman walks past a currency exchange office in Moscow.

A woman walks past a currency exchange office in Moscow on Aug. 14.Yuri Kadobnov/AFP via Getty Images

Russia’s Central Bank announced on Monday that it will convene an emergency meeting on Tuesday after the ruble fell to a 16-month low against the U.S. dollar—indicating that Western sanctions and international isolation over Russia’s war in Ukraine are taking a bite out of the country’s economy. According to new central bank data, the ruble is trading at a rate just above 101 to the U.S. dollar—a value loss of around 30 percent since the year began.

This marks the Kremlin’s weakest currency level since Russia invaded Ukraine more than 18 months ago. Now, only a handful of fiscally stricken nations—such as Turkey, Nigeria, and Argentina—are having a worse monetary year. “The whole world is laughing at us now,” said Vladimir Solovyov, a Russian TV presenter considered Moscow’s top media propagandist.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economic advisor, Maxim Oreshkin, wrote a column for a state media outlet blaming “loose monetary policy” for the weak currency and worsening inflation. The nation’s central bank furthered his argument, citing Russia’s shrinking trade balance; the country’s account surplus fell 85 percent year on year in the last seven months, shrinking to just $25.2 billion.

Much of that is due to Western sanctions, which have restricted trade revenue, increased costs of imports, and made migrant labor less attractive in Russia during a time when Moscow is battling its worst labor shortage in decades. Still, Russia’s GDP exceeded expectations by growing 4.9 percent in its second quarter, mostly due to consistent oil revenue deals and intense government spending on war production efforts.

To stop inflation from rising further, Russia’s Central Bank raisedinterest rates last month. And on Thursday, it halted foreign-currency purchases for the rest of the year. But economists maintain that inflation will reach as high as 6.5 percent by the end of 2023.

If the Kremlin does not shore up its currency soon and decrease inflation fears, the nation’s economic crisis could spill into the streets. “It is important for the Central Bank of Russia to understand that until now, unfortunately, the dollar exchange rate is not only an economic indicator, the exchange rate has a significant impact on the social rights of our citizens,” wrote Russian Sen. Andrey Klishas on Telegram.


quinta-feira, 23 de junho de 2022

UE quer poder impor sanção ambiental em acordos comerciais (Brasil seria candidato)

 UE quer poder impor sanção ambiental em acordos comerciais


Bloco quer fazer parceiros cumprirem meta climática; acordo UE-Mercosul estaria inicialmente fora

Por Assis Moreira — De Genebra
Valor/O Golobo, 23/06/2022

A Comissão Europeia, o braço executivo da União Europeia (UE), anunciou ontem que vai impor sanções em acordos comerciais, como último recurso para fazer respeitar a proteção do clima, meio ambiente e direitos trabalhistas - teoricamente, o Mercosul estaria de fora.

“Prometemos tornar o comércio mais sustentável e hoje estamos cumprindo”, disse o vicepresidente executivo e comissário para o Comércio, Valdis Dombrovskis, ao anunciar o reforço e aplicação de capítulos sobre Comércio e Desenvolvimento Sustentável (TSD, na sigla em inglês) em acordos comerciais negociados pela UE. “Nossos acordos comerciais nos dão força no cenário mundial e apoiam o crescimento econômico e o desenvolvimento sustentável, mas, a partir de agora, queremos torná-los um motor ainda maior de mudança positiva.”

Dombrovskis acrescentou que a UE vai se engajar e apoiar os parceiros para que isso aconteça. “Reforçaremos nossa aplicação e recorreremos a sanções se os principais compromissos trabalhistas e climáticos não forem cumpridos.”

Mas a ideia é de que a nova regra da UE seja aplicada apenas a acordos a serem negociados ou em negociação, portanto não se aplicaria ao Mercosul. “Não será aplicado sobre acordos já concluídos”, confirmou ao Valor a porta-voz de comércio da EU, Miriam Garcia Ferrer. Bruxelas tentará já aplicar as novas regras em acordo em negociação com a Nova Zelândia.

Mas a pressão sobre o Mercosul continuará. Bom número de eurodeputados acredita que as sanções devem ser incluídas nos 46 acordos comerciais existentes, e naqueles ainda a serem ratificados, como no do Mercosul para assegurar proteção da Amazônia. No caso do Mercosul, a UE fará ainda a demanda de compromissos adicionais na área ambiental para o acordo ser implementado. O que está excluído - pelo menos no momento - é a inclusão da parte de sanção, acredita um observador.

Mas recentemente o presidente da Comissão de Meio Ambiente do Parlamento europeu, Pascal Confin, deixou claro que o acordo UE-Mercosul só teria chances de aprovação pelos eurodeputados com a introdução de sanções. Ou seja, se compromissos assumidos no capítulo de desenvolvimento sustentável, para combater o desmatamento não forem implementados, por exemplo, a Europa poderia suspender a redução tarifária ou cotas (volumes importados com alíquota menor) previstas no acordo birregional para produtos do Brasil e do restante do Mercosul.

Todos os acordos comerciais modernos da UE incluem capítulos sobre comércio e desenvolvimento sustentável. Incluem a ratificação das convenções fundamentais da Organização Internacional do Trabalho (OIT), e a implementação efetiva das convenções da OIT e dos Acordos Ambientais Multilaterais que cada parte ratificou, como o Acordo de Paris sobre Mudança Climática e a Convenção sobre Diversidade Biológica.

Ou seja, os acordos já têm “boas intenções”, o que faltava eram “dentes”, como diz uma fonte. Agora, a UE identifica prioridades políticas e pontos-chave de ação, que estima que aumentarão a eficácia nessa área, como o uso de sanções comerciais para responder às violações das principais disposições de sustentabilidade.

A nova abordagem do capítulo sobre Comércio e Desenvolvimento Sustentável em futuros acordos cobre medidas e roteiros com prazos limitados para obter resultados eficazes; intensificação do envolvimento com parceiros comerciais para promover o cumprimento das normas internacionais trabalhistas e ambientais, inclusive através de assistência técnica e financeira; abrir novos mercados de importação e exportação de bens e serviços verdes e matérias-primas, que considera importante para reduzir as dependências no atual clima geopolítico.

Prevê também mais participação e apoio à sociedade civil, incluindo em apresentação de reclamações sobre violações dos compromissos de sustentabilidade. No mecanismo de solução de controvérsias, a parte acusada de violação de qualquer dos compromissos sobre sustentabilidade terá que informar prontamente como implementará o relatório do painel e cumprirá as decisões dentro de um certo período de tempo. A UE reitera que incluirá a possibilidade de aplicar, como último recurso, sanções comerciais por violações materiais do Acordo Climático de Paris e dos princípios trabalhistas fundamentais da OIT.

Também ontem o Parlamento europeu aprovou sua proposta da reforma do mercado europeu de carbono, levando assim à frente o plano de Bruxelas para impor a taxa carbono na fronteira sobre importações procedentes de países que não estejam submetidos aos mesmos padrões ambientais.

https://valor.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2022/06/23/ue-quer-poder-impor-sancao-ambiental-em-acordos-comerciais.ghtml

Putin reclama dos ocidentais por problemas que ele mesmo criou - BRICS

 Putin pede ajuda dos Brics para superar sanções de EUA e Europa


Presidente russo tenta compensar isolamento com aproximação do bloco formado por Brasil, Rússia, China, Índia e África do Sul

Estadão, 23/06/2022 | 05h00

KIEV - O presidente russo, Vladimir Putin, pediu ajuda dos Brics – grupo formado por Brasil, Rússia, Índia, China e África do Sul – nesta quarta-feira, 22, para superar as sanções ocidentais contra a economia russa decretadas em razão do conflito ucraniano. Em discurso gravado, Putin defendeu uma maior aproximação dos países do bloco.

“Nossos empresários estão sendo obrigados a desenvolver suas atividades em condições difíceis, já que os aliados ocidentais omitem os princípios de base da economia de mercado, do livre-comércio”, disse no fórum econômico do Brics, na véspera da cúpula virtual do bloco. “A aplicação permanente de novas sanções por motivos políticos contradiz o bom senso e a lógica econômica elementar.”

Segundo Putin, a Rússia pretende redirecionar seus fluxos comerciais e contatos econômicos para parceiros internacionais confiáveis, especialmente os países do Brics. Ele afirmou que empresas russas de TI estão expandindo suas atividades na Índia e na África do Sul e satélites russos já fornecem transmissões de TV para 40 milhões de pessoas no Brasil.

“Negociações estão em andamento para abrir lojas de redes indianas na Rússia e aumentar a participação de carros chineses no mercado russo”, afirmou Putin.

O presidente da China, Xi Jinping, comprou a ideia de Putin e criticou as sanções internacionais – embora sem citar diretamente os EUA. “Politizar e instrumentalizar a economia mundial, usando uma posição dominante no sistema financeiro global para impor sanções de forma desenfreada, apenas prejudica os outros, espalhando sofrimento às pessoas pelo mundo”, disse Xi.

Já o presidente brasileiro, Jair Bolsonaro, que não chegou a mencionar a guerra na Ucrânia, saudou a abertura no Brasil do escritório nacional do Novo Banco de Desenvolvimento (NDB, na sigla em inglês), o banco dos Brics, que permitirá a ampliação da atuação dos países do bloco no Brasil.

O termo “Bric” foi cunhado por Jim O’Neill, então chefe da equipe de economistas do banco Goldman Sachs, para indicar os mercados emergentes de Brasil, Rússia, Índia e China – mais tarde, em 2010, a África do Sul foi convidada para engrossar o bloco. A aliança sempre teve um caráter mais político que econômico.

Em razão do caráter de suas economias, muitas vezes concorrentes, nunca houve uma intenção declarada de integração ou de assinatura de um acordo de livre-comércio. O NDB, por exemplo, citado por Bolsonaro, foi fundado em 2014 e vem ganhando corpo a passos de tartaruga. Agora, com a guerra na Ucrânia, a Rússia parece disposta a patrocinar uma aproximação entre os cinco países.

Na guerra, Rússia avança sobre Luhansk
Se o esforço de Putin parece ter conquistado aliados externos, ele também obteve ontem avanços no campo de batalha. As forças russas estão cada vez mais perto de conquistar o último foco de resistência ucraniana na região de Luhansk.

As cidades de Sevierodonetsk e Lisichansk foram alvo de intensos bombardeios russos. O governador de Luhansk, Serhi Haidai, disse que os russas atacaram prédios da polícia, das forças de segurança do Estado e do Judiciário. Caso domine a área, a Rússia teria controle quase total da região industrial de Donbas, no leste da Ucrânia – um dos objetivos declarados de Putin.

A Ucrânia, no entanto, não parece aceitar passivamente o avanço da Rússia. Imagens divulgadas pelos russos nesta quarta-feira, 22, mostraram um drone ucraniano se lançando contra uma refinaria de petróleo dentro das fronteiras da Rússia.

O vídeo compartilhado nas mídias sociais mostrou o veículo aéreo não tripulado colidindo com a refinaria de petróleo de Novoshakhtinsk, na região de Rostov, no que seria uma falha constrangedora dos sistemas de defesa aérea da Rússia.

Vasili Golubev, governador da região russa de Rostov, confirmou o ataque, escrevendo que fragmentos de dois drones foram encontrados nos arredores da refinaria de petróleo de Novoshakhtinsk, que pegou fogo. A Ucrânia vem usando drones na guerra, mas nunca reivindicou responsabilidade pelos ataques.

Tensões no Mar Báltico
Em um sinal de que a guerra vem ampliando a tensão no Báltico, o chefe das Forças Armadas da Finlândia, o general Timo Kivinen, disse nesta quarta-feira que seu país está preparado para um ataque russo e oferecerá forte resistência caso ocorra. “Estamos motivados para lutar e construímos um arsenal substancial”, disse Kivinen.

As declarações foram dadas na esteira das tensões entre Rússia e Lituânia, que proibiu o trânsito de certas mercadorias russas para o exclave de Kaliningrado. Ontem, Moscou voltou a ameaçar retaliar o governo lituano. O Kremlin disse que a resposta será no campo diplomático, mas avassaladora. / AP, AFP, REUTERS e NYT

https://www.estadao.com.br/internacional/putin-pede-ajuda-dos-brics-para-superar-sancoes-de-eua-e-europa/

domingo, 27 de março de 2022

The Toll of Economic War - Nicholas Mulder (Foreign Affairs)


The Toll of Economic War

How Sanctions on Russia Will Upend the Global Order

Nicholas Mulder

Foreign Affairs, Nova York – 24.3.2022

 

The Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022 is not just a major geopolitical event but also a geoeconomic turning point. Western sanctions are the toughest measures ever imposed against a state of Russia’s size and power. In the space of less than three weeks, the United States and its allies have cut major Russian banks off from the global financial system; blocked the export of high-tech components in unison with Asian allies; seized the overseas assets of hundreds of wealthy oligarchs; revoked trade treaties with Moscow; banned Russian airlines from North Atlantic airspace: restricted Russian oil sales to the United States and United Kingdom; blocked all foreign investment in the Russian economy from their jurisdiction; and frozen $403 billion out of the $630 billion in foreign assets of the Central Bank of Russia. The overall effect has been unprecedented, and a few weeks ago would have seemed unimaginable even to most experts: in all but its most vital products, the world’s eleventh-largest economy has now been decoupled from twenty-first-century globalization.

How will these historic measures play out? Economic sanctions rarely succeed at achieving their goals. Western policymakers frequently assume that failures stem from weaknesses in sanctions design. Indeed, sanctions can be plagued by loopholes, lack of political will to implement them, or insufficient diplomatic agreement concerning enforcement. The implicit assumption is that stronger sanctions stand a better chance of succeeding.

Yet the Western economic containment of Russia is different. This is an unprecedented campaign to isolate a G-20 economy with a large hydrocarbon sector, a sophisticated military-industrial complex, and a diversified basket of commodity exports. As a result, Western sanctions face a different kind of problem. The sanctions, in this case, could fail not because of their weakness but because of their great and unpredictable strength. Having grown accustomed to using sanctions against smaller countries at low cost, Western policymakers have only limited experience and understanding of the effects of truly severe measures against a major, globally connected economy. Existing fragilities in the world’s economic and financial structure mean that such sanctions have the potential to cause grave political and material fallout.

 

THE REAL SHOCK AND AWE

 

Just how severe the current sanctions against Russia are can be seen from their effects across the world. The immediate shock to the Russian economy is the most obvious. Economists expect Russian GDP to contract by at least 9–15 percent this year, but the damage could well become much more severe. The ruble has fallen more than a third since the beginning of January. An exodus of skilled Russian professionals is underway, while the capacity to import consumer goods and valuable technology has fallen drastically. As Russian political scientist Ilya Matveev has put it, “30 years of economic development thrown into the bin.”

The ramifications of the Western sanctions go far beyond these effects on Russia itself. There are at least four different kinds of broader effects: spillover effects into adjacent countries and markets; multiplier effects through private-sector divestment; escalation effects in the form of Russian responses; and systemic effects on the global economy.

Spillover effects have already caused turmoil in international commodities markets. A generalized panic erupted among traders after the second Western sanctions package—including the SWIFT cutoff and the freezing of central bank reserves—was announced on February 26. Prices of crude oil, natural gas, wheat, copper, nickel, aluminum, fertilizers, and gold have soared. Because the war has closed Ukrainian ports and international firms are shunning Russian commodity exports, a grain and metals shortage now looms over the global economy. Although oil prices have since dropped in anticipation of additional output from Gulf producers, the price shock to energy and commodities across the board will push global inflation higher. African and Asian countries reliant on food and energy imports are already experiencing difficulties.

These former Soviet states are strongly connected to the Russian economy through trade and outward labor migration. The collapse of the ruble has caused serious financial distress in the region. Kazakhstan has imposed exchange controls after the tenge, its currency, fell by 20 percent in the wake of the Western sanctions against Moscow; Tajikistan’s somoni has undergone a similarly steep depreciation. Russia’s impending impoverishment will force millions of Central Asian migrant workers to seek employment elsewhere and dry up the flow of remittances to their home countries.

The impact of the sanctions goes beyond decisions taken by G-7 and EU governments. The official sanctions packages have had a catalyzing effect on international businesses operating in Russia. Virtually overnight, Russia’s impending isolation has set in motion a massive corporate flight. In what amounts to a vast private sector boycott, hundreds of major Western firms in the technology, oil and gas, aerospace, car, manufacturing, consumer goods, food and beverage, accounting and financial, and transport industries are pulling out of the country. It is noteworthy that these departures are in many cases not required by sanctions. Instead, they are driven by moral condemnation, reputational concerns, and outright panic. As a result, the business retreat is deepening the economic shock to Russia by multiplying the negative economic effects of official state sanctions.

The Russian government has responded to the sanctions in several ways. It has undertaken emergency stabilization policies to protect foreign exchange earnings and shore up the ruble. Foreign portfolio capital is being locked into the country. While the stock market has remained closed, the assets of many Western firms that have departed may soon face confiscation. The Ministry of Economic Development has prepared a law that grants the Russian state six months to take over businesses in case of an “ungrounded” liquidation or bankruptcy.

The potential nationalization of Western capital is not the only escalatory effect of the sanctions. On March 9, Putin signed an order restricting Russian commodity exports. Although the full array of items to be withheld under the ban is not yet clear, the threat of its use will continue to hang over international trade. Russian restrictions on fertilizer exports imposed in early February have already put pressure on global food production. Russia could retaliate by restricting exports of important minerals such as nickel, palladium, and industrial sapphires. These are crucial inputs for the production of electrical batteries, catalytic converters, phones, ball bearings, light tubes, and microchips. In the globalized assemblage system, even small changes in materials prices can massively raise the production costs faced by final users downstream in the production chain. A Russian embargo or large export reduction of palladium, nickel, or sapphires would hit car and semiconductor manufacturers, a $3.4 trillion global industry. If the economic war between the West and Russia continues further into 2022 at this intensity, it is very possible that the world will slide into a sanctions-induced recession.

 

MANAGING THE FALLOUT

 

The combination of spillover effects, negative multiplier effects, and escalation effects means that the sanctions against Russia will have an effect on the world economy like few previous sanctions regimes in history. Why was this great upheaval not anticipated? One reason is that over the last few decades, U.S. policymakers have usually deployed sanctions against economies that were sufficiently modest in size for any significant adverse effects to be contained. The degree of integration into the world economy of North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Myanmar, and Belarus was relatively modest and one-dimensional. Only the rollout of U.S. sanctions against Iran required special care to avoid upsetting the oil market. In general, however, the assumption held that sanctions use was economically almost costless to the United States. This has meant that the macroeconomic and macrofinancial consequences of global sanctions are insufficiently understood.

To better grasp the choices to be made in the current economic sanctions against Russia, it is instructive to examine sanctions use in the 1930s, when democracies similarly attempted to use them to stop the aggression of large-sized autocratic economies such as Fascist Italy, imperial Japan, and Nazi Germany. The crucial backdrop to these efforts was the Great Depression, which had weakened economies and inflamed nationalism around the world. When Italian dictator Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in October 1935, the League of Nations implemented an international sanctions regime enforced by 52 countries. It was an impressive united response, similar to that on display in reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

But the league sanctions came with real tradeoffs. Economic containment of Fascist Italy limited democracies’ ability to use sanctions against an aggressor who was more threatening still: Adolf Hitler. As a major engine of export demand for smaller European economies, Germany was too large an economy to be isolated without severe commercial loss to the whole of Europe. Amid the fragile recovery from the Depression, simultaneously placing sanctions on both Italy and Germany—then the fourth- and seventh-largest economies in the world—was too costly for most democracies. Hitler exploited this fear of overstretch and the international focus on Ethiopia by moving German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland in March 1936, advancing further toward war. German officials were aware of their commercial power, which they used to maneuver central European and Balkan economies into their political orbit. The result was the creation of a continental, river-based bloc of vassal economies whose trade with Germany was harder for Western states to block with sanctions or a naval blockade.

The sanctions dilemmas of the 1930s show that aggressors should be confronted when they disrupt the international order. But it equally drives home the fact that the viability of sanctions, and the chances of their success, are always dependent on the global economic situation. In unstable commercial and financial conditions, it will be necessary to prioritize among competing objectives and prepare thoroughly for unintended effects of all kinds. Using sanctions against very large economies will simply not be possible without compensatory policies that support the sanctioners’ economies and the rest of the world.

The Biden administration is aware of this problem, but its actions so far are inadequate to the scale of the problem. Washington has attempted to reduce strains in the oil market by a partial reconciliation with Iran and Venezuela. Countering the spillover effects of sanctions against one leading petrostate may now require lifting sanctions on two smaller petrostates. But this oil diplomacy is insufficient to meet the challenge posed by the Russia sanctions, the effects of which are aggravating preexisting economic woes. Supply chain issues and pandemic-era bottlenecks in global transport and production networks predated the war in Ukraine. The unprecedented use of sanctions in these already troubled conditions has made an already difficult situation worse.

The problem of managing the fallout of economic war is greater still in Europe. This is not only because the European Union has much stronger trade and energy links with Russia. It is also the result of the political economy of the eurozone as it has taken shape over the last two decades: with the exception of France, most of its economies follow a heavily trade-reliant, export-focused growth strategy. This economic model requires foreign demand for exports while repressing wages and domestic demand. It is a structure that is very ill suited to the prolonged imposition of trade-reducing sanctions. Increasing EU-wide renewable energy investment and expanding public control in the energy sector, as French President Emmanuel Macron has announced, is one way to absorb this shock. But there is also a need for income-boosting measures for consumer goods and price-dampening interventions in producer goods markets, from strategic reserve management to the excess profits taxes that are being rolled out in Spain and Italy.

Then there are the consequences of sanctions cause for the world economy at large, especially in the “global South.” Addressing these problems will pose a major macroeconomic challenge. It is therefore imperative for the G-7, the European Union, and the United States’ Asian partners to launch bold and coordinated action to stabilize global markets. This can be done through targeted investment to clear up supply bottlenecks, generous international grants and loans to developing countries struggling to secure adequate food and energy supplies, and large-scale government funding for renewable energy capacity. It will also have to involve subsidies, and perhaps even rationing and price controls, to protect the poorest from the destructive effects of surging food, energy, and commodity prices.

Such state intervention is the price to be paid for engaging in economic war. Inflicting material damage at the scale levelled against Russia simply cannot be pursued without an international policymaking shift that extends economic support to those affected by sanctions. Unless the material well-being of households is protected, political support for sanctions will crumble over time.

 

THE NEW INTERVENTIONISTS

 

Western policymakers thus face a serious decision. They must decide whether to uphold sanctions against Russia at their current strength or to impose further economic punishment on Putin. If the goal of the sanctions is to exert maximum pressure on Russia with minimal disruption to their own economies—and thus a manageable risk of domestic political backlash—then current levels of pressure may be the most that is politically feasible now.

At the moment, simply maintaining existing sanctions will require active compensatory policies. For Europe especially, neither laissez-faire economic policies nor fiscal fragmentation will be sustainable if the economic war persists. But if the West decides to step up the economic pressure on Russia further still, far-reaching economic interventions will become an absolute necessity. More intensive sanctions will inflict further damage, not just to the sanctioners themselves but to the world economy at large. No matter how strong and justified the West’s resolve to stop Putin’s aggression is, policymakers must accept the material reality that an all-out economic offensive will introduce considerable new strains into the world economy.

An intensification of sanctions will cause a cascade of material shocks that will demand far-reaching stabilization efforts. And even with such rescue measures, the economic damage may well be serious, and the risks of strategic escalation will remain high. For all these reasons, it remains vital to pursue diplomatic and economic paths that can end the conflict. Whatever the results of the war, the economic offensive against Russia has already exposed one important new reality: the era of costless, risk-free, and predictable sanctions is well and truly over.

 

NICHOLAS MULDER is Assistant Professor of History at Cornell University and the author of The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War.