WIREDGOV

If universities in the West teach courses on sanctions and economic warfare, we shouldn’t be surprised by the emergence of a parallel world teaching the art of circumvention.

For many years, a Google search for sanctions courses would have turned up an array of opportunities for bankers and lawyers to hone their understanding of sanctions compliance as part of their job. Academic interest was limited and specialised – and courses appealing to those with such an appetite were few and far between.

Yet today, if you visit the website of a European university like King’s College London, you’ll find plenty of academic courses focused on different elements of international security. Topics related to finance and security are not exempt. Courses with titles such as ‘Sanctions and Statecraft’ or ‘Sanctions and Economic Warfare’ catering to students and the generally curious alike have sprouted across the academic landscape.

These courses advertise themselves as offering the opportunity to explore ‘how sanctions operate as tools of coercive diplomacy in global politics – from their historical evolution to the strategies states use to design, deploy, and resist them’ or exploring ‘the international political economy of sanctions in the constantly changing context of economic warfare and geopolitical rivalry’.

This is not surprising. Given the rate at which banks, law firms and ministries of foreign affairs and finance are hiring staff with an understanding of sanctions, universities are tapping into a demand signal that is too strong to ignore.

This expertise is sorely needed, particularly if it comes with the perspective provided by academic study. One of the author’s favourite questions to policymakers – when he gets the chance – is to ask for a show of hands from those that worked in the sanctions field before February 2022. The display is always sparse, and the hands that are raised normally belong to those from the US government.

Russia’s military shows no sign of running short of the funding and resourcing that the sanctions seek to restrict

Those sitting in London, Brussels or EU member state capitals have been consumed with sanctions thinking for over three years. When is the next EU package? What are we doing about the shadow fleet or the role of cryptocurrencies in sanctions evasion? Why is there not more enforcement of sanctions evasion? Are sanctions actually working? Politicians herald the latest sanctions as the ‘strongest ever’ (until the next package comes along), ‘world’s first’, ‘the largest to-date’ and other superlatives.

But that’s in the West. What of the view from Russia, which was the focus of the majority of these sanctions over the past three and a half years?

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