Thursday, March 28

Waiting for sanctions to stop Russia could go ‘terribly wrong’: Niall Ferguson


The strategy of sitting back and waiting for Russia’s war machine to grind to a halt because of sanctions could go “terribly wrong,” according to Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

“It’s a highly risky strategy,” he said.

The Ukrainian resistance cannot hold the fort for much longer, and sanctions by the West won’t be able to stop Russia in time, he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Friday.

He said the US is relying heavily on sanctions and “very belated arms deliveries” to Ukraine, but he’s concerned that those fighting for Ukraine won’t be able to defend the country for long.

Though the Russians have sustained more casualties than expected, they are still “advancing steadily,” he said.

“The assumption that this is going to drag out, that the United States can sit back and watch the economic sanctions do their work may be seriously mistaken,” Ferguson said.

There’s no guarantee that Ukraine holds out, and what I dread is steadily worse news from Ukraine, and the breakdown of Ukraine’s defenses.

Niall Ferguson

Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution

Anna Ohanyan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) echoed that sentiment.

“While the sanctions will start biting — perhaps can change Putin’s behavior down the road — at this point, they cannot be relied on as an instrument to be used to stop the violence,” said Ohanyan, a nonresident senior scholar in CEIP’s Russia and Eurasia program.

“It won’t work fast enough to prevent a Russian victory in Ukraine and I think this is the critical problem,” Ferguson said.

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‘Nightmare stage’

The US and its allies have imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. But it appears that there’s a race between Russia’s military advancements and the sanctions that are crippling Moscow.

“There’s no guarantee that Ukraine holds out, and what I dread is steadily worse news from Ukraine, and the breakdown of Ukraine’s defenses,” Ferguson said.

“We’ll sit there saying, oh, well the sanctions have really hurt Russia — but it won’t matter to Putin because he will be able to claim victory. That for me is the nightmare scenario,” he added.

Ferguson said the US should help support Ukraine’s defenses without escalating it into a full-blown NATO-Russia war.

Arms deliveries to Ukraine slowed down previously, and now there is a “frantic effort” to help Ukraine keep up the fight, he said.

That, however, may create the conditions of a proxy war, CEIP’s Ohanyan said.

“It appears that unfortunately, [at] this point, sanctions and the military assistance work at cross purposes,” she said.

Opportunity for a deal

Peace is “urgently needed” to avoid continued bloodshed and the destruction of Ukraine, which Ferguson said seems to be the Russian plan for now.

“The goal was to prevent Ukraine being a successful democracy oriented towards the West, whether in NATO or the EU,” he said. “You can achieve that just by destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure and turning it into a smoking pile of rubble and unfortunately, every passing day allows President Putin to do more of that,” he said.

Ohanyan agreed that there has to be a diplomatic push to de-escalate, start a cease-fire and negotiate on “bigger issues.”


www.cnbc.com

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