Re: At least they were caught?
It would be good to see something explaining sanctions are supposed to work when they're announced - whether it's actively or passively enforced. I'm genuinely curious
I ain't no expert. But there's all sorts of different sanctions regimes - and different levels of effectiveness.
Take sanctions on Iran's nuclear program. They were always UN led. Approved by the Security Council. But of limited effectiveness. Because Iran's neighbours mostly carried on trading with them. You don't need the whole world onside to make sanctions really effective - but if you can get the country's neighbours on board as well - it's a lot easier. As most trade (at least usually) is between countries that are close together. Even then though, it's bloody easy to smuggle across long land borders. Also there's often no penalty for breaking UN sanctions. Even if you're Russia and voted on the Security Council to sanction North Korea - when you're desperate for artillery ammo in Ukraine what are you gonna do?
However - still most of the oil industry is Western dominated. That means lots of the equipment and the spare parts comes from countries that do tend to, at least try, to enforce UN sanctions. So although Iran's trade didn't suffer as much, their oil industry did get hit hard - and of course that generates lots of their trade and government revenues. Oil sanctions have also had an impact on Russia for similar reasons. They still have a large oil industry, but they struggle to replace equipment and get the yields from their oil fields that they should do.
The the US Treasury Department started looking at more effective sanctions about 20 years ago. They worked out that almost all of the world's financial institutions operate in dollars at least some of the time. And if you want to trade in, or borrow, dollars - you're going to need to talk to big banks. And so this gave the US the power to have very effective secondary sanctions. Even if the UN, or their allies in Europe wouldn't agree - they could still put out quite effective sanctions. If you trade with certain Iranian banks, then we won't allow our banks and financial institutions to trade with you. Thus you have a choice, trade in the US fiancial markets or trade with Iran. As a bank that's a no-brainer. You're making far more cash in New York, than doing a couple of deals for clients in Iran - so you simply drop all that trade. So when Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, the EU were in a right old mess because they wanted to keep it going, but were too rubbish to organise a way for European financial institutions to carry on trade with Iran without suffereing secondary sanctions from the US. Well the UK and EU did -they created a clearing exchange to effectively make barter possible for Iranian trading - no money so no banks - but it didn't really take off. The German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern did also create a charitable organisation as a front for work on the Nordstream pipeline to get round US secondary sanctions. As otherwise they couldn't get a company to certify they pipe, as they couldn't pay them, and the state premier bet that Trump wouldn't directly sanction the German government, which he didn't. Plus she got some nice extra Russian government money to spend on local projects as part of it - so easier re-election too.
The same has been true on sanctions for Russia, though even more effective as the EU, UK, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Australia and Canada joined in. So the G7 and the EU is a big old chunk of the world economy - and an even bigger chunk of the global financial services market.
However, there are limits. Trade with China is so important to some countries that it would be a serious dilemma as to whether to comply with US financial sanctions or to find ways to get round them. But if China invades Taiwan, I think there's a good chance that the Ukraine coalition might get back together, so the EU, G7, Australia and South Korea.
Finally it's relatively easy to stop big arms exports. But dual-use stuff is harder. Though Russia's T90 tanks are equipped with French night vision systems - a bunch of which it turns out were shipped after the EU arms embargo in 2014. Germany apparently also shipped a few hundred million of weapons to Russia that the excuse is was ordered before the embargo when they first invaded Ukraine. But mainly that's easy. Communications gear can be military or civilian. As can many other things.
RUSI did a report into a Russian Kalibr cruise missile that crashed in Ukraine. I think they found 50-odd electronic components sourced from countries with arms embargoes since 2014. Things like accelerometers on a chip and other miniaturised stuff for the guidance system. But they only make six a month, so how hard is it to buy these kind of components in lots of a few hundred for a "drone project" or something?
Much easier to embargo spares for their Airbus and Boeing commercial jets, oil industry or big stuff like that with highly regulated supply chains.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
