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What have U.S. sanctions on Russia achieved since the war in Ukraine began?

MICHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: As President Trump pushes to end Russia's war in Ukraine, one of the key topics for negotiators will be sanctions. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago, the United States and its allies have targeted the Russian economy. But has it worked?

To understand Trump's leverage in this moment, we're going to turn now to Edward Fishman. He's a former U.S. sanctions official who's held roles at the Departments of State, Treasury and Defense. He's also the author of the forthcoming book "Chokepoints: American Power In The Age Of Economic Warfare," and he's with us now. Good morning, Mr. Fishman. Thanks for joining us.

EDWARD FISHMAN: It's great to be here with you today, Michel.

MARTIN: So, you know, you hear two things about Russia - one, that they found workarounds for sanctions, and two, that their economy is in shambles. Which is it?

FISHMAN: I think both are true. Russia certainly has weathered the initial storm of sanctions. I think if you go back to February of 2022, Russia felt like it was on the brink of collapse. You know, for a full month, its stock market shut down. You had massive bank runs, when people were lining up on ATM lines. But then Russia's economy recovered, and part of that was that Russia found work-arounds. But part also was that Russia was just taking advantage in weaknesses in the sanctions regime that the Biden administration and other Western leaders had put in place.

The key absence from the initial sanctions regime was that the West was very hesitant, Michel, to go after Russia's oil sales, because if you think about the context in early 2022, inflation in the United States was at a four-decade high. Oil prices were skyrocketing. And President Biden was just very cautious, frankly. So Russia kept exporting oil and gas to its heart's content for the first year or so of the war. And in 2022, Russia actually raked in the highest energy revenues the Kremlin has ever collected.

MARTIN: So President Biden added more sanctions just before he left office. Like, what was that about, and what was the thinking then?

FISHMAN: In his last 10 days in the White House, Biden reversed that policy. He imposed blocking sanctions on 2 of the 4 largest oil companies in Russia. He also imposed sanctions on over 180 tankers that are shipping Russian oil. I think Biden felt comfortable doing this for two reasons. One is inflation is under control. Oil markets look well supplied. There's no longer skyrocketing oil prices. I think he was handing Trump a little bit more leverage that he could potentially use at the negotiating table. And of course, today, Russia's economy is sort of inexorably declining, and I think Putin is very desperate for sanctions relief right now.

MARTIN: So now that President Trump is talking about making a major push to end the war, what does he need to do on the economic side of things?

FISHMAN: So Putin right now thinks that he can get Trump to lift sanctions without giving up anything of value. And I think that's what we saw in the meeting in Saudi Arabia, where Russia's strategy right now is basically to persuade Trump that sanctions relief is in America's interest. They want to basically treat Ukraine as a side issue and try to get sanctions relief before negotiations. So I think the most powerful thing Trump could do would be to signal very clearly that that is not going to happen, that Russia's not going to get any sanctions relief until it agrees to a just peace in Ukraine.

MARTIN: You know, the Biden administration espoused a rules-based international order and a human rights-based international order, OK? As we've seen, President Trump doesn't buy into a lot of that. So far as we can tell, his worldview is that - what's in America's economic interest? So what steps might he be willing to take that are in alignment with his worldview?

FISHMAN: Right. I do think that stronger sanctions are very much in very narrow American economic interests. Trump has called for American energy dominance. He can build upon this final sanctions package that Biden put together, impose more sanctions on Russian oil. If Russian companies are selling less oil and gas, that could create room for shale producers in the U.S. to export more of their product on global markets.

MARTIN: So before we let you go, as we mentioned, you have a forthcoming book called "Chokepoints: American Power In The Age Of Economic Warfare." Can you take a step back and just tell us what you've learned about how America wields this economic warfare, as you put it?

FISHMAN: So I think my biggest finding, Michel, is that we are living in an age of economic warfare. Sanctions, tariffs, export controls - they've become the most prominent way that great powers compete with each other. Well, a data point that I find pretty enlightening is that Barack Obama imposed twice as many sanctions during his time in the White House as George W. Bush did. And then Trump imposed twice as many sanctions that Obama did. And then Biden doubled the number of sanctions that Trump imposed.

I think the big difference with Trump is that he's wielding these tools not just against adversaries, like China and Russia, but against our friends. I think that is probably the biggest change and the thing that could lead to the most significant ripple effects through the global order in the years to come.

MARTIN: That is Edward Fishman. He is a senior research scholar at Columbia University and the author of the forthcoming "Chokepoints: American Power In The Age Of Economic Warfare." Edward Fishman, thanks so much for talking with us.

FISHMAN: It was great to be here with you today. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Michel Martin is the weekend host of All Things Considered, where she draws on her deep reporting and interviewing experience to dig in to the week's news. Outside the studio, she has also hosted "Michel Martin: Going There," an ambitious live event series in collaboration with Member Stations.
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