How Foreign Nations Should Interact with the Ukraine Conflict

The situation between Russia and Ukraine is complicated, as foreign nations cannot participate without escalating the conflict. This means that they are obligated to support less directly through the use of sanctions or donations to help the country of their choice. NATO countries have provided military equipment and supporting infrastructure to Ukraine over the past few days because they cannot support through full military involvement. The United States and many other countries have committed similar acts in an effort to alleviate economic stress in Ukraine.

Although these donations are relatively simple and their effects are directly beneficial to the Ukrainian government, the effects of other methods of participation are not as guaranteed. Sanctions are one of the main methods of support being used in this war, but it can be difficult to predict the full effect of sanctions. They can cause a massive domino effect as limiting one aspect of the economy will certainly affect another and so on and so forth. The biggest concern of this unpredictability is the potential negative effects on Russian citizens, who could be unknowingly harmed if the Russian government is targeted by these sanctions.

While world governments have been enacting individual sanctions against senior officials and others in places of power, they are unreliable and often ineffective. Moreover, the imposition of export bans on Russia will certainly have adverse effects on the global impact as they are large contributors to the international economy and have large holdings in energy, raw materials and technology. It is far too risky, as a slight destabilization of the world economy could also affect the citizens of other countries and there is certainly a potential for serious retaliation from the Russian government. Instead, many experts have suggested applying sanctions on financial transactions through Russian banks and institutions because the US dollar has so much power that not having access to it could pull an entire country out of the global financial system.

    However, this is a more extreme suggestion as it would impact Russian citizens and also remove great global purchasing power (affecting the entire global economy), but the effects are almost guaranteed. Recently, we saw this sanction proposal come into effect when the European Commission and the United States adopted sanctions against the largest Russian banks, cutting off most of their economy from the US dollar. This is a risky, but necessary undertaking, as it will have a negative impact on the Russian economy and will allow the government under pressure to support the Russian people and will not hurt the morale of the war. However, this must be a closely monitored effort, as the scope of these sanctions is still relatively unknown and could lead to unintended consequences.