U.S. Sanctions on Russia: Evaluating Impacts and Costs

For the past three years, the United States and our allies have been locked in confrontation with Russia over its intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. After an initial debate, American policymakers responded to Russian aggression with sanctions linked to implementation of the Minsk agreement.

Our European partners regularly debate Russia sanctions—with a special eye on the costs they impose due to Europe’s large business exposure to Russian markets. Here in the U.S., discussion tends to focus on the impact of sanctions on Russia itself. But in either case, the arrival of new leadership at the White House provides an obvious and natural inflection point to reassert the efficacy of sanctions as a tool of U.S. and Western policy toward Russia.

Hudson Institute was honored to welcome H. E. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Secretary General of NATO and prime minister of Denmark, to discuss Sanctions on Russia: Impacts and Economic Costs on the United States, a new report commissioned by Rasmussen Global and prepared by the Graduate Institute of International Studies. He was joined by Ambassador Sandy Vershbow and Ambassador Paula Dobriansky, both experts on Russia and sanctions, for a discussion moderated by Hudson Institute Fellow Peter Rough.