WHAT'S THE ISSUE?

The sanctions imposed on Russia since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict have been on an unprecedented scale, and at an unprecedented speed.

But how exactly do sanctions work? And just how do countries decide what sanctions to impose – and find the balance between targeting a government while allowing ordinary people to survive?

To find out, The Agenda with Stephen Cole spoke to Adam Smith, a sanctions lawyer and formerly a senior sanctions official in the Obama administration.

MEET THE EXPERT:

Adam M. Smith is a partner at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, LLP in Washington DC and is considered one of the world's leading sanctions and trade lawyers.

Smith served in the Obama Administration as senior advisor to the director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control – the U.S. Government's economic sanctions agency – and as the director of multilateral affairs on the National Security Council.

Earlier in his career, Smith was a political economist at the United Nations and also held posts at the World Bank and the OECD.

WHAT DOES ADAM SMITH SAY?

"Sanctions are very much a war by other means," Smith says. "And I think sanctions are resorted to because war – kinetic action, actual boots on the ground – is often not acceptable politically, or viable."

But he adds that there is a real problem trying to figure out the economic pressure points when targeting a given regime. "The reality is that the elite are often protected from the immediate impacts of sanctions and the people on the streets, certainly poorer people... are going to be the ones that are impacted," he says. 

"It's very, very hard to calibrate sanctions to eliminate the consequences to the average individual. You can reduce them, for sure. But eliminating them? I don't think it's possible."

So will the sanctions imposed by the West work to get Russian troops out of Ukraine? Historical precedent suggests that's no certainty.

"The record of sanctions is mixed, to say the least," Smith says. "But it really depends on what your measure of success is. If what you are saying is, is President Putin going to change his mind with respect to Ukraine in the immediate term? I think sanctions are not going to work in that context. 

"If sanctions are going in a longer-term perspective to force President Putin to perhaps think again about what he's going to do, I do think sanctions could potentially have an impact."

ALSO ON THE AGENDA

- Sergey Aleksashenko, former deputy governor of Russia's central bank and former deputy finance minister for the Russian Federation

- Lorenzo Codogno, former chief economist at the Italian Treasury

FIND MORE STORIES FROM THE AGENDA WITH STEPHEN COLE HERE