 Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Shankar Iyer's Academy, International Relations Capsule. Today, we are going to discuss a new kind of war, the war of sanctions. On the 19th day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the situation is deteriorating fast. Russia has not achieved its targets, at least as well we can see, though Russia says that they are going according to plan. But the real war is not between Russia and Ukraine, but between Russia and NATO, which includes the United States. This is the unique feature of this war. What Russia tries to do in Ukraine is not something that Ukraine can provide. Ukraine cannot guarantee Russia security against NATO. Ukraine cannot partner with Russia as a part of a single nation. And then so what Putin is trying to do is to secure guarantees for himself to make sure that not only Ukraine, but also other former Soviet republics should not join NATO. He believes that an agreement was given in 1990-91 that NATO would not expand to the east, but it has expanded. And the person responsible or the country responsible for it is the United States and the European Union. So the war is against the European Union and the United States, or rather let's put it as NATO. But the war is not against Ukraine, because Ukraine is not part of NATO. So you have two kinds of wars. One war that Putin is fighting against US and the rest of NATO. And the other he is fighting against Ukraine to put pressure on NATO. So the war is against NATO. But NATO has decided that they will not fight a war. They will not engage their military, either in Ukraine or into Russia. They will defeat Putin with financial sanctions. This is their strategy. So we have to look at it from that perspective as to whether the strategy to defeat Putin through economic sanctions is going to work or not, regardless of what he is able to achieve in Ukraine. United States has a policy of using sanctions as a weapon, as a weapon of war for a long time. Wherever they have tried to defeat a country or counter a country, they do not necessarily go to war anymore. They will do that by strangling that country by economic sanctions. All of us know the famous law that President Trump enacted, countering American adversaries through sanctions act, it is called, CADSA. And that is only the embodiment of a policy that the US has followed for a long time. So it is their policy to counter adversaries through sanctions. And that is their policy. And that has been applied now in the most severe fashion against Russia. And it has gone beyond expectations. They have gone into various areas. And it looks as though Russia does not accept that, but it looks as though it is actually biting Russia. And at least NATO thinks that they will be able to win this war by sanctions. All of us know what exactly they have done. They have done several things. It is very difficult to list all of them. And the latest is what is called the denial of most favorite nation status to Russia. This has nothing to do with favoritism, as Pakistanis seem to think, because they say, how can we have MFN status with India when India is not a favorite country? But that is a false interpretation. MFN, most favored nation status only means regular trade relationship. And that is what now NATO countries would like to impose on Russia, which means no normal business can be done with Russia. It is a wide and very expansive kind of a sanction. Before that, of course, their frozen central bank assets limited the possibility of loans and grants, etc., from financial institutions. And the sanctions against so-called oligarchs of Russia, that is the billionaires who have been supporting Putin and also keeping their money, the ill-earned money in Western banks. They have also been affected. Big corporations are leaving Russia in a big way. Volkswagen, Apple, name it, VP, Exxon, Shell, and they have stopped buying oil and gas. And even McDonald's, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, General Electric, almost every major American corporate is leaving Russia. So won't this have all a big impact? We don't know as yet. But Russia believes that these will not affect them because they have a strong base, they have a strong economy, they have links all around the world, and particularly its new relationship with China. Oil and natural gas is a double-edged weapon for NATO. They need oil and gas from Russia. And Russia needs to sell their oil and gas with Russia and to the United States to maintain their economic strength. So even that has been touched. The oil and gas supply to the West is being stopped. And Russia itself is saying that we will stop supply to these things to create problems for the NATO countries. And the latest is that Russia has even asked for Chinese arms, which has been denied by China itself. They say this is just a rumor floated by the Americans. So that is as well. So sanctions are going beyond the usual limits. History has never applied, no country has applied such sanctions against a single country. And the expectation is that Putin will eventually surrender to this war, sanctions as war. So let us look at sanctions in general. There are various kinds of sanctions which are possible according to international law. The most significant of it is of course the UN sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council under Article 7 of the Charter, which says that when there is a threat or threat of use of force or use of force by a country, then sanctions can be imposed. These are universal sanctions approved by the Security Council under Article 7, well, Chapter 7, Article 41 of the UN Charter. This one such a resolution is passed. It is binding upon all countries to impose the same sanctions. And the most famous of it and the most widespread and the longest was the UN sanctions against South Africa, apartheid South Africa. And it was probably because of that after several years in 1994, apartheid was abolished in South Africa. It is supposed to be a success story, but took a long time to come. There was also a UN sanctions against Zimbabwe because it was of same reason, racism and apartheid and also not letting Zimbabwe become an independent country. Then there was the most severe sanctions against Iraq, also imposed by the United Nations. We were a member of the UN at that time in 1992 and we voted for that resolution, which came to be known as the mother of all resolutions in the sense that all imaginable sanctions were imposed against Iraq and also it was decided that every piece of nuclear material from Iraq would be confiscated by the international atomic engages. That was a very, very vigorous sanction regime. Then there is the UN embargo against Cuba, also imposed by the Security Council, but violated by many countries, including Europe. And President Obama himself decided to withdraw this embargo, but then President Trump put it back. But that was also an example of UN sanctions, which are binding on everyone. So that is one set of sanctions. The second set of sanctions we have seen are the sanctions imposed by individual countries or groups of countries. Iran's case is one of that, where the United States has imposed sanctions and has asked friendly countries to do the same, not as a mandatory part, but as a part of cooperating with the United States. And some did and we did not. Of course, when the UN sanctions were there, we had to cut down our supplies of oil from Iran, etc. But in Iraq, we cooperated with the United Nations and we stopped doing any business with Saddam-Sankt regime. So after the United Nations sanctions, then you have the multilateral sanctions in the sense not under UN, but individual countries together with like-minded nations can impose sanctions. Then you have unilateral sanctions. Any country can impose a sanction against another country because of any political or economic reason. And that has happened. And even India has done so in the case of Fiji. When there was a military coup in Fiji and the constitution was suspended, India imposed trade sanctions against Fiji, even though that was hurting us because the people of Indian origin in Fiji wanted Indian goods more than the rest of the population. So even though it hurt us, also hurt the Fiji Indians. We impose sanctions for some time in order to bring the country back to democracy, which happened after about 10 years or so. So this is the most powerful sanctions regime, short of military action. And of course, the use of force can also be authorized any moment as part of the sanctions. But it has remained within the economic sanctions, which I just mentioned. So the NATO sanctions are not applicable to the others, but there may be other countries who may be willingly wanting to join it, but otherwise it is limited in scope, but limited in scope in terms of countries concerned, that is only NATO countries, but unlimited in scope relating to its reach. What are the arguments against sanctions? There are some arguments against sanctions in international law. One of them is the right to development. Right to development is the right of every country. And if you impose economic sanctions against a country, you are violating the international law relating to right to development. Also, right to self-defense is a right of all countries. And if you limit their capability for self-defense by any action, such as cutting off military supplies, etc., can also be considered to be violation of the law relating to self-defense. We imposed, the United Nations imposed an arms embargo against South Africa, lasted for many, many years. And no arms could be supplied to South Africa because of apartheid. But there are always sanctions, violations. In fact, there used to be a committee in the United Nations monitoring the implementation of these sanctions. And we always found a large number of countries surreptitiously violated these sanctions and supplied arms to South Africa. But in any case, all that had a big impact. But if you look at the history of sanctions, you will find that most of these sanctions were illegitimate forms of collective punishment or the weakest and poorest members of the society. It doesn't affect the so-called polygarchs against whom sanctions have been imposed because they have deep pockets that they can survive. But even denial of a certain number of goods which are vital to the poorer sections of the people bring misery to them. And so this is also an argument raised by humanitarian considerations. And then exceptions are like you know, when the sanctions were at their highest in Iraq, United Nations went out of its way to allow Iraq to sell oil to whoever wants to buy it and then take the money, UN took the money and purchased medicines and food for the Iraqi population. So there are all these countermeasures also which can be taken and in effect it is a political commitment whether you impose sanctions against a country or not is determined by the political commitment you have for or against that country's policies. The calculation is many people believe that 33% of the time sanctions have been effective. If you look back at the history of sanctions in various parts of the world, only 33% of the time the sanctions bite. Very often the sanctions also bite those who impose sanctions and so-called unintended victims of sanctions. Like for example, the Iraq war. Our calculation was that our loss in terms of lost revenue, in terms of lost trade, etc. It was not intended. The United Nations had not intended that India should suffer on account of the war in Iraq. And therefore, there is a provision in the security in the United Nations Charter that if there are such unintended harm is done to any country, that country could approach the United Nations and seek compensation. And we did. But ironically, I was the chairman of the sanctions committee. India was the chairman of the sanctions committee against the Article 50. In terms of Article 50, seeking advice from the other countries to compensate, those are effective. The committee was set up and India happened to be the chairman. I tried very hard to collect data from all these countries and make a very strong presentation to the security forces. But they would not even touch it. The Article 50 exercise, which we continued for a year or so, we abandoned because nobody was willing to pay anybody for the losses sustained in sanctions. So it has various ramifications. It hurts the person you target. It hurts the people who target them. It hurts people around. It violates some of the fundamentals of international law. But still, it remains a policy of the United States, particularly in the post sanctions. And the most infamous American sanctions were against India in 1998 when we tested nuclear weapons. There was a Glenn amendment introduced by Senator Glenn, who was a cosmonaut. He had introduced an amendment in the American Congress that any nuclear weapon states, that is a country which is not designated as a nuclear state, if it violates the rules of the NPT and explodes a nuclear weapon. Maximum comprehensive sanctions should be applied against that country. So the moment President Clinton heard about India's nuclear quest, he immediately said that within a few hours, he was going to impose Glenn amendment sanctions against India. And Glenn amendment sanctions had never been used before in history. Nobody knew the extent of it. It was not very well clarified or delineated. And so American departments of commerce and others concerned ministries started interpreting it at the extreme level, that is to the extent of disallowing Indian scientists even to visit the United States. Dr. Chidambaram was not given a visa. To that extent such things have never happened. The Indian banks were almost closed down. Nobody could get a visa. Scholarships were discontinued. Many people left. In fact, at one time, we thought that 3 million Indians will just leave the United States. It became so critical. But then a better sense prevailed because many of the Republican senators felt that this was gross injustice. We should deal with India, talk to India on nuclear matters, but this is a gross injustice to the Indian population. And also loss for various areas in the US, which was supplying good students. So there was a senator called Brownback who introduced the first resolution in the Senate asking that we should lift the sanctions. We were talking with the Americans, but we never made that as an issue. We pretended that these sanctions were not affecting us. But it was affecting us because they had targeted the space program. They had targeted the nuclear program and we could not get any component for any of these agencies in India because of the sanctions. And they were critical components. And so it did affect us, but it did not affect our economy in general because they were targeted against certain institutions like space and nuclear energy. But in the discussions, the Americans put forward different, what are called the benchmarks. If you do this, we'll leave sanctions to a certain extent. If you do like that, and therefore over a period of time, even before the conclusion of the negotiations, slowly and gradually, we manage to lift the sanctions. So sanctions are not a one-way war. It's not like you're bombing somebody because this bomb can fall on YouTube. And that is why the hope of the victim, that is Russia, is that after some time, they will themselves regret doing this and then destroying the world economy. And therefore, they are promptly continuing the war in Ukraine, which even if it is concluded, will not solve the problem that Russia is talking about, that is their security, their ability to defend themselves against a move of the NATO as an institution into the East and bringing the American missiles and weapons at their doorstep. That is his objective. And that objective can be realized only by dealing with the West. And he's not attacking the West. But West is using sanctions as a machinery. It's for the first time as in place of war. That's why I call this talk sanctions as war. Sanctions have been used elsewhere before, but never as a substitute for war. And it's a sensible thing to do because why kill people and destroy buildings and so on like Mr. Putin is doing in Ukraine. Even if he succeeds to occupy, how will he get the objective of getting the house security for himself? And therefore, it is a catch 22 situation. Russia is attacking Ukraine, but NATO is attacking Russia with sanctions. So this is a very special situation. And the last point is how does it affect, it affects many people, it affects the world economy, all true. How does it affect India? We do not know yet. We have, as you know, big trade with India, with Russia, we have economic cooperation, 25 agreements reached in the last, during the last visit of President Putin to India. So it has to affect us in one way or the other. We have a development program in the Far East of Russia, $1 trillion we are supposed to have, $1 billion we're supposed to have committed to to the area around Vladivostok. So to implement all this will be difficult for India to make progress and our own economy will be affected by this. But as of now, we do not see this because it is mainly the major American companies which have been drawn from Russia, and they are still operating in India. So there is no immediate problem as far as the sanctions are concerned for India, but calculations are being made and alarms bell are ringing in various areas of Indian economy, saying that unless this war ends in Ukraine, and the sanctions war by European Union will also stop. So I wanted to focus on this aspect of the war. As far as the war is concerned, we hear that Russian troops are closing in on Kiev, but they are taking their time because they don't want to destroy too many buildings and kill too many people and 2 million people have already left Ukraine as refugees. Maybe they'll allow more of them to go and then occupy Kiev. But what is the purpose? Nothing will be sold by that. Maybe Putin can say I have won a victory, but he has to win a victory against the European Union and NATO on the sanctions war. This is what I wanted to bring to your attention today. Sanction has been imposed against India on S-400 missiles. They have done it on even Turkey, but the United States has kept quiet and they have indicated to us on different occasions that it is being considered. But nothing stops from imposing that sanction in case it becomes part of their sanctions war against Russia. So they may have to stop Russians from supplying arms to India, particularly as S-400 missiles and therefore as an extreme step, they could do that. But so far there is no indication. We do not expect it. The reason is that our strengthening of the Indian Defence Forces is part of the American agenda because of the presence of China close to us. So they will not do something which weakens India in any particular manner and therefore we still expect that unless something more serious happens, Americans will let the S-400 through. Part of it has already arrived in India and the rest will also come. Yes, all these reports are there. But as I always say, the first casualty in war is truth because none of these we should believe because there is a big misinformation war also going on. And the monopoly of this social media and others are in the western hands in the United States. And now of course those who do not go into Russia because all these social media are not operating in Russia, but they are able to reach the rest of the world. So what we hear may not be true and Russian broadcasts etc are not reaching many countries and therefore we do not know what the real picture is. But certainly we can imagine that this will have an impact on Russia but Mr. Putin is absolutely determined that whatever be the consequences he will pursue his interests and his objectives which have been changing over the days. So if he wants only to occupy Ukraine, change the president, he can do so anytime. But that's not what he wants. He wants security guarantees that NATO will not expand towards the east. Whether he will be able to accomplish that through this war is a matter to be seen as it grows. And of course war is really going very strongly and he has not seen any sign. Though there were a couple of ceasefire situations that was basically to let innocent people go out of the country including our students. As far as we are concerned, India is concerned the war is over as far as the repatriation of students is concerned. But that has not reduced the dangers of a third world war if things get worse than this. Well for that I think we have to go to astrologers because American psychiatrists have been studying his mind for some time and they are saying that he is a little bit off balance, nothing more. They have not proved that he is mad yet but that may even happen. But what is in mind, nobody seems to know not even his generals. He must have given only a general directive and not specifically what would stop the war that will be in his own hands. Yes, this is coming. Don't be disappointed. Don't think we can hold the price of oil beyond the point where the price are going very high. But the government of India can absorb some amount of increase in prices because we have very high taxes in oil prices. So if governments want government, state governments and central governments, government wants to hold the prices they can do so for some time. And the story goes that once the elections are settled, the new governments take position in the five states, then bang, it will come. So please expect the worst and don't buy happy with what is happening now. That they will not do because Poland is a member of nature. So which means third world war. In fact, our friend Zelensky has been saying that this is what's going to happen. Russia will now invade NATO countries around it and therefore America should protect Ukraine even more because if Ukraine is made a sacrificial land and Putin gets encouraged to attack NATO countries, that will be a global disaster. And that's not ruled out. But at the moment, he's not showing any sign of doing that. Thank you very much.