Economic Sanctions Work

Endless articles in my blogroll insist that economic sanctions against Putin will not work because they never work. Of course, there is evidence that the threat of the sanctions is working already, but who cares, as long as pundits can trot out a dozen other situations that are “just like” this one and where sanctions did not work.

One thing that could really tip the balance here is introducing visa restrictions. Just let the Russians know that it will be a tad harder for them to travel to Europe and the US, and this will help Ukraine enormously. The only people who will suffer because of this measure are the bandits because regular folks in Russia are not likely to jet set all over the world, as you can imagine.

In the meanwhile, we can see that the Ukrainian soldier from the video I linked to earlier today was not mistaken in the belief that “America is on our side”:

In a demonstration of support for Ukraine’s fledgling government, Secretary of State John Kerry arrived here on Tuesday with an offer of $1 billion in American loan guarantees and pledges of technical assistance, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday.

Technical assistance is more important than the loans because it is crucial to do something to prevent this money from being stolen just like all the previous loans were.