Sanctions as a foreign policy tool: comparing EU and US sanctions on the Russian Federation for Ukraine related activities

Abstract

Through the past decade, sanction literature has looked into different sides of this political tool, bringing a vast number of new insights to aspects such as sanction effectiveness, influence on the target by outlining numerous case studies. However, the literature has put only a small amount of attention to the initial sanction cooperation aspect, as well as sanction cohesion and complimentary rating. At the same time, the popularity of cooperation sanctions as well as implementing sanctions collaborate with two or more countries has spiked, leaving the possible effects of working coherently and together somewhat unknown. This study seeks to contribute to the sanction literature by analysing US and EU sanction formulation process and sanction regimes cohesion on case study Russia. The main aim of the thesis is to examine US and EU sanction formulation process from decision-making to enforcement and to compare sanction regimes which are imposed on Russia for Ukraine related activities from 2014. Author uses document analysis method for conducting detailed and comprehensive analysis with the set of developed indicators inspired by analytical framework of Christhopher Hill. This thesis focuses on sanction formulation, implementation timing, measures and goals in order to evaluate and explain US and EU sanction-making process, sanction regimes cohesion and complementarity on Russia. The findings of this work suggest that sanction formulation process of US and EU are different in every level of sanction making process which in return affects the sanction regimes complementarity and cohesion. In the case study Russia sanctions implementation timing, measures, specific targeted entities and sanction goals do not match with one another, therefore causing disturbances in coherence of sanction regimes which in return has an effect on the purpose of sanction imposition in the first place. The author suggests that with the raising sanctioning activities and multilateral sanctions outside of the international organization’s framework, more attention should be put on sanction cohesion and complementarity in order to achieve desired outcomes of the regimes. More specifically common framework for sanction imposition should be developed and more attention should be paid to the various aspects related to the cohesion and effectiveness of the sanction regime.