I'm sure they're weeping and wailing all the way to the bank

 

Remember the sanctions against Russia that were instituted in the wake of that country's invasion of Ukraine?  Looks like those sanctions are (as usual) somewhat less than a stellar success.  Sky News reports:

British carmakers appear to have continued selling hundreds of millions of pounds of luxury vehicles to Russia even after the invasion of Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions, exporting the cars indirectly via former Soviet states, Sky News analysis suggests.

While direct British car exports to Russia have fallen to zero following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that collapse has been followed by a corresponding increase in car exports to countries neighbouring Russia, most notably Azerbaijan.

Our analysis, based on official HMRC trade data, finds that the UK exported £273m of vehicles to Azerbaijan last year, a 1,860% increase compared with the five-year period preceding the invasion.

Not only is the increase in exports to Azerbaijan unprecedented, it is of a similar magnitude to the annual car exports to Russia in the two years before the imposition of sanctions, which averaged £330m.

Alongside the UK HMRC statistics, Sky News has analysed UN international trade data which shows that over precisely the same period that Britain recorded an unprecedented increase in car exports to Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan recorded an unprecedented increase in car exports to Russia.

. . .

Sky News has previously shown that many other banned items, including those known to have been repurposed as weapons, have been sent to former Soviet states in the Caucasus and Central Asia, including Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. Those states have all recorded sharp increases in their exports to Russia.

There's more at the link.

As usual, sanctions are a feel-good panacea, not an effective means of exerting pressure.  All they do is increase the cost of doing business with the nation targeted by them.

South Africa, my country of origin, is an excellent example.  A mandatory arms embargo was instituted against it in 1977.  It certainly interfered with the importation of naval vessels and other major items of hardware:  but that didn't stop South Africa from building its own and/or upgrading existing assets, including obtaining (legally or illegally) all the technology needed to do so.  In addition, major expansion of its domestic armaments industry produced world-leading advances in artillery, mine-protected vehicles (which were the foundation of almost all MRAP designs in the West a couple of decades later) and other areas, as well as supplying almost all components, spares and tools that had previously been imported.  Being at the time the largest producer of gold in the world, South Africa could pay suppliers in utterly untraceable precious metals or in any currency in the world, obtainable by selling that gold.  (Why do you think the Krugerrand became the world's most widely circulated gold coin during that period?)

Needless to say, there were any number of vendors ready, willing and able to do business on those terms, including major companies in the USA, Britain, Germany, Israel and elsewhere.  Also, non-military products that could be applied to military needs were imported on a massive scale:  I mentioned a couple of examples in a previous blog post.  To cite yet another one, South Africa produced its own clones of the DEC PDP-11 computer in large quantities, and imported Japanese clones of the IBM System/370 mainframe.  Imported computers could not legally be supplied to South Africa's military or armaments industry, in terms of the arms embargo:  but they could be (and were) sold to other government departments and organizations for non-military scientific research and administrative data processing.  If those same computers from time to time ran software for other entities as well, who was to know?

Sanctions benefit two groups of people.  First, they benefit the feel-good, do-good emotional types who can at least say, "Well, we're doing something about the problem!"  The fact that what they're doing isn't very useful or effective is neither here nor there - it's the feelings that count (and the public relations value), not the facts.  Second, they benefit all those who are prepared to take money from anybody for anything.  They can ratchet up their prices according to how difficult the sanctions make it to export to the buyer, and according to how badly the buyer needs what they have to offer.  That latter, by the way, is a two-edged sword.  South Africa often encountered sellers who believed they had a lock on the market, and could force South Africa to pay whatever they demanded for what it needed.  They usually found that they were sent on their way without a penny while another, more reasonable (and more realistic) seller got the business.  (If you're going to play hardball with an expert in hardball, you'd better be sure your ball is harder than his, so to speak.  Some would-be sellers who thought they were hard men tried tactics such as threats of exposure, blackmail, etc., only to find that South African purchasers could be harder than their worst nightmare.  Others watched and learned, making it much simpler to do business with them in future.)

To go back to the report above, the British manufacturers involved have clean hands according to the sanctions regulations.  They're not making money out of Russia, but from Azerbaijan.  The fact that anyone with two working brain cells can figure out that Azerbaijani money is, in fact, very thinly disguised Russian money is conveniently swept under the carpet.  After all, one can't expect politicians to do without the bribes payoffs contributions they receive from commerce and industry;  and the thought of causing greater unemployment by asking awkward questions is just too ghastly for them to contemplate.  After all, that might cost them votes!

So much for morality in politics and in business . . .

Peter