As debates continue about sanctions relief for Syria and peace talks are being planned for the Russia-Ukraine War, Western leaders and foreign affairs officials face an uncomfortable reality: they have absolutely no idea how to lift economic and financial sanctions once a war ends and elongated sanctions regimes need to be changed. This intractable problem of economic statecraft is one that few understand or are willing to acknowledge.
To be more specific, Western leaders, and particularly those in the United States, have not developed a successful strategy for leveraging sanctions to negotiate major concessions that end hostilities. Nor have they constructed a toolkit for how to provide timely sanctions reduction that would clarify, incentivize, or reciprocate such concessions. At best, leaders often lament that it is always easier to impose sanctions than to adapt or terminate them in a ripe-for-resolution crisis negotiation.
An adaptive, serious schematic for aiding the transition of a devastated sanctioned economy to a functioning one without sanctions is as critical a step for ending hostilities as de-mining operations, reciprocally reducing frontline troop numbers, and the complete exchange of prisoners. Failure to develop scenarios and actions that produce sanctions-leveraged agreements with the targets of those penalties is both irresponsible to the millions of innocents suffering from sanctions but also risks adding a poison pill to any ceasefire deal at conception. It may even prevent a final peace deal from being signed. In fact, the tools for potential success in reducing sanctions exist; they just need to be heeded by the sanctions-imposing entities’ policymakers and political leaders involved.
During the past 10 years, there have been at least three clear cases of failed sanctions relief in similar circumstances of opportune political compromise as today’s Syria situation: Iran (2016-2018), Colombia (since 2016), and Sudan (2017-2021). In the case of Iran, one of us (Stephen) witnessed the immense struggle the United States and its allies faced trying to deliver sanctions relief after 2016 and how lingering sanctions eroded confidence and good faith between parties. This weakening set the stage for President Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018.
In Colombia and Sudan, private actors were reluctant to pursue new business ventures while any government sanctions remained. Similarly, U.S. and Venezuelan negotiations appeared to have agreed which sanctions reduction would produce which specific changes in Maduro’s conduct of the 2024 national election, but when Venezuela failed to deliver some of these changes, the United States reinstated the sanctions, and Maduro falsified the election results to remain in power. So again the economic quagmire remains: Sanctions become the policy rather than the tool of a policy of crisis resolution.
Sanctions Relief and Adaptation Have Been Too Slow and Uncoordinated
The Jan. 27 meeting of the European Union on Syrian sanctions reduction prompted optimism that a roadmap would soon be forthcoming. Yet beyond some loosening of restrictions affecting the energy sector and enabling some emergency humanitarian relief, the ministers appeared to struggle with “technical issues” and debate a “snap back” of sanctions if needed. But in a significant move on Monday, European Union countries suspended a range of sanctions against Syria with immediate effect, including restrictions related to energy, banking, transport and reconstruction.
To its credit, the Biden administration was quick to issue General License 24 for Syria in early January, permitting economic transactions in the energy sector and with official Syrian government institutions. But it expires on July 7. The Trump Administration, which stated early that ‘Syria wasn’t our fight’, now appears to have shifted to full uncertainty about its policy direction. U.S. inaction, even on extending GL 24, becomes even more problematic and irresponsible as it may undercut Europe’s efforts unless issues of U.S. secondary sanctions jeopardy are quickly addressed.
These Western discussions and uncoordinated sanctions relief in the humanitarian sector unfold almost three months after the fall of the Assad regime. While the prospect of a post-Assad Syria prompts optimism, now is the time for cooperative action that produces tangible relief. Otherwise, as argued recently by seasoned analysts, the West will make the same mistakes of sanctions reduction timidity and slow direct diplomatic engagement that it did with Afghanistan in 2021.
Why a Working Playbook for Sanctions Relief Is So Difficult
A significant blockage to effective action is the West’s inability to sort through the different views held by various sanctions targets of what constitutes sanctions relief. One of the first requests to the international community from the new, interim Syrian government led by the armed group that toppled Bashar al-Assad, Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was sanctions relief in the energy, telecoms, roads and airports, education and healthcare sectors, to meet the basic needs of its citizens. Leading a country devastated from 14 years of war, HTS envisioned a coordinated, rather massive and immediate response, largely because the dictator had fled and a new, however imperfect Syrian order was unfolding. But Western cautions and lack of plans for the intricacies of reversing sanctions jeopardize peace and progress in Syria, and further destabilization in the region.
Sanctions relief has been directly stated last week by Russia in its summit with the U.S. Russia views Western sanctions as a long-term economic containment strategy to box it in, not a nimble policy tool. This has fueled Russia’s pivot to alternative trade partnerships and economic models like the 10-country BRICS group of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. These States increasingly coalesce into a parallel economic system that is immune from Western pressure. Furthermore, Russia’s relationship and transactions with Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and Syria under Assad has led them to be labeled “the axis of the sanctioned.” To deal with this collective demands a well-conceived and implementable plan.
Additionally, experience with the outcomes of political decisions to reduce or remove sanctions shows that they often naively assume that a market-based economic and business resurgence will miraculously appear. But when the free market is forced into a position of hard de-coupling and de-risking for several years, it does not return to its pre-sanctions or pre-war position. It opts instead for a recalcitrant “wait and see” approach, hedging against the risk of further political shifts when what is needed is an “act and see” strategy in which business and investors sense at least enough economic stability to resume at least some degree of risk-taking.
This vexes policymakers since they consider the market as the same medium they rely on for delivering relief from economic pressure. Without solving this conundrum, there remains a significant likelihood that gradual sanctions relief without incentives for the market to return to risk-taking will lead to political conflicts. And without any sanctions relief, there will be no binding armistice or enduring peace, neither in these days of Syrian transition nor in an end of the Ukraine-Russia War.
Finally, a major mental block manifest by sanctions imposers continues to be their approach to sanctions reduction and relief discussions as if they engaged in an arms control negotiation. The former is an asymmetric confrontation, the latter seeks a trade-off bargain between equals. With sanctions, deep bruising of the target remains, especially from regional and global financial institutions, long after these economic weapons are formally decommissioned. Moreover, sanctions-imposing governments and their diverse departments with different sanctions jurisdictions — financial, counterterrorism, trade, and political — assume unravelling these overlapping restrictions will occur in a logical and timely fashion. Recent cases prove otherwise.
The Opening for Meaningful Action is Slipping Away
To operationalize sanctions relief effectively, Western diplomats must engage the real-world recommendations from sanctions experts and prioritize the policy groundwork for sanctions reduction. A serious toolkit exists for delivering humanitarian relief when sanctions are in place. That provides a model for a possible toolkit for sanctions reduction in emergency recovery and for the resumption – or start — of economic exchanges. This sanctions relief toolkit must include establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for sanctions relief to define and track the target State’s compliance and progress with whatever political deals about target behavior are forged. These KPIs must define clear snap-back provisions to address violations, while simultaneously addressing private-sector hesitancy through regulatory assurances.
Such steps would ensure credibility and reduce uncertainty for all engaged parties. Diplomats must design a sanctions relief roadmap that incentivizes early and substantial re-engagement by humanitarian organizations and then by financial institutions whenever a new political opportunity for ceasefire or peace presents itself. Without such preparation, market actors will remain cautious, preventing economic recovery, and undermining long-term peace efforts.
As the rapid end to the Assad regime illustrates, and as sudden U.S.-Russian meetings on Ukraine have thrown allies of the United States and Ukraine into a scramble, Western nations are now in the last minute of new political openings and peace negotiations with no sanctions plan. They must urgently formulate negotiation strategies and the master technical mechanics for the immensely complex suspension or termination of the multiple restrictions on the work of humanitarian organizations, as well as on commercial trade, finance, and development assistance.