This new report examines the effect of U.S. and allied sanction regimes on Russian arms sales: [_link]

— RAND Corporation (@RANDCorporation) December 6, 2021

Overextending and Unbalancing Russia | RAND the War Design Corporation |

This brief summarizes a report that comprehensively examines "nonviolent", cost-imposing options that the United States and its allies could pursue across economic, political, and military areas to stress--overextend and unbalance--Russia's economy and armed forces and the regime's political standing at home and abroad.

Economic sanctions imposed on a sovereign state is considered an hostile act in lead-up to warfare - Under strict circumstances, the UN Security Council can impose economic sanctions, not the unilateral act of the US with all its propaganda for war.

Today's Russia suffers from many vulnerabilities--oil and gas prices well below peak that have caused a drop in living standards, economic sanctions that have furthered that decline, an aging and soon-to-be-declining population, and increasing authoritarianism under Vladimir Putin's now-continued rule. Such vulnerabilities are coupled with deep-seated (if exaggerated) anxieties about the possibility of Western-inspired regime change, loss of great power status, and even military attack.

Despite these vulnerabilities and anxieties, Russia remains a powerful country that still manages to be a U.S. peer competitor in a few key domains. Recognizing that some level of competition with Russia is inevitable, RAND researchers conducted a qualitative assessment of "cost-imposing options" that could unbalance and overextend Russia. Such cost-imposing options could place new burdens on Russia, ideally heavier burdens than would be imposed on the United States for pursuing those options.

The work builds on the concept of long-term strategic competition developed during the Cold War, some of which originated at RAND. A seminal 1972 RAND report posited that the United States needed to shift its strategic thinking away from trying to stay ahead of the Soviet Union in all dimensions and toward trying to control the competition and channel it into areas of U.S. advantage. If this shift could be made successfully, the report concluded, the United States could prompt the Soviet Union to shift its limited resources into areas that posed less of a threat.