EDITORIAL: Wielding the economic weapon against Russia

Mar. 10—Vladimir Putin has said many things about his unwarranted invasion of Ukraine, most of them unconnected to reality. But he has this much right: The economic sanctions levied on Russia by most of the rest of the world amount to war.

President Joe Biden and our allies crushed the ruble in a weekend; it is now worth less than a penny. Moscow, knowing full well that the sanctions regimen has made Russian companies worthless, dares not reopen its stock market. Most international companies have now shuttered their Russian outlets and affiliations. The Russian economy is already broken.

But Russia is not completely impotent in an economic war. It is, and remains today, a critical supplier of fuel to western Europe. It is, and remains today, a major producer of wheat and oilseeds. The escalating sanctions piled on Putin's regime have been designed to allow Europe to continue to purchase the gas and oil its needs from Russia.

It was easy enough for Biden on Tuesday to prohibit imports of Russian oil and gas to the United States; it is a different matter for Germany to do the same. The European Union's goal of energy independence is no help today.

So this is a difficult balancing act for Biden and the rest of the free world. Russia — most precisely Putin — must be reined in and punished for this criminal war. The trick is minimizing the damage done to our own economies, and keeping Putin from lashing out militarily beyond Ukraine.

A wider war carries too much risk of going nuclear; certainly Putin cannot, after the embarrassments inflicted on his army in Ukraine, expect better results in a conventional confrontation with NATO.

And we have no illusions: Our economic war with Russia adds to the inflationary pressures already in place.

Gas prices here have escalated since the invasion began. Ukraine is a major agricultural producer, and it's hard to imagine how its wheat and sunflowers will be produced, much less exported, with the war going on. This will doubtless raise prices for American farmers, but also raise prices for consumers.

Polling so far suggests that Americans accept higher gas prices as a result of helping Ukraine. How much pain Americans will accept, and for how long, is unknown.

But certainly the pinch from filling a pickup's tank at $4 a gallon is minimal compared to the agony of Mariupol, the Ukrainian port city being slowly starved and leveled. This economic war does little to help those unfortunate souls.