The target strikes back: explaining countersanctions and Russia’s strategy of differentiated retaliation

This article analyzes Russia’s retaliatory food embargo, explaining why the Russian government banned some imports from the West but refrained from banning a range of equally plausible others. I argue that Moscow was following a strategy of differentiated retaliation when selecting which imports to embargo. The countersanctions were not designed to mete out equal punishment on all members of the sanctioning coalition. Rather, Russia purposefully crafted the policy to inflict greater economic damage on some states than others. Utilizing an original data-set on all agricultural and food products that Russia imports, I demonstrate that, ceteris paribus, imports of sizeable commercial value to countries the Kremlin has long viewed as the mainstays of anti-Russian policies were far more likely to have been banned. In contrast, the evidence shows that Moscow stayed its hand in dealing with Europe’s major powers. This analysis both illuminates the policy objectives being pursued by a leading actor in world politics, as well as lays the groundwork for theoretically understanding the geostrategic, political, and economic drivers of countersanctions.