Features of countries’ response to large-scale sanctions: Are there lessons to be learned?

The article is devoted to a comparative analysis of the economic policies of several countries — Iran, DPRK, Venezuela — implemented under large-scale external sanctions and aimed at both minimizing the damage caused by them and ensuring long-term economic development. The reviewed practices of responding to sanctions allow us to identify a number of regularities and formulate some lessons. In particular, the widely practiced “switching” of trade, technological and other linkages to countries that have not joined the sanctions allows to partially offset their negative impact, but often entails a dramatic increase in dependence on new partners. Large volumes of fuel and raw materials exports play an ambiguous role under sanctions. On the one hand, such exports are obvious targets for external restrictions, and dependence on them makes countries more vulnerable to sanctions pressure. On the other hand, stable demand for energy resources and raw materials from a large number of players makes it possible to use various ways to bypass sanctions and develop alternative supply channels, although they are often complicated and costly.