Sanctions, enablers and collective punishment
Moral Maze
BBC
4.4 • 623 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We can’t help Ukraine with troops and planes, most politicians insist, but we can hit back at Putin by punishing his friends and choking the Russian economy. This week the long-promised Economic Crime Bill zipped through the Commons and could be law within a month. The Home Secretary said the legislation proves she’s determined to “hobble Putin and his cronies”. But it will do nothing to hurt their ‘enablers’ – the London-based accountants, lawyers and fixers who’ve helped the oligarchs to hide their money and muzzle their critics. Should we try to punish those people too, or does that cross a moral red line?
We don’t need to wait for a new law before we start hurting ordinary Russians with economic sanctions. We’re already punishing extraordinary Russians, from Paralympians to opera singers, with bans and boycotts. Have they all deserved this for the crime of being Russian? Soon visa restrictions will start to trap Russian dissenters in a country that isn't safe for them. Is such "collective punishment" morally justified? What about our own economy, our businesses and their workers? Are we sure we will tolerate squeezing Russia when we have massive rises in the costs of energy and food?
Some global companies are shutting down their Russian operations - at least temporarily. Others have not, though the pressure on them is growing. But is that a commercial decision or a moral one? Do we even want businesses to advertise their virtue, if (as the Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman put it) the social responsibility of business is solely to increase profits? With broadcaster Isabel Hilton; journalist Niko Vorobyov; City University Professor of Finance and Accounting Atul K Shah and Economist Julian Jessop.
Produced by Olive Clancy
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:04.9 | Good evening. Our horror at what's going on in Ukraine has led to what an ex-minister described this week as an auction of indignation against anything to do with Russia. |
| 0:14.5 | Ban this, ban that, ban everything, he said. |
| 0:17.9 | Sir Alan Duncan's concern was utilitarian, that sanctions would rebound on us and lead to what he called a dystopian economic collapse in the West. But there are profound moral questions, too. First, they amount to collective punishment. They affect all Russians, even disabled athletes. The economic crimes bill, being rushed through the Commons this week, |
| 0:38.5 | does target individuals here, and few will weep for oligarchs with their billions of ransacked |
| 0:44.9 | rubles. But what about their so-called enablers, lawyers, accountants, PR men? There's a clamour to go |
| 0:50.7 | after them, even though they would say they were doing their jobs and breaking |
| 0:54.7 | no law. And what about businesses queuing up to condemn Russia and divest? Shell and McDonald's |
| 1:01.5 | are the latest. Their bosses may share the general anger about what's happening or want to be |
| 1:06.5 | seen to do so. But what actually is a company's social responsibility beyond, as Milton Friedman put |
| 1:12.1 | it, making a profit for the shareholders within the law? Sanctions, do they work? Will they hurt us? |
| 1:18.8 | Above all, are they right? That's our moral maze tonight. The panel, Melanie Phillips, |
| 1:22.8 | social commentator at the Times, the historian Tim Stanley, Ash Sarker, the libertarian Marxist and editor at the Navarro Media Group, |
| 1:30.3 | and the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, Matthew Taylor. |
| 1:34.3 | Ash, where do you stand on sanctions? |
| 1:36.2 | Well, I think that the flow of Russian cash into London's property market, into London's financial institutions, |
| 1:42.0 | has been really bad for people, both here and also in |
| 1:45.7 | Russia. It's only been good for making fat cats even fatter. And what's more is upset the natural |
| 1:51.8 | order of things, which is Chelsea being rubbish. Tim, Tim, Sam. I think the West tends to think, |
| 1:59.3 | assume that sanctions are easy, that they only hit the rich |
| 2:02.8 | and the powerful. But they can also hurt, quote, unquote, ordinary people, not just in the |
| 2:07.4 | targeted country, but also in the blowback back here at home. And I'm concerned about that |
... |
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