Daleep Singh is a former US deputy national security adviser in the Biden administration and a key architect of US sanctions against Russia. He spoke recently with Daniel Flatley, a national security reporter with Bloomberg News in Washington, about his ideas for a US-led doctrine of economic statecraft. Here’s a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity:
Singh: Great power competition is not going away. It’s likely to intensify in the years ahead and set against the alternatives of military conflict between nuclear powers or just standing aside when core principles that lie at the heart of the UN charter are under threat, sanctions and statecraft are going to remain a fixture of foreign policy. My point is, let’s get on with the work of institutionalizing how, when, and why statecraft is used.
And I think those tests should begin by assessing where do our economic strengths intersect with the target’s vulnerabilities and vice versa. Because statecraft is generally a multiplayer repeated game. The target has options too. And that should evolve into a continuous process that allows us to identify where we need to strengthen or invent new tools, new defense mechanisms, new forms of coordination.
Singh: My view is that proximity to power is the most important consideration. So this effort I’m describing should start at the White House, and it should be down the hall from the president. And my sense is that it should be co-led by the National Security Advisor and the National Economic Council director.
Singh: The first option would be not to do so in a threatening manner, but to say, you know, the tools of economic statecraft are going to be used, let’s agree, with more frequency and more potency than we’ve seen in decades. We, both of our countries have much, much at risk from the use of these tools. And let’s not engage in a race to the bottom in how they’re executed.
Flatley: One thing I wanted to ask about was sanctions. One of the criticisms of sanctions, as I’m sure you’re well aware, is that they’re used too much or that once you have them on, they’re very hard to take off.
More importantly, we know that two-thirds of the world’s population lives in countries that have not joined the sanctions regime against Russia. In some circumstances, their hesitance to do so is rooted in a belief that it is essentially a unilateral exercise of brute American financial force. And that is a very damaging perception. It’s an incorrect perception, but it’s a very damaging perception that I think is rooted in the visibility of our sanctions regime relative to other tools.
On top of all of that, we know that right now when countries have an almost unprecedented need for external financing, Chinese net lending to the developing world is falling sharply. And where they’re still lending, the average borrowing cost for distressed countries is considerably higher than for rescue loans extended by the IMF. So, there’s a real opportunity for us to step up right now where China has essentially engaged in deals that are not in the interest of the borrowing country.
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