Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The increased sanctions efforts of European diplomacy in recent years have formed a new angle of view on the European Unionʼs external policy towards neighboring countries, since one of the criteria of the EUʼs sanctions policy effectiveness is the so-called “regional leadership” – third countriesʼ alignment with the EU sanctions regimes. The established academicdiscourse on the topic in Europe evaluates the effectiveness of the sanctions policy on this parameter extremely highly. However, what, in fact, is behind the facade of the postulated successes of regional leadership? In this paper, the author asks this question in relation to Iceland, a country that has increased vulnerability in the face of external challenges and which has incurred incomparably high costs from harmonizing its foreign policy with the EU anti-Russian sanctions regimes. Using the theoretical and methodological frameworks of the shelter theory, this study documents the negative political and economic consequences that Iceland has faced and shows that there are no such categories as consideration and leveling of possible costs for affiliated countries in the goal setting of the EU sanctions policy. In the Icelandic case, this, in turn, leadsto a reformatting and polarization of the existing ecosystem of relations in the Euro-Atlantic, since the costs Iceland incurs from harmonization with EU policy are mostly compensated by the United States, although traditionally the U.S. has been responsible for Icelandʼs military rather than economic protection. The international political situation in the conditions of sanctions sets the stage for possible tensions in Icelandʼs relations with the EU and a stronger U.S. direction in its multilateral foreign policy. Nevertheless, despite these tensions, Iceland will continue to synchronize with the EU sanctions regimes, as other options are either fraught with even greater costs (synchronization with the U.S. sanctions policy, which is substantially tougher than that of the EU) or unrealizable in the international realities after the start of the Special Military Operation(developing its own sanctions regime).
Author: Sabina Davranova
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4407752169