No. of Recommendations: 9
The Europeans need to help change the overall calculus.
The overall calculus doesn't need to be changed for Ukraine to win, nor is there anything the Europeans can really do to change it in any material way.
Secondary sanctions won't change the direction of the war. We've already seen that with the U.S. and India. The U.S. imposed whopping big sanctions against India to try to get them to stop buying Russian oil. They didn't stop buying Russian oil. Instead, the sanctions had the opposite of the intended effect. India promptly moved closer into the Sino-Russian sphere of influence, publicly cozying up to Putin and Xi in a pointed show of increased alignment.
Europe imposing sanctions against China and India would have the same effect - or rather, the same unintended consequence.^^ Neither India nor China would stop trading with Russia in response to the sanctions. Instead, they would simply tighten their economic and diplomatic bonds with each other. And the damage to the EU's economy from the sanctions would make it harder for them to continue their economic support for Ukraine.
The current overall calculus provides a good chance for Ukraine to win the war, but painfully slowly. If there were measures that could speed that up, it would be good to implement them. However, there aren't really any such measures on offer. Secondary sanctions won't work.
^^Note that the EU almost certainly can't do this. They cannot impose sanctions without unanimity among the member states, and Hungary would almost certainly refuse to approve them.
