If the Russian Federation is to prevent such negative domestic fallout in the future, the Russian Federation should adopt a special legislative procedure to address the issues that are raised when Russia participates in sanction regimes. This procedure should obviously include some means of reconciling any differences in the positions of the executive and legislative branches, and it should provide for open discussion of the issues with representatives of different political groups and parties. Second, Russian policy on sanctions should be defined-both legislatively and by regulation. On the international level, a multilateral process should be undertaken to clarify the criteria for the adoption of economic and political sanctions as well as the criteria for the termination of sanctions. In addition, a process should be initiated within the U.N. framework to try to reconcile different national laws on sanctions, with the goal of developing a universally accepted and codified mechanism for international economic and political sanctions.
Many questions remain to be answered in regard to internationally imposed and enforced sanctions.
In fact, recent attempts to impose sanctions should be considered only first steps toward the creation of a set of internationally recognized peace-making mechanisms. The end of the Cold War has opened the way for the United Nations and other international organizations to engage in more fruitful activities. A study of the present record of sanctions, with all its successes and failures, could yield extremely rich material for the future improvement of interstate cooperation in peacekeeping. Sanctions should not be regarded as an instrument of routine political interaction between nations, but rather as an extraordinary instrument to be adopted only after careful study of all the circumstances. In neither the case of Iraq nor Yugoslavia did the introduction of sanctions lead to the fulfillment of the goals articulated by the international community-even though the sanctions were able to undermine vital areas of the target countries' economies.