Any woman would tell you that. What matters is what you do with it and whether you know how to use it. Whatever Brobdingnagian thing you’ve got going on there, it’s way more important to have a game plan and understand the sweet spots you need to target. Otherwise,...
Recently, Suzanne Nossel published a piece critical of US and EU sanctions against Russia. A number of her points make sense. For US-EU sanctions to really isolate Russia and thus have a chance to...
This was another busy week in global politics and I'm going to highlight some of the best tweets in my Twitter feed. Before starting, however, I will acknowledge that this post is late. I believe my...
Seeing reports in the New York Times today on further Russian aggression in Ukraine has me thinking about Ely Ratner and Elizabeth Rosenberg’s recent article entitled “Pointless Punishment?" where...
Editor's note: a more detailed version of this post previously appeared on my personal blog. If sanctions are to succeed as a tool of coercive diplomacy, they must impose real costs on the target. Yet, in most cases, they fail to do this—at least, directly. The economic costs tend to fall disproportionately on the average person, while the regime and its elite supports often find ways to benefit from newly emergent black markets. But might sanctions put pressure on the regime through some other channel? Say, by increasing protests? There have been many attempts at answer this question, all...
In 1991, with the Soviet Union on the verge of collapse, the rump regime of Mohammad Najibullah finally cut a deal with Iran. The Iranians were allowed to supply the Hazarajat in central Afghanistan with armaments and other goods through direct flights to Bamiyan in exchange for supplying petroleum to western Afghanistan, including to the Kabul regime's military forces. The arrangement provided Tehran with unfettered access to an area which since 1981 was increasingly under its patronage. The Iranians hoped that they would be able to use this access to strengthen their proxies (i.e. Hezb-i...
In case you're like most American academics and are on vacation, you may have missed the fact that America is seriously turning up the heat on Iran. The US has begun squeezing Iran's fuel imports and access to financial markets in response to Iran's refusal to halt its alleged nuclear enrichment activities. A controversial new US law has been signed by President Obama which will sanction any company (regardless of national origin) that exports refined petroleum products or provides financing to Iran. Corporations and financial firms have already begun to comply with the new US law which goes...
I just heard a radio discussion in which two pundits debated whether or not today's sanctions will trigger a reversal in Iran's nuclear program. The focus of the conversation was single cause = single effect -- the sanctions either will or will not be successful gauged solely against the one criteria. Obviously, that criteria is the most significant. But, like most policy instruments, sanctions are a complicated tool. I've been influenced most on this topic by David Baldwin's Economic Statecraft. David argues that that there are multiple objectives behind almost every policy. To effectively...