1
00:00:01,920 --> 00:00:06,600
Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey

2
00:00:06,680 --> 00:00:12,559
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. Lauren Bogbaum here. On February twenty one, Russian

3
00:00:12,560 --> 00:00:15,960
Speaker 1: President Vladimir Putin gave an hour long speech where he

4
00:00:16,200 --> 00:00:20,160
Speaker 1: not only recognized the independence of two Russia BacT territories

5
00:00:20,200 --> 00:00:25,120
Speaker 1: in eastern Ukraine, but also delegitimized the sovereignty of Ukraine itself.

6
00:00:26,040 --> 00:00:29,720
Speaker 1: Putin expanded the idea that Ukraine's borders were drawn up

7
00:00:29,720 --> 00:00:33,479
Speaker 1: by the Soviet Union's founder, Vladimir Lenin and still exist

8
00:00:33,640 --> 00:00:36,159
Speaker 1: only because of the fall of the Soviet Union in

9
00:00:37,840 --> 00:00:41,160
Speaker 1: After the speech, Putin ordered troops into those eastern territories

10
00:00:41,280 --> 00:00:45,920
Speaker 1: under the guise of them being peacemakers. Many experts in

11
00:00:45,960 --> 00:00:50,560
Speaker 1: global geopolitics were concerned, if not horrified, by the speech

12
00:00:50,640 --> 00:00:54,960
Speaker 1: and invasion, suggesting it was Putin's way of rewriting history

13
00:00:55,240 --> 00:00:57,680
Speaker 1: as well as of providing a reason to launch what

14
00:00:57,800 --> 00:01:00,400
Speaker 1: could become the largest war in Europe's in the end

15
00:01:00,440 --> 00:01:03,600
Speaker 1: of World War Two. The speech came after Putin had

16
00:01:03,640 --> 00:01:08,160
Speaker 1: spent months building up Russian military forces surrounding Ukraine. He's

17
00:01:08,200 --> 00:01:12,039
Speaker 1: also demanded Ukraine not be allowed to join NATO, the

18
00:01:12,080 --> 00:01:16,920
Speaker 1: defensive alliance that currently includes thirty countries, So how is

19
00:01:16,920 --> 00:01:21,520
Speaker 1: the world responding? The NATO Ukraine Commission met in Brussels

20
00:01:21,640 --> 00:01:25,960
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, February twenty second two to address the situation.

21
00:01:27,040 --> 00:01:31,200
Speaker 1: NATO Secretary Yan Stoltenberg said it will stand by Ukrainian

22
00:01:31,240 --> 00:01:35,640
Speaker 1: sovereignty with force if necessary, but hoped Russia would still

23
00:01:35,840 --> 00:01:41,520
Speaker 1: choose diplomacy. So aside from a full on war, what

24
00:01:41,680 --> 00:01:45,680
Speaker 1: else are world leaders doing to deter Putin from invading Ukraine?

25
00:01:46,480 --> 00:01:52,160
Speaker 1: They're imposing sanctions. So today let's talk about what sanctions

26
00:01:52,200 --> 00:01:56,080
Speaker 1: are and how they're imposed, and also what sanctions are

27
00:01:56,120 --> 00:02:01,520
Speaker 1: supposed to accomplish and how they work. Very basically, sanctions

28
00:02:01,560 --> 00:02:05,160
Speaker 1: are sort of economic versions of weaponry designed to turn

29
00:02:05,240 --> 00:02:08,040
Speaker 1: up the pressure on another country and its regimes leaders

30
00:02:08,160 --> 00:02:11,760
Speaker 1: by hitting them in their wallets. For the article this

31
00:02:11,800 --> 00:02:14,400
Speaker 1: episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with Ellen

32
00:02:14,440 --> 00:02:18,440
Speaker 1: laps In back In. She's the director of the Master's

33
00:02:18,480 --> 00:02:22,160
Speaker 1: in International Security degree program and the Center for Security

34
00:02:22,160 --> 00:02:26,120
Speaker 1: Policy Studies at George Mason University's Shore School of Policy

35
00:02:26,120 --> 00:02:29,000
Speaker 1: and Government and a former vice chair of the U.

36
00:02:29,040 --> 00:02:34,320
Speaker 1: S Government's National Intelligence Council. She explained sanctions are any

37
00:02:34,400 --> 00:02:40,040
Speaker 1: penalty or disruption in the normal economic relations between two countries. Usually,

38
00:02:40,320 --> 00:02:43,520
Speaker 1: sanctions are supposed to target a particular bad behavior or

39
00:02:43,600 --> 00:02:49,160
Speaker 1: send a signal to an unfriendly country. Sanctions often involve

40
00:02:49,360 --> 00:02:52,480
Speaker 1: freezing any of the target's assets, such as real estate

41
00:02:52,600 --> 00:02:55,400
Speaker 1: or funds and bank accounts that happened to be inside

42
00:02:55,440 --> 00:02:59,840
Speaker 1: the US, and threatening to punish any financial institution inside

43
00:03:00,080 --> 00:03:03,000
Speaker 1: or outside the US that does transactions for the adversary

44
00:03:03,240 --> 00:03:07,359
Speaker 1: or helps in some other way. But sanctions also can

45
00:03:07,360 --> 00:03:10,680
Speaker 1: take a variety of other forms as well, from interrupting

46
00:03:10,680 --> 00:03:14,520
Speaker 1: international trade to closing a border to suspending arms sales.

47
00:03:14,960 --> 00:03:17,680
Speaker 1: The sanctions can even be tailored to hit a specific

48
00:03:17,760 --> 00:03:21,760
Speaker 1: industry or part of another nations economy At any rate,

49
00:03:21,840 --> 00:03:26,639
Speaker 1: it's a form of what's called coercive diplomacy. Sanctions come

50
00:03:26,639 --> 00:03:29,560
Speaker 1: down to this, how do you get their attention so

51
00:03:29,720 --> 00:03:33,440
Speaker 1: they're feeling some pain and give themselves incentives to change

52
00:03:33,480 --> 00:03:37,200
Speaker 1: their behavior. Here in the US, the President has sweeping

53
00:03:37,200 --> 00:03:40,600
Speaker 1: authority to impose sanctions on other countries and leaders under

54
00:03:40,600 --> 00:03:45,840
Speaker 1: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, of which allows him

55
00:03:45,920 --> 00:03:48,720
Speaker 1: or her to impose them quote to deal with any

56
00:03:48,840 --> 00:03:53,680
Speaker 1: unusual and extraordinary threat. Congress has the power to hit

57
00:03:53,720 --> 00:03:56,800
Speaker 1: other nations and people with sanctions as well. Back in

58
00:03:57,600 --> 00:04:01,400
Speaker 1: for example, legislators passed the magnet Ski Act to impose

59
00:04:01,440 --> 00:04:05,200
Speaker 1: sanctions against Russia. The law is named after a corruption

60
00:04:05,240 --> 00:04:08,320
Speaker 1: exposing lawyer who died in a Russian prison cell. In

61
00:04:08,400 --> 00:04:12,720
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, a Congress imposed additional sanctions against Russia

62
00:04:12,800 --> 00:04:18,240
Speaker 1: for an invasion of Ukraine. In given the current Russia

63
00:04:18,320 --> 00:04:22,000
Speaker 1: Ukraine crisis, President Joe Biden announced on February twenty two

64
00:04:22,400 --> 00:04:25,520
Speaker 1: that the US would impose sanctions would extend further than

65
00:04:25,560 --> 00:04:30,280
Speaker 1: those implemented in including sanctions that will prohibit American financial

66
00:04:30,279 --> 00:04:35,240
Speaker 1: institutions from processing transactions for large Russian banks. This will

67
00:04:35,360 --> 00:04:41,120
Speaker 1: effectively inhibit those banks from transactions involving US dollars. Leipson

68
00:04:41,200 --> 00:04:44,800
Speaker 1: explained that Congress often resorts to sanctions to avoid having

69
00:04:44,839 --> 00:04:49,640
Speaker 1: tensions with another country explode into armed conflict. She said,

70
00:04:50,120 --> 00:04:54,040
Speaker 1: Congress often believes, let's go carefully up the escalatory ladder.

71
00:04:54,600 --> 00:04:57,800
Speaker 1: Let's express our disapproval in a resolution. If they don't

72
00:04:57,800 --> 00:05:01,039
Speaker 1: pay attention, will then threaten sanctions. If they still don't

73
00:05:01,080 --> 00:05:04,599
Speaker 1: pay attention, we'll impose those sanctions, and then will impose

74
00:05:04,640 --> 00:05:08,839
Speaker 1: more sanctions. It's a longer continuum from peace to war.

75
00:05:09,880 --> 00:05:13,960
Speaker 1: Either way. Once sanctions are imposed, the Treasury Department's Office

76
00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:19,680
Speaker 1: of Foreign Asset Control enforces the restrictions. Of course, other

77
00:05:19,680 --> 00:05:23,279
Speaker 1: countries can impose sanctions as well, though according to Leipson,

78
00:05:23,560 --> 00:05:28,560
Speaker 1: nobody utilizes the economic weapon as frequently is the US does. Instead,

79
00:05:28,880 --> 00:05:32,400
Speaker 1: most only want to participate in multinational sanctions, such as

80
00:05:32,400 --> 00:05:35,200
Speaker 1: those imposed by the U N Security Council, which have

81
00:05:35,279 --> 00:05:38,680
Speaker 1: included economic and trade sanctions as well as arms embargoes

82
00:05:38,720 --> 00:05:43,320
Speaker 1: and travel bands. Since nineteen sixty six, the U N

83
00:05:43,360 --> 00:05:47,240
Speaker 1: has used such measures thirty times, punishing regimes ranging from

84
00:05:47,240 --> 00:05:52,880
Speaker 1: apartheid era South Africa to North Korea. Okay, but so

85
00:05:53,240 --> 00:05:57,839
Speaker 1: do sanctions actually work? Leipson said, There's always this range

86
00:05:57,839 --> 00:06:01,359
Speaker 1: of opinion about whether sanctions work or not. It depends

87
00:06:01,360 --> 00:06:04,880
Speaker 1: on what your intentions were. If your intention was to punish,

88
00:06:05,160 --> 00:06:08,599
Speaker 1: then just measuring the economic pain on another country is

89
00:06:08,680 --> 00:06:11,960
Speaker 1: a way of saying the sanctions are working. If your

90
00:06:11,960 --> 00:06:15,040
Speaker 1: intention is to truly change the behavior of the other country,

91
00:06:15,320 --> 00:06:18,480
Speaker 1: you have to use a very different metric, and in

92
00:06:18,520 --> 00:06:23,960
Speaker 1: that case, most sanctions fail because countries become resistant. They're

93
00:06:23,960 --> 00:06:27,400
Speaker 1: willing to absorb the pain for nationalistic reasons. They don't

94
00:06:27,440 --> 00:06:30,839
Speaker 1: want to concede to a more powerful country instead of

95
00:06:30,839 --> 00:06:34,200
Speaker 1: giving in. For example, a targeted nation may find another

96
00:06:34,440 --> 00:06:38,280
Speaker 1: more powerful nation to act as its patron. For example,

97
00:06:38,760 --> 00:06:42,159
Speaker 1: after the US imposed a sweeping embargo on the communist

98
00:06:42,200 --> 00:06:45,680
Speaker 1: regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba in nineteen sixty, the

99
00:06:45,760 --> 00:06:49,240
Speaker 1: island nation relied upon trade with the Soviet Union, which

100
00:06:49,360 --> 00:06:52,520
Speaker 1: for years bought Cuban sugar at five to six times

101
00:06:52,560 --> 00:06:55,080
Speaker 1: the world market price as a way of tweaking the

102
00:06:55,160 --> 00:07:00,400
Speaker 1: United States It's Cold War adversary. There's also increasing political

103
00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:03,640
Speaker 1: pushback against the sort of sanctions that broadly target and

104
00:07:03,760 --> 00:07:07,640
Speaker 1: nation's economy, out of concern that they punish the population

105
00:07:08,080 --> 00:07:12,280
Speaker 1: rather than the government. As Lapson explained, that's led to

106
00:07:12,320 --> 00:07:15,880
Speaker 1: a shift towards the so called smart or targeted sanctions,

107
00:07:16,160 --> 00:07:19,880
Speaker 1: which might be designed to target regimes leaders but allow

108
00:07:19,960 --> 00:07:24,800
Speaker 1: the country to import needed medicines. Targeted sanctions might also

109
00:07:24,840 --> 00:07:28,760
Speaker 1: include arms embargoes, financial sanctions on the assets of individuals

110
00:07:28,760 --> 00:07:32,600
Speaker 1: and companies, travel restrictions on the leaders of a sanctioned state,

111
00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:42,760
Speaker 1: and trade sanctions on particular goods. Today's episode is based

112
00:07:42,760 --> 00:07:46,640
Speaker 1: on the article why countries use economic sanctions to prevent conflict?

113
00:07:46,760 --> 00:07:49,240
Speaker 1: On how s Toffworks dot com written by Patrick J. Keaiger.

114
00:07:49,800 --> 00:07:52,040
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership

115
00:07:52,040 --> 00:07:54,080
Speaker 1: with hous Tofworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler

116
00:07:54,160 --> 00:07:57,480
Speaker 1: Clang and Ramsey Young. For more podcasts my heart Radio,

117
00:07:57,680 --> 00:08:00,280
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever

118
00:08:00,320 --> 00:08:11,720
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H