Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. Lauren Bogbaum here. On February twenty one, Russian
Speaker 1: President Vladimir Putin gave an hour long speech where he
Speaker 1: not only recognized the independence of two Russia BacT territories
Speaker 1: in eastern Ukraine, but also delegitimized the sovereignty of Ukraine itself.
Speaker 1: Putin expanded the idea that Ukraine's borders were drawn up
Speaker 1: by the Soviet Union's founder, Vladimir Lenin and still exist
Speaker 1: only because of the fall of the Soviet Union in
Speaker 1: After the speech, Putin ordered troops into those eastern territories
Speaker 1: under the guise of them being peacemakers. Many experts in
Speaker 1: global geopolitics were concerned, if not horrified, by the speech
Speaker 1: and invasion, suggesting it was Putin's way of rewriting history
Speaker 1: as well as of providing a reason to launch what
Speaker 1: could become the largest war in Europe's in the end
Speaker 1: of World War Two. The speech came after Putin had
Speaker 1: spent months building up Russian military forces surrounding Ukraine. He's
Speaker 1: also demanded Ukraine not be allowed to join NATO, the
Speaker 1: defensive alliance that currently includes thirty countries, So how is
Speaker 1: the world responding? The NATO Ukraine Commission met in Brussels
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, February twenty second two to address the situation.
Speaker 1: NATO Secretary Yan Stoltenberg said it will stand by Ukrainian
Speaker 1: sovereignty with force if necessary, but hoped Russia would still
Speaker 1: choose diplomacy. So aside from a full on war, what
Speaker 1: else are world leaders doing to deter Putin from invading Ukraine?
Speaker 1: They're imposing sanctions. So today let's talk about what sanctions
Speaker 1: are and how they're imposed, and also what sanctions are
Speaker 1: supposed to accomplish and how they work. Very basically, sanctions
Speaker 1: are sort of economic versions of weaponry designed to turn
Speaker 1: up the pressure on another country and its regimes leaders
Speaker 1: by hitting them in their wallets. For the article this
Speaker 1: episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with Ellen
Speaker 1: laps In back In. She's the director of the Master's
Speaker 1: in International Security degree program and the Center for Security
Speaker 1: Policy Studies at George Mason University's Shore School of Policy
Speaker 1: and Government and a former vice chair of the U.
Speaker 1: S Government's National Intelligence Council. She explained sanctions are any
Speaker 1: penalty or disruption in the normal economic relations between two countries. Usually,
Speaker 1: sanctions are supposed to target a particular bad behavior or
Speaker 1: send a signal to an unfriendly country. Sanctions often involve
Speaker 1: freezing any of the target's assets, such as real estate
Speaker 1: or funds and bank accounts that happened to be inside
Speaker 1: the US, and threatening to punish any financial institution inside
Speaker 1: or outside the US that does transactions for the adversary
Speaker 1: or helps in some other way. But sanctions also can
Speaker 1: take a variety of other forms as well, from interrupting
Speaker 1: international trade to closing a border to suspending arms sales.
Speaker 1: The sanctions can even be tailored to hit a specific
Speaker 1: industry or part of another nations economy At any rate,
Speaker 1: it's a form of what's called coercive diplomacy. Sanctions come
Speaker 1: down to this, how do you get their attention so
Speaker 1: they're feeling some pain and give themselves incentives to change
Speaker 1: their behavior. Here in the US, the President has sweeping
Speaker 1: authority to impose sanctions on other countries and leaders under
Speaker 1: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, of which allows him
Speaker 1: or her to impose them quote to deal with any
Speaker 1: unusual and extraordinary threat. Congress has the power to hit
Speaker 1: other nations and people with sanctions as well. Back in
Speaker 1: for example, legislators passed the magnet Ski Act to impose
Speaker 1: sanctions against Russia. The law is named after a corruption
Speaker 1: exposing lawyer who died in a Russian prison cell. In
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, a Congress imposed additional sanctions against Russia
Speaker 1: for an invasion of Ukraine. In given the current Russia
Speaker 1: Ukraine crisis, President Joe Biden announced on February twenty two
Speaker 1: that the US would impose sanctions would extend further than
Speaker 1: those implemented in including sanctions that will prohibit American financial
Speaker 1: institutions from processing transactions for large Russian banks. This will
Speaker 1: effectively inhibit those banks from transactions involving US dollars. Leipson
Speaker 1: explained that Congress often resorts to sanctions to avoid having
Speaker 1: tensions with another country explode into armed conflict. She said,
Speaker 1: Congress often believes, let's go carefully up the escalatory ladder.
Speaker 1: Let's express our disapproval in a resolution. If they don't
Speaker 1: pay attention, will then threaten sanctions. If they still don't
Speaker 1: pay attention, we'll impose those sanctions, and then will impose
Speaker 1: more sanctions. It's a longer continuum from peace to war.
Speaker 1: Either way. Once sanctions are imposed, the Treasury Department's Office
Speaker 1: of Foreign Asset Control enforces the restrictions. Of course, other
Speaker 1: countries can impose sanctions as well, though according to Leipson,
Speaker 1: nobody utilizes the economic weapon as frequently is the US does. Instead,
Speaker 1: most only want to participate in multinational sanctions, such as
Speaker 1: those imposed by the U N Security Council, which have
Speaker 1: included economic and trade sanctions as well as arms embargoes
Speaker 1: and travel bands. Since nineteen sixty six, the U N
Speaker 1: has used such measures thirty times, punishing regimes ranging from
Speaker 1: apartheid era South Africa to North Korea. Okay, but so
Speaker 1: do sanctions actually work? Leipson said, There's always this range
Speaker 1: of opinion about whether sanctions work or not. It depends
Speaker 1: on what your intentions were. If your intention was to punish,
Speaker 1: then just measuring the economic pain on another country is
Speaker 1: a way of saying the sanctions are working. If your
Speaker 1: intention is to truly change the behavior of the other country,
Speaker 1: you have to use a very different metric, and in
Speaker 1: that case, most sanctions fail because countries become resistant. They're
Speaker 1: willing to absorb the pain for nationalistic reasons. They don't
Speaker 1: want to concede to a more powerful country instead of
Speaker 1: giving in. For example, a targeted nation may find another
Speaker 1: more powerful nation to act as its patron. For example,
Speaker 1: after the US imposed a sweeping embargo on the communist
Speaker 1: regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba in nineteen sixty, the
Speaker 1: island nation relied upon trade with the Soviet Union, which
Speaker 1: for years bought Cuban sugar at five to six times
Speaker 1: the world market price as a way of tweaking the
Speaker 1: United States It's Cold War adversary. There's also increasing political
Speaker 1: pushback against the sort of sanctions that broadly target and
Speaker 1: nation's economy, out of concern that they punish the population
Speaker 1: rather than the government. As Lapson explained, that's led to
Speaker 1: a shift towards the so called smart or targeted sanctions,
Speaker 1: which might be designed to target regimes leaders but allow
Speaker 1: the country to import needed medicines. Targeted sanctions might also
Speaker 1: include arms embargoes, financial sanctions on the assets of individuals
Speaker 1: and companies, travel restrictions on the leaders of a sanctioned state,
Speaker 1: and trade sanctions on particular goods. Today's episode is based
Speaker 1: on the article why countries use economic sanctions to prevent conflict?
Speaker 1: On how s Toffworks dot com written by Patrick J. Keaiger.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership
Speaker 1: with hous Tofworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler
Speaker 1: Clang and Ramsey Young. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
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