The Sanctions Age

Delaney Simon on the challenges of peacebuilding in the wake of sanctions.  Sanctions are not meant to last forever. When diplomatic negotiations bring a dispute or conflict to an end, it may be time to lift sanctions imposed in response to that conflict. Unfortunately, sanctions can be difficult to lift, and they have lingering effects that can make it harder to build a durable peace after confli...

Maximilian Hess and Nicholas Mulder on economic war and economic peace.  Maximilian Hess and Nicholas Mulder have spent a lot of time thinking about economic weapons and economic war, especially in the context of Ukraine. Their writings have graced the pages of the New York Times, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy. If there are trenches in economic wars, then Max and Nick tw...

Javad Shamsi on how firms adapt to sanctions.  The U.S. sanctions on Iran target sectors across the country’s economy, including the energy, manufacturing, and banking sectors. In addition, hundreds of Iranian companies have been designated, meaning they have been singled out with targeted sanctions. Despite this expansive sanctions regime, very few large enterprises in Iran have gone out of busin...

Daniel McDowell and Maria Shagina on how states evade and undermine sanctions.  The stakes around sanctions circumvention have never been higher. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made sanctions evasion a matter of life or death. Russia continues to use export revenues to fund its war economy, and, despite trade restrictions, Russian factories continue to churn out weapons using imported parts a...

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman on weaponizing Interdependence in a globalized world.  In 2019, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman published a paper titled “Weaponized Interdependence,” which quickly became one of the most widely cited papers about economic coercion. The paper spurred scholars and policymakers to recognise how the networks that underpin the globalised economy can be exploited by po...

Saleha Mohsin on how the strong dollar became the weaponized dollar.  Over the last few decades, the Department of Treasury has transformed from an institution that managed the dollar, government budgets, and issued bonds into an institution playing a critical role in US national security. At the heart of this transformation was cast of characters—legislators and bureaucrats—who realised the immen...