Sanctions have been used on the global playing field since nation-states existed, but they’ve never been so popular as they are today. For a long time, sanctions were considered foreign policy freebies, a safe middle ground between going to war and doing nothing.
But in an increasingly globalized economy, there is a healthy dose of sanction skepticism. Big business insists that sanctions, especially unilateral ones, cost them Big Money. And there are humanitarian concerns and questions about who gets the U.S. door shut on them and who doesn’t.
Some experts say, plain and simple, that sanctions work and we need them. The promise and problems of sanctions.
(Hosted by Neal Conan)
Guests:
Brenda Shaffer – Research Director of the Caspian Studies program at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government
Meghan O’Sullivan, expert on economic sanctions and a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington
and Richard Nuccio, Director of the Pell Center, Salve Regina University, and former special advisor to President Clinton on Cuba.