Intelligence Squared19 Nov 2025

Debate: Sanctions Don’t Work as a Tool of Foreign Policy

In partnership with GlobalSanctions.com, the world’s leading online resource for up to the minute information on sanctions and export controls worldwide. Sanctions have become one of the most widely used tools in modern foreign policy, imposed not only on states but also on individual leaders, oligarchs and corporations. From trade embargoes to asset freezes and travel bans, sanctions are deployed in response to everything from territorial aggression to human rights abuses. But do they actually work? Sanctions sceptics argue that they rarely achieve their goals and often inflict suffering on ordinary people while strengthening authoritarian regimes. Far from making unsavoury governments change course, they say, sanctions are little more than virtue signalling, allowing our leaders to appear resolute without doing the harder work of diplomacy or long-term strategic thinking. Proponents of sanctions counter that, when carefully targeted, sanctions can pressure both states and individuals without harming wider populations. Measures such as trade restrictions, freezing personal assets, grounding private jets and restricting access to international financial systems, they say, can deter bad behaviour, disrupt illicit networks and signal international resolve. Rather than abandoning sanctions altogether, we should focus on using them more intelligently and in conjunction with broader diplomatic strategies. Do sanctions work, or are they just political theatre? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(1636)

The New Silencing: Women Versus the Manosphere (Part One)

When the MeToo movement ignited in 2017, many believed it would be a turning point for women after which positive change would become inevitable. And for a brief time, it felt like the world was final...

6 Sep 37min

Why Did the Working Class Abandon the Left? With Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu

Liberal democracy was once a radical force. It challenged monarchies, expanded political rights and, at its most successful, helped deliver rising wages and shared prosperity. So how did it become ass...

5 Sep 37min

How Trade Shapes Our World, With Ed Conway

Trade has shaped human civilisation for thousands of years. From the copper used in Mesopotamian ploughs to the silicon inside our smartphones, vast networks have evolved to move the materials and pro...

3 Sep 53min

NYT’s Novel of the Century? Marlon James on The Disappearers

In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play. Though strangers to one another, they share an inescapable truth: All of them are gay. And they live in a world that refuses to ac...

1 Sep 49min

The Secret History in Our DNA: Adam Rutherford Meets David Olusoga (Part Two)

Adam Rutherford is a science broadcaster, and author of A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, which transformed the way we think about human history. By using genetics to uncover the story of ou...

30 Aug 38min

The Secret History in Our DNA: Adam Rutherford Meets David Olusoga (Part One)

29 Aug 42min

Can Democracy Survive the Age of AI? With Jill Lepore

We live in the age of data. Over the past century, rapidly evolving technologies have transformed almost every aspect of our society, in ways that can seem both troubling and unstoppable. Political ca...

28 Aug 41min

What John Berger Saw That We Still Don’t, with Tom Overton

John Berger transformed the way generations thought about art, politics and the act of looking. Best known for Ways of Seeing, his work ranged across migration, capitalism, war and mortality, always a...

25 Aug 42min