A conversation with Ilana Bet-El

Sanctions have become central to the Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with ever escalating packages being announced every few weeks, notably by the US and the EU. But sanctions did not start in 2022. Indeed, Russia was first sanctioned over Ukraine in 2014, after it annexed Crimea — and over decades states such as North Korea, Iran, Nicaragua and various others have been subject to a variety of restrictions, bans and many other measures, largely related to economics. As such, sanctions have clearly become a core tool of international statecraft; the question is: do they work?

A large majority of sanctions are economic, for after all: money makes the world go around. Therefore, in order to understand sanctions it is best to talk to economists, and in this episode Ilana Bet-El is joined by Agathe Demarais, Global Forecasting Director at the Economist Intelligence Unit, and Elina Ribakova, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Vice President at the Kyiv School of Economics. Join them in a great conversation that starts from basics — what is an economist and the difference between strategy and tactics — and reaches far and wide in the world of economic statecraft and the war in Ukraine. If you want to know if sanctions work, listen closely!

The episode was recorded on the 21 April 2023