Sanctioning Russia Is a Form of War. We Need to Treat It Like One.
About this episode
Guest host Rogé Karma, sitting in for Ezra Klein, interviews historian Nicholas Mulder, author of The Economic Weapon, about the West's sanctions on Russia. Mulder argues sanctions are not an alternative to war but a form of war itself — one that immiserates civilians while rarely achieving its aims, succeeding only 10 to 30 percent of the time. They discuss the interwar origins of sanctions as a total weapon, how Germany and Japan responded to economic pressure in the 1930s, whether the Russia sanctions could back Putin into a corner or force a settlement, the Iran nuclear deal as a model, and the spillover damage to the global South. The conversation closes on whether sanctions can be paired with diplomacy and reconstruction rather than wielded alone.