2 Events

President Donald J. Trump signs an EO on Iran Sanctions in the Green Room at Trump National Golf Club, August 5, 2018, in Bedminster Township, New Jersey.

White House Photo/Shealah Craighead

Seminar - Open to the Public

Turning Paper Screws: The Effectiveness of Economic Sanctions in International Security

Thu., Apr. 9, 2020 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

Speaker: Ariel Petrovics, Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

Economic sanctions are one of the most common coercive tools of foreign policy, used regularly in an effort to change target state behavior. Yet despite their versatility and prevalence in international relations, sanctions are at best an unreliable tool of foreign policy. Indeed, many of the most important and publicized sanction attempts have failed to produce any desired change in the target. Existing literature on the effectiveness of sanctions has largely focused on whether or not sanctions eventually succeed, but this overlooks the arguable more policy relevant questions of when and under what conditions sanctions are effective tools of statecraft. The speaker's research  finds that sanctions with the greatest implications for international security such as those that combat nuclear proliferation or foreign military aggression fail even more catastrophically than their less salient counterparts.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Click here. Meeting ID number: 810311271

JFK Jr Forum - Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

Lessons from Iceland: A Nation Striving to Punch Above Its Weight in a Globalized World

Fri., Jan. 26, 2018 | 4:00pm

Harvard Kennedy School - Institute of Politics, John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum

A public address by His Excellency Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson, President of Iceland. Moderated by John Holdren, President Obama's Science Advisor and Director of the White Office of Science and Technology Policy (January 2009 – January 2017); Co-Director, Belfer Center's Science, Technology and Public Policy Program.