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

Intelligence Squared

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4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2025

⏱️ 84 minutes

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Summary

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

Transcript

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0:40.7	com.com. Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Serrenti.
0:48.8	Do sanctions work, or are they just political theatre? Today's episode is a live debate on the contentious issue of sanctions as a tool of foreign policy.
0:59.0	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.
1:09.0	From trade embargoes to asset freezers and travel bans,
1:12.5	sanctions are deployed in response to everything, from territorial aggression to human rights abuses.
1:18.0	But do they actually work? This October, Intelligence Squared brought together four leading thinkers
1:24.4	to debate this very question. Arguing in favour of the motion,
1:28.5	sanctions don't work as a tool of foreign policy, are economist Rebecca Harding and former
1:33.7	diplomat Ian Proud. Opposing them are columnist Edward Lucas and Tom Keating, the founding director
1:40.5	of the Centre for Finance and Security at the IUSI. This debate was produced in
1:46.3	partnership with global sanctions.com, the world's leading online resource for up-to-the-minute
1:51.3	information on sanctions and export controls worldwide. Let's join our chair, Anne McElvoy, now from
	...

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