When the US and NATO allies decided not to send troops to Ukraine, they simultaneously

decided to hit Russia with sanctions.

The aim to strangle Vladimir Putin's economy and devastate the finances of his oligarch

friends and frenemies.

We have purposely designed these sanctions to maximize the long-term impact on Russia

and to minimize the impact in the United States and our allies.

When late June, the Biden administration announced yet another round of sanctions banning

among other things the import of Russian gold into the US.

If you're a glass half empty person, you might look at this and wonder, after all these

months are sanctions working?

If you're a historian, you might ask, have they ever?

Coming up on today explained the historian asks and we ask the historian.

It's today explained, I'm Noel King, sanctions are a way of fighting a war without fighting

in a war.

They do really involve the actual use of force or sometimes a threat of force, but they

don't necessarily have the same intensity always as kinetic warfare.

That's Nick Molder, he's an assistant professor of history at Cornell and we talked to him

back in February about his new book The Economic Weapon, The Rise of Sanctions as a tool of

modern war.

You have war or kinetic warfare as the most intense kind of use of force.

You have attempts at persuasion or coercion that can be threats or message sending and

sanctions are somewhere in between.

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