From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control decade. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Now, before everybody falls asleep and once they hear the title of today's episode, we want to assure you that this is not going to be full of a bunch of dry, academic, unsexy language. We're talking about something important. We're talking about something that is often misreported, and we're talking about something that you know can be a little misleading on the offset. So we thought, at least I thought a good way to get into this would be with a thought experiment. So imagine if one day, uh, yours truly, me, your old Palt, Ben and Josh Clark, friend of the show from Stuff You Should Know, Imagine we are yet again beefing over some weird trivia point that no one except for like people like our cruise would care about, you know, and maybe it's domestication or some some arcane little thing from a brain stuff video and tensions arising. Well, first of all, Ben, if it results in an academic rumble, I hope you know that, Matt and I have your back to the end because I've called you off channel and have said, hey, things are getting you know that, uh, that crazy dictator Josh Clark is is going wild. This injustice will not stand. And you say, we've seen the public statements. Josh and Ben are making their their's talking about how the other guy's a jerk and a pill. But we think nobody actually really wants an open conflict disagreements. Okay, a rumble is maybe a bridge too far. So instead of coming into the office and attempting to physically smack me around, let's say Josh calls in some favors and suddenly no one in Atlanta will sell me a K C D A. In fact, no one will even allow is allowed to sell me the ingredients to make a case ada. He hasn't launched a missile at me, he hasn't physically harmed me or any any of the folks. I roll with. But he's hit me where it hurts. He's affected my quality of life. This is a hopefully silly version of a very serious and dangerous thing, a concept called a sanction. So we have the hear of the facts here and yes, here are the facts. But this whole thing is is kind of it's kind of crazy, right, We've talked about it before. You see the public statements of various politics are dictators or presidents, and what they talk about in an international sphere, it's way different from what they talk about their domestic sphere when they want support. But one of the big secrets is most stable nations actually do not want continual, large scale hot wars. People don't want a World War three, or they don't. They definitely don't want to be seen as the kid on the playground who throws the first rock, you know what I mean. That's why it's always like we're defending ourselves. We set all these drones and thousands of troops to this country most Americans can't find on a map because we're defending ourselves, or we're fighting for human rights. Whatever the thing is. Everybody wants to be seen as the good guy. No one wants to be thought of as the bad guy. Well, you know, one one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. In my mind, that's why a well executed false flag is so handy. M. Delpha Tonkin. Yes, yes, you know what the win right right right? You know it's it's kind of a shame that well, it's not a shame. The world's a better place because of this. But what kind of world would it be if we could do our own false flags? You know people have tried that before. Um, what was it, Jesse Smillette most most infamously recently. Um, that's the that's the actor who staged staged an assault and his false flag was unsuccessful. He did get busted. Um. But nations do want to make sure they can somehow make their aims and their desires known, and ideally they want as many other nations to agree with them, and they like to posse up. But they also can't really trust each other. That's the thing. Countries are not friends. No matter what the people currently driving those things are saying. The concept of friendship doesn makes sense at this level. You can't really trust people, you can't trust institutions. So if you make a previous agreement right, if it's something where like Matt and Noel and Mission Control and Doc and Scully and Ben are part of their we're part of our own agreements, and we made the great you know, case Ida Accords, even amongst each other. We have to have a mechanism to enforce that agreement because otherwise, like this is what you're talking about, I think no when you say does something have teeth? Right, like we're talking about this little off air um. Otherwise it could be one of those non binding resolutions and people just ignore those. You're not gonna send in troops. They're just gonna say, hey, our understanding of that agreement was different, So fiddle d d what you're gonna do? Bro, I mean, who decided to call them that non binding agreements? It's like, inherently not that scary. It's like, ah, maybe maybe we'll do it, maybe we won't. See how you feel on the day. It makes perfect sense, really, and it's just a public facing release of of a group's opinion on something, right, And it's just the first step. It's always the first step. If sanctions occur, there's almost always some kind of resolution that's put forward that's just like a hey, here's how we feel about this. Just it's a little heads up there. There could be something else coming. You have to have consequences, You have to have some kind of if then equation going on. And ideally you want to be able to either incentivize countries towards doing something you want them to do, even to the point of like pollution regulations, or you want to de incentivize them from doing something else. Right, So you don't want um. You don't want Libya or North Korea or South Africa to pursue nuclear armament, so you make these deals with them. And historically, I don't want a ruffle too many roost here. But historically nations know that if they do back down from pursuing nuclear weaponry, things still aren't gonna work out very well. I mean, there's a reason Gaddafi doesn't have a podcast. Now, you know, that's somewhat of a cold way to say it, but it's true. So you don't want war, but you want to get your way. So here are here's where sanctions come in. There are a couple of broad types and they're all used to one degree or another, and there's a lot of inequality in the world of sanctions, but they're also conspiratorial because to be effective, they have to have a group that conspires. Not just public entities, by the way, not just governments, but banks play a huge role in this. Uh. They get together and they conspire to change the actions of another nation or in some cases other groups of nations, or in some cases even v I P. Very high powered individuals. If you are listening in this podcast, the odds are and no offense to anyone. The odds are you're you're probably not a big enough deal to have the U N. Say, like Paul mission control has to be stopped. He can no longer control the dog toy market or something like that. You know we're talking, Yeah, we're talking like Putin's at that level. Um and and you know at that point too. We'll get to this question a second. You have to ask yourself, given how controversial the US is, given how controversial past precedents and politicians here have been seeing you know, by people abroad, like how controversial their actions are, how come don't have a bunch of sanctions. We'll tell you, but first we have to we have to talk about the lay of the land. So sanction in a country that's what most people have heard about. We're mad that Cuba is communist. Nobody sell them anything. We're not going to sell them any thing. But if you hear this, you can't either just because that's how we wanted to be, or Syria or a rod Yeah, and that in the case with human the Soviet Union, here's that and goes, oh, will gladly trade things with you? Exactly. That's part of the problem here. And then their list based sanctions, like we talked about the HSBC drug cartel conspiracy and how that was a controversy because they were knowingly, knowingly washing dirty money for organized crime. Well, they could have fallen under sanctions for that because if if the U EU, the US or the u N had said we're issuing a list based sanction, you cannot do business with known drug cartels or terrorists or you know, supervillains like Carlos the Jackal or whatever. I just keep saying that name because it's so cool. Those are a real thing, um And essentially, like if you look at it now, there's a way to target any group. You can move the lens however you wish. Vast majority of people alive aren't going to get specifically targeted by sanctions. But the scary part is you might be affected by them even if you do not live in the country that has those sanctions imposed on them. And when we're hearing this thrown around, you know, obviously sanction has a couple of different meanings, right Like, um, let's say Matt walks in the office one day and Nolan I are clearly heisting the little cooler where we keep all the fancy sodas and whatnot, and then you say, what what is what is wrong with you? Guys? You're supposed to be company men. And then we tell you, oh, our actions are sanctioned. The network said it was okay, that's a different kind of sanction, right, These sodas are for everyone, so we're free. We are liberate eating these sodas. We got a flag and everything. You often hear like the hyphenite of that, like government sanctioned whatever terrorism even right like you you heard sometimes that term is used as like a ding on the government, where maybe it's not officially sanctioned, but you can call some negative behavior something sanctioned, government sanctioned to imply that there was approval given that this was like there was co signed by the highest level of authority, government sanctioned burning of rice patties, yeah, or books. And so when you hear this term thrown around, what you're gonna hear what they're referring to. Really the full name is like international sanctions. That's the state level stuff. Um. Even though there are a lot of people in the world who wish that they could impose their own sanctions, the best you can do in in you know, your life as a private individual is going to be attempt to uh create a boycott, right and get a bunch of other people to agree with you and say, hey, we're not gonna we're not gonna support tours in Miami, Florida because it's something Miami did. And if you get enough people to agree with you, then that's kind of like a sanction, but it's way less powerful. I think we should talk about like the different categories of what we're looking at here, because they're not all created equally. Some are more dangerous than others, but they all have some punch. One of them, especially, is very I think topical now and it's surprisingly effective, but not in a way that says impressive things about humanity. Well, let's start off with yie old financial sanction or an economic sanction. This is probably the most common one you've heard about, certainly recently over the past ten twenty years. UM. It's the concept we are agreeing to not sell this country, slash this ruler anything and or or very specific things and or we're not going to buy any goods of a specific type from this country, or you're not allowed to basically, and then again, like in the case of Iran, UH there's a sanction that says no one can buy iron or steel from Iran. And then you know, private companies out of another country like China, say, will gladly take that steel at a very low price because we're the only buyers. Yeah, exactly. And if you take it back to the cheese example, the case Ada example that we set up earlier, it would be the concept of not only can no one sell let's say Ben case Adas, no one can even sell him cheese, No one can sell him pork, I don't know, beef, what do you put in your case ad has been well at this point, damn near or anything I could get my hands on. It's terrible, Like no tortillas, no tortillas from UH this will not stand. I'm radicalized. No, you're right, And this this sounds like a silly example again, but consider it in the realm of nuclear research, because so much nuclear equipment is dual use, meaning the same things they can build peaceful nuclear power plants can be used to build nuclear weapons. So banning a case a DA purchases saying nobody can sell international intercontinental ballistic missiles i c b M S to ORAN that would be one example. But going further and saying you know, you can't buy the ingredients. You can't buy the cheese and the tortillas and and the you know, the mushrooms, what have you? Uh, that would be that's like a wonder one comparison would say, not only can you not buy missiles, which you can't buy the stuff that would be used to assemble missiles, you can't buy the um, you can't buy the plutonium that could be refined or the uranium that could be refined. You can't buy the center few which is and we don't believe anything you're saying about peaceful nuclear power, So that's all that's gonna happen. Typically, these sanctions mainly for humanitarian and pr purposes. They'll have some exemptions and they'll say like, okay, you can't trade anything except necessities for ordinary people, So you can buy food or medicine right from international um international producers of those things stuff like insulin, right. I mean, this is why they can really hurt. You know, we're talking a little bit about this off air, and I was sort of saying, how, like, you know, a blockade, you know, for example, of goods and services for one country to another, isn't the same as like an invasion. Uh, it's not a hot war. It's like them us staying on our turf and to say no, you can't come through or you can't get stuff from us. But those things matter if you're like the number one producer of said good and results in people may be getting sick or not getting the things they need for basic survival, and they're they're enforced by the way we should. We should also say this. One of the things that makes them binding is violation of sanctions is considered a crime, and it doesn't matter if everybody agrees to the sanction. The US does a lot of what are called unilateral sanctions, which is just Uncle Sam saying I don't like him you shouldn't like him either, And if you are a business that's based in this country, then it's illegal for you to mess with them, even if that was the entirety of your business. Before we will put you under the jail and will put you in the poorhouse. We don't care. And they usually because the global West controls the banking system, they're the vast majority of what we call the you know, the anatomy of the banking system across the world, they can they can really really make an impact there, and these things can be tremendously damaging. Usually before you get you like a big um catastrophic economic sanction, you've got a diplomatic sanction. And the best way to explain a diplomatic sanction is, we're mad at you. We're closing down were clubhouse. We're not staying at the slumber party. We're going back to moms. So that's like we're closing the embassy. We're not taking your calls, we're not going to meetings with you until you apologize. And because this is stuff they don't want you to know, we're pretty open about this. Where we're talking about diplomacy, we're also talking about spies. We're also talking about assets and tradecraft in the intelligence community, because not every I T director or not every I T grunt at your local embassy is necessarily actually an I T guy. Yeah, yeah, Well, and the United States has a specific department that we're gonna get into when we talk about the history here within the Department of Treasury called the o f a C or the oh FAK, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, and a major part of their mission is to gather intelligence on countries and individuals who have sanctions sanctions placed against them. Exactly. They're the they're the enforcers of this, and you're not. You won't hear a ton about them when you hear sanctions mentioned on say you're CNN or whatever, you're whatever, your news channel of choices. They don't get talked a lot about. They're not super sexy, but they're not super secret, you know, they're they're just the people who have to enforce the at times grandiose statements and declarations of politicians, whether they are made in good faith or bad faith. Uh. There are also military sanctions. Wait, you might be saying, how is a military sanction not a war? You don't have to declare war to have a military sanction that's a targeted strike, right, That's like a U. A V. Taking out a factory. Of factories are a great example of this, attacking manufacturing infrastructure. You will just have country A saying you know you're up to something that that factory, so we took it off the table. Now you apologize for making us do that to you. That's kind of how it goes, and it should be no surprise. Yeah it does. It's tough to figure out. Well, we'll talk about whether whether that situation would be considered successful later. But so we've got military, diplomatic, economic. Here's the one that surprises me. It's a real thing. Sports sanctions. You have probably heard stories about this where like person from insert country here is not allowed to play at the Olympics because their country got in trouble and has nothing to do with you know, chess or volleyball or what have you. Uh, this is a soft power push. You're not allowing and giving countries athletes, teams, or individuals to compete internationally. And it sounds kind of absurd that this would matter, But this one does actually work because people are by in large the same across the planet. They hate it when their favorite sports teams don't get a chance to win something. So like, if the economic pressure is not, um, pushing a dictator out of a place of power, then not letting the national soccer team compete in the Olympics or the god forbid, the World Cup, that might push the needle. People might say, Okay, I was all right with a lot of injustices, but you touched the football, your excellency, and that's that's a that's a line too far that can actually work. Why does that work? Yeah? Well, um, I don't know. It's a hit to pride. I think in nationalism. Uh you think back to sat not. I guess they were sanctions put on Russia during the Olympics, but it wasn't the exactly the kind we're discussing here, but very similar because of the the anti doping movement and some of the mechanisms. They're both within the Russian Federation and the Olympics committee. Um where I can't remember fully you guys, but I remember in the last Summer Olympics, or maybe it was two Olympics ago. Um, many Russian athletes were not allowed to compete, and if they were allowed to compete, they weren't allowed to like have a medal ceremony if they won. Something very similar happened that in the Winter Olympics. It just happened in the Winter Olympics. Oh man, I'm blanking on it. There was a skater who was he was decided she was allowed to compete, but if she won a medal, there would be no official ceremony. Bomber. I mean, that's kind of the thing that ever, you know, young Olympian dreams of, is like standing on that podium getting handed that that medal. That skater's name, if you look it up, is Camilla Veliva v A l I E V A M. It's it's a soft power thing. Soft power is weird and and it works. Don't don't let the name soft fool It is measurements and optics thing. It's about humiliation kind of in a way, and it's it's a war perception to also a lot of times the proposed ideas for sanctions are not the entire story. Let's be very clear about that. Like if you look at if you look at some especially during the Cold War, if you look at some of these things, what they're what they're proposing and the full extent of their calculus are often not announced together. You have to do digging to figure out what's happening. The new kid on the block here is environmental sanctions, the ideas you can put up trade barriers and restrictions to stop poaching, to stop pollution, so on. Honestly, the jury is still out on whether this works, but the logics they're hitting someone in the wallet has definitely made a difference in the past. You always hear that phrase when people talk about sanctions, it's hitting one in the wallet. And I can't help but think of I think you should leave now where the guys like you hit me in the cup? Do you remember that? Yeah? You gotta gives yeah, otherwise it'll go dark, right. Uh? You know what, I hope if anyone hasn't seen that show or that episode, I hope you think we're just having a weird freestyle conversation. Just do yourself a favor and check it out. The episodes. They're like eighteen minutes or something crazy like that. You will know very quickly whether it's your thing or not. But I hope it is. You hit me in the cup anyway, So those are like, that's kind of the bare bones, the different flavors in the basket robbins of international sanctions. UH. Sanctions also UH, they take international cooperation really be effective. The UN certainly thinks about them a lot. One country alone can lead a sanction initially do, but they're gonna have a hard time meeting their own goals. And yes, that includes that includes the big dogs, the China's, the Russia's, the US is. And that's because in many cases, if one country won't sell you something, like you were pointing out earlier, Matt, somebody else will. The US is a huge fan of unilateral sanctions. They have regrettable personal experience with this conundrum. And that wasn't always the case, because while sanctions sound like a modern day thing, back in the in the eras of your they did you could totally sanction the crap out of someone on your own. Um. There's a journalist Uri Friedman who was writing in Foreign Policy and he points this out. He says, quote as a blunt tool of diplomacy. The concept of sanctions has been around at least from the time of the ancient Greeks, when Athens imposed the trade embargo on its neighbor Megara in four thirty two b CE, so they are very old and no like you had you had mentioned, I think we talked about this a little bit earlier. The old school sanctions were physical shutdowns. Right, we're building a wall around all your stuff. Now do what we say. And that was a bit different in four or thirty two b C where you could literally just send troops and block off some roads, kind of like what was happening in Ottawa and other places in the world with the trucks, but you just do it with soldiers and there's now do you pronounced that way where they literally line up with shields and create a human wall. Yeah, you could do that. And to your your pointment, these things were happening before there were global trade in communication networks anywhere near what exists today. So Megara wouldn't have had the option to in pardon my Greek pronunciation, folks, but it would have had the option to say, contact some of quick of of the u N and say they're starving our people. This is collective punishment. This is a siege. You know. That is in our opinion, dirty politics or dirty diplomacy. Those outlets didn't exist, um and for that's why for a long time countries would just send a bunch of troops or ships just physically shut it down. We control the bay, so good luck getting a ship out, you know what I mean. And naval black aides were a huge part of the dominance of European empires in the age of expansion there. But as you fast forward, you see, like through the centuries, sanctions have become more and more sophisticated, they become more and more surgically targeted, they've become more and more embedded in the world of international finance, but they are still a far cry from perfect, like a far crisis from perfect. In fact, a growing number of experts are convinced that sanctions don't actually work at all. So what what does that mean? Uh? Why this is a huge industry, by the way, sanctioning. Uh why did they come to that conclusion. We're gonna pause for word from our sponsors, sanctions are us, and then we're going to dive into the answer. Here's where it gets crazy. Let's go back to that earlier example, one of the first historically proven records of a sanction, Athens tries to shut down its neighbor. Did it work? Well, you know depending with no. Basically no, it started the Peloponnesian War. Damn, that's exactly who I wanted to avoid. I know. It's like I can't believe my elaborate system of open flames and oily rags keeps burning down houses. I guess I'll try again. Well, I mean, it's one of those things too, where you push, you push, you you push people, you know, and what do they do? They push back Eventually, even if you're not actually setting foot on their territory, they are eventually going to react. Well, I mean threaten someone's livelihood or you know, an entire nation's livelihood and ability to fake on their table. Yeah, those are fighting fighting actions, right, fighting sanctions right there. It is. It's like we were talking about with direct action eco terrorism right as the word that gets thrown around. The people on the whaling ship aren't gonna are gonna be like all these things you've done to us. Now, you know you made a good point. They're they're going to want retribution. They're going to push back. Humans are relatively Newtonian in that regard. So this is not to say the sanctions don't have potential. They just have a lot of serious problems that need to be considered. First, If you look at those unilateral sanctions, one powerful country says no, and that's basically a one powerful country says no. Um does it work? Uh? This is something I found this interesting. I wanted to share it with with all our fellow listeners. Uh. Have you guys heard of the Cato Institute Kato Kaylin the neighbor No, but that would be way more interesting, not unfortunately Cato from the green hornet No, but also even more interesting than the first one. Yeah, uh no, Unfortunately none of those things. The Cato Institute is a is a think tank that does have its own agenda, but it's the think tank that raises some really good points about the dangers of these unilateral sanctions like the You know again, the most famous one here in the West is the US embargo against the neighboring nation of Cuba. Not really, I mean, it's it's politically dirty. It's not as if Cuba attacked the US. It's because they didn't want the country to be communist, and that's that's why they made life just terrible for a bunch of people who didn't really get to decide what kind of government they would live in they were just born. And when they were born, no one asked them like, hey, you're a couple of days old, Well, what's your take on on, you know, the nature of governance? And nobody asked them when they were twenty, nobody asked when they were thirty. Nobody's going to ask them on their deathbed. But they have to bear the bread to these consequences. So like, let's I mean, I just pulled a few excerpts here, but I would love to go through these and then get everybody's take on whether or not you agree or disagree, and then we'll we'll also shed some light on Cato Institute too, We'll save that to the end um quote. Unilateral sanctions simply do not work. There are no examples of US unilateral economic sanctions changing the basic character or significant policies of a foreign nation. Thirty five year economic embargo of Cuba, a tiny country less than ninety miles from the U. S. Coast, is a monument to the ineffectiveness of unilateral economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool and to the to the this is me to the point that we were making earlier, Matt, I mean, if anything, is just going to cause further simmering resentment that could explode. And depending on which nation or group comes to the aid of the person undergoing sanctions or having sanctions imposed on them, it could become a much bigger problem with multiple people or nations or you know, however you want to put it involved. Yeah, So what they're saying here, and there are statistics from other sources to back this up if you don't like the Cato Institute, they're staying here is if you measure the goals of the people instituting the sanctions in this case, the US, and then you measure, you know, the cost of that saying, and you measure you know what, whatever metric you want for these regimes. Because the sanction is a regime, it's a set of rules and governing policies. Um, if you measure that stuff, it's a bill of goods. It's not doing what people wanted it to do. And the question is is that because it's being misused or it needs to be fixed, or is that because we're trying to fix the problem with the wrong tool. Like a kitchen whisk is useful, but it's not going to help you get a nail into a two by four. That's what hammers are for. So that's like a very I think for my sake, that's a very dumbed down comparison, But that is part of the question. What they're saying here is that the idea of a of a one entity sanction is just a non starter. And they also have a little bit of a hit piece or not a little This is like the equivalent of a of a dis track or a disc line in a hip hop song an academic sense. Because they also, as will find, accuse the US for giving itself undeserved out of boys for sanctions that it will tell you did work out, and not to mention that they also the Institute rejects the idea that unilateral sanctions against apartheid South Africa worked um they wrote on that subject quote. Supporters of sanctions often point to South Africa as a success story, but the facts tell a different tale. It is unrealistic to credit the US Congressional vote for sanctions in October with the overthrow of apartheid. Uh It was not outside forces, but powerful and well organized domestic political forces that, after a three decade long struggle, achieved the peaceful overthrow with an anachronistic system that had no moral standing. Wait a minute, so are you saying that the U s claim responsibility or something someone else did trying to steal the thunder of someone else's hard work. I don't believe that would ever exactly they're they're saying, Okay, pump your brakes, uncle's m I know it all felt Uh, it all felt great inside the Beltway, inside the halls of power in d C, when you could pat each other on the back and say we did it. We made the world a better place in South Africa because we made it too expensive to continue being monstrous. But that is clearly dismissing the multigenerational, multidecade long efforts of people who live in the area to make the world better for themselves. Uh, this and that that is, you know, put in that light, that does seem very dismissing. It's got some shades of white savior complex or whatever you wanna call it. But it is also politically convenient for the powers to be to say we did this. Yeah, other than anybody responsible for those kinds of claims, it truly ideologically believes that that's the truth. Yeah, Well, there are always a few. There are always a few people who like folks are really good at rationalization, very cognitively agile and nimble. So there are a few people who have convinced themselves in retrospect that yes, and there are people who say, you know, maybe our sanction regime was not the entire reason that apartheid went away, but we played the right role, we did the right thing, and I think you can say that right. You just can't dismiss the efforts of the people who actually lived there and all the work that they did two push for a better society. So here's where the Cato bias comes in. You might have been persuaded while you heard this, You might have thought those are good points, maybe sanctions don't work. The thing you gotta know about Cato Institute is, yes, it's a think tank. It's a libertarian think tank. And that's not to say that their points are invalid. I think they're raising very good points. But if you do digging, there's a there's a website we love here called source Watch, And if you go to source watch, it's like a Wikipedia that just tells you the associations, the aims, the missions of various groups and nonprofits and what have used. So it's very valuable today when a lot of bad faith actors will try to sell you something under a misleading name. So Cato Institute is libertarian think tank, and as such, they are always going to be suspicious of any high level government involvement in any aspect of commerce. And they're like, hey, you should just let people sell and buy stuff, you know what I mean, That's that's where we're coming. We're coming through They they make good points, but also you have to realize that in general their stance is going to be against anything they see as excessive regulation. They they think the spice must flow and everything is the spice, with the possible exception of nuclear weapons, and not not even that all the time. So, in the opinion of them and some more conservative, like traditionally conservative forces, the real victim of unilateral sanctions on the on the part of the US, it's not the governments of those countries. It's not even really the people who live in those countries. It's the US based businesses who get this are losing money. Won't someone think of the corporations they hate that. I want to Sarah McLaughlin where it's her talking about saving the corporations. You know, I always I always bring this Mr. Show quote up, But it's like the movie Executives saying, I swear to God, if I have to go from being super rich and just rich, I'm gonna kill myself. Hey, just in thinking about another source in this kind of exactly what we're saying, the efficacy of sanctions. I wanna read a quick quote if if I may, that I found in This is from the United States Institute of Peace. I am just gonna read this to you guys. According to a gentleman named Robert Art, his research on applications of coercive diplomacy, which is sanctions are a type of coercive diplomacy by US policy makers over the past twelve years has shown that quote, coercive diplomacy fails more often than it than it succeeds. And they are estimating that coercive diplomacy techniques have been roughly successful around twenty of the time. That and this is one This is one opinion and from you know, some group that show that studied twelve years of these kinds of things like sanctions, and they're saying of the time it's effective. You can find other statistics as well that say, like, if we'll get to this, like how you measure the so called effectiveness, you'll see other statistics that say, over the length of time, this has a relatively negligible effect on economies, right, and many men. Any cases, it's not always the case, right, because is not zero, is not even there's definitely not a B plus. It's not even a passing grade. That's the kind of stuff that gets you held back in school. So this, this is clear, clearly case of asking about the motivations of the people making the sanctions. Again, the game is already rigged because you have to be a powerful station or you have to be part of a powerful international block of nations, like a group of people the U N or the European Union. You have to be at that level to enforce sanctions, to make them real things other than just like an official we hate this country meeting. Right, So, with what we know about the conversation, now, can we say that sanctions are worth it? We'll tackle that after a word from our sponsor, who's hopefully a seller of miniature false flags. We're back, all right. Look, at best, we can call the efficacy of sanctions the degree to which they work debatable. And that's not because it's at heart a terrible idea. It's because it's very difficult to measure their level of success. First, you have to define their level of success, and that can be tricky on its own. Want to introduced the director of the Master's in International Security degree program as well as the Center for Security Policy Studies at George Basin University, uh one Ellen Laipson, who says, look, if we're just gonna summarize, she says, look, if it's your intention to punish a country, then just measuring the economic pain you've inflicted on that country. Yeah, that's a way of saying it worked, right, Like we tanked the economy. Therefore, success, go team. Let's get on and let's get on another naval vessel and have a big gas sign that says mission accomplished. Let's get that photo. Op. Yeah, don't do it. It doesn't work out. It does historically, like history judges that kind of action very very poorly. Well, I be, I was gonna ask you like so, I mean, obviously many things are ideological in government in terms of like this is gonna be our thing, either as a party or as a candidate or as a you know, an elected official, would you say that sanctions or the idea of kind of carrots and sticks is one of those where it's like some people that that is believe in it all in, like this is the way and we're gonna, you know, work our diplomatic magic and effect change across the world with this brilliant series of sanctions. And then there are some maybe that that don't lean into it as hard and think what we what you're saying that maybe it's debated. I think, yeah, I think it's Uh. You raise a really interesting point. So across the history of the US political parties, members of any political party have been for sanctions in the past, unless they're absolute isolationist, which is incredibly rare these days. But what we do see is that when sanctions are politically convenient, they get support. So if you are a politician who is seen a lot of good polling numbers every time you say I hate Russia or I hate China and I'm very hawkish on those those two countries or something, then of course you're gonna reply. You're gonna give your audience what they want, because they're not going to ask you hard policy questions, and you can always differ because you're only really going to be talking on the news for like what a couple couple of minutes at a time unless you really screw up, So you don't have to explain your actual calculus. All you have to do is respond is create the feedback loop what people want. That is the nature of politics. It's one of the broken things about that system. But you're right, so it does. It happens case by case when convenient for domestic powers or when they feel like there is an existential threat to global security or you know, to the US. So they would say, hey, we've all had our differences, but Iran just cannot have a nuclear bomb, right, we can agree on that, right, And then like the very far right people are like, we should have the most nukes, right, and the far left people are like, well, I would like for their not to be any nukes, but we can agree that Iran shouldn't have any, and they're like, all right, deal, we'll team up for this one. That's how that's how that kind of stuff happens. And in the similar teaming up against groups like al Qaeda and isole isis in those word sanctions because a pretty much universally agreed yes, because no one wants to risk political suicide by saying hold on right, Like, I know terrorists are bad, but I think these sanctions are an overreach because that first line wouldn't make it into the news. You would be the person where it's like, you know, uh, Senator Scully Brownstone or whatever comes out in support of ISIS. That's what people would remember. They wouldn't think you had some nuanced standing on policy and philosophy of market forces. Even if you did, even if like your degree was in that, it wouldn't matter. So, yeah, people are going to do that. Um, but what if we try to measure But if we try to measure success not by the financial pain inflicted on innocent people in a country and the country's rulers. Maybe, But what if we tried to measure it by see seeing the change in the country's behavior. Did the country begin to do the stuff you wanted to you push them into doing or tempt them into doing? Did you care at them? Right? With like an aid package? See that's the nice side of sanctions, right, the kind of stuff like that aid package, technical assistance, support logistics, that kind of stuff. You can give actors things too, but if you try to, if you try to measure the degree of change in behavior, you have to use a way different metric, and in that case, by that definition, which is the actual definition you should be using. Right by that definition, most sanctions clearly fail because countries, like people become resistant. They'll be willing to absorb pain for the reasons of pride, for nationalism. They don't want to concede to this, uh, this bigger country that is very easily seen as a bully, and often with good reason. They imagine, even if they're not thinking of it in these trope terms, they imagine that David versus Goliath situation. You know what I mean, Um, just because my country is smaller than yours does not give you the right to act as though you rule us. And that's a good point as well, you know, Like like you said, us leaned hard on on Cuba. The USSR was waiting with open arms. They said, we get you. Not only do we get you this like this is a way of the petty things. I love the petty details. They were like, not only do we get you, not only have your back, bro, but we're gonna all that sugar you can't sell, We're gonna buy it, and we're gonna purposely overpay for it. So five times what you're supposed to pay for a kilo. That's you take it. Go do something nice, do something good. Fires. Do you like missiles, We get a lot of missiles. I mean, do eminescent do some missiles? Okay, don't worry about this. And they were doing that to support the country, but they were also inevitably on some level doing it because they knew it would piss off the US. It was a flex they also knew would kind of scare the US. I'm just bringing this back to foreign policy that's occurring right now as we're recording this. Because of the proximity to the United States, where the US r us SR was operating, very similarly to where there are major issues in Ukraine right now, I would pause it, and I'm no expert here because of the proximity to the Russian Federation or to Russia. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean ultimately, what you want is hegemony. You want to go from being a regional power to ultimately being a global powers. So that's where you get into the concept of vassal states. Where clients states, I believe would be the proper terminology, because nobody likes to bring up the concept of serfdom and vassal hood, even when it is very appropriate. Anyway, you want, you know, want the fact, though impractice serenity over neighboring countries. You want to have the most influence, right and you also, ideally I don't want to have the responsibility and accountability you would have if they were really part of your country, you know what I mean. So you're the idea is it's a devil's bargain. Do what we say. We'll protect you from the wolves across the way, though we are in this case also a wolf. Well it just as another quick example there been. I keep thinking about North Korea and just how gloriously unsuccessful sanctions against North Korea have been at getting the quote Hermit state to change it's oppositional stance two countries around it. I mean, how many missile tests is that country done in the past ten years and sanctions have been on them? What gosh? I mean the main ones I'm thinking about happening in the mid nineties and they still like, I don't know, it's just it almost hardened their position. I would say it just occurred to me. The Hermit state, I guess, refers to the fact that they don't ever really leave the house, you know, or at least the global house. Yeah. Yeah. And also that's a really interesting of course, I'm going to say that. Don't feel like that has to be part of a drinking game, because you'll drink too much. But um, but jo. Politically, it's really interesting because out of all, like all the countries in the region, and then other countries evolved in things like the Six Party talks, like the US, they don't really want the peninsula to reunite. China doesn't really want South Korea or a democratic South Korea right on its border like that. It's already close enough. And and you know, of course, the families have been ripped apart by by the Korean War, and these beautiful moments when people on the sides on different sides of the borders can reunite after decades, and both the Republic of Korea and the DPRK do publicly state they would love to reunify the peninsula, but they each think their government should be in charge when that reunification occurs, and the power like the global superpowers are particularly pressuring this country, North Korea to open up ultimately because before before Russian power really started deteriorating, they were a powerful ally of DPRK. And no also nobody talks about this, but for a while, uh, average quality of life in DPRK was better than it was in the Republic of Korea. That's very much not the case now. But anyway, yes, you're what I'm saying, as your example holds the backyard reasoning is real here and it's very much a Nimby situation. Not in my backyard, say World Powers. I love that movie The Secret of Nimby. Yes, I like it too. I was gonna actually have a movie night, uh and put it on a big projector outside, just not in my backyard, maybe one of yours. No, no joked. The Secretive m is one of my favorite animated movies of all. It's very sad, but it is beautiful. I watched it with my kid when she was like maybe seven or eight, and I cry. Pixar movies, to be fair, but I cried a lot. That's an adult what's in the Secretive So that reminds me of one of the biggest points we have to talk about today, and so that one of the last points of this episode unintended consequences. I wanted to see this movie. I didn't know it would turn on the wet works or as a good pal, Chandler Maye says, send the Onion Ninjas to my house, which took me forever to understand that. Like, I feel like you walked down the street to make that reference. Oh my god, you should. But it's quite brilliant. Uh, you know what a secretive nime is also about unintended and so the unintended consequences here are not super smart rodents spoiler alert. But I didn't ruin it for you. I'm it's it's about this, like it's on the back cover. Yeah, it's in the blurb. Picture this. Let's say you are targeting a country that is ruled by an authoritarian, oppressive regime, and you're targeting them because you want them to quit their human rights abuses. You want them to stop threatening adjacent countries and becoming bellicost and pushing for war or annexing places, or you know, stealing resources or aiding and embedding terrorism. You name it, all the hits, all the good ones, and then you say, okay, we're gonna hit on what a massive economic sanction. And the goal of this is we are going to make their current actions so increasingly expensive, so cost prohibitive, that it will be to their financial advantage to start creating first a less aggressive government and then a more democratic government. And those things never happened in a vacuum. There are a lot other levels they get pulled with that now, but that's basic. Well, here's the problem. The vast majority of that population and they're living in an authoritarian or corrupt regime. They have no say in politics, just like we're pointing out in like a Cuban situation, they don't really have a say. They will nonetheless they will be first in line to suffer the consequences of this stuff. And the people in power, the people you're trying to intimidate or squeeze or smack with the political stick a little bit, they're the They're like the only folks in those countries who have the connections and influence to soften the blow is still get what they want. Oh I can't officially get it. Um, I can't officially get that McLaren or that giant whale skeleton that I wanted for my second mansion. I'll just call my other dictator body, you know what, you know what those things, that's a lot of responsibilities. He's got someone for that. It's got whale skeleton people already. Uh. He walks by and looks at it, shout out again to Putin's Putin's mansion in the interior of that. But uh, but what will happen then, is they can you they have the opportunity and the wherewithal to use proxy companies, right to have other forces, third parties get around those sanctions, and it happens, happens all the time whenever it's advantageous for that third party to help. So, so what this means is this sanction could accidentally and quickly become widespread collective punishment inflicted on people whose lives weren't already super great to begin with. Part of the u N itself, who's big in the sanction game, agrees with this. Even they play a huge role in the imposition of sanctions, and as recently they found that unilateral sanctions in particular, which was very a cough cough us cough cough statement. They said those in particular cause innocent people living in those countries to sink into poverty. They can't get electricity, housing, water, gas, fuel, basic stuff. And what is what is that going to do? Are they gonna be like I am suffering because this country I have never visited? Is right about this country in which I was born? You know? Um not to mention, then I'll let you get your get the gold medal, right, you don't. You don't get the medicine, you don't get the food. Just point out quickly a source that we found for this, and it actually comes from the u N itself. It's news dot u N dot org and the title of this article is punishment of quote innocent civilians through government sanctions must end, according to u N experts, I mean, wouldn't that fall under collateral damage? I mean, these aren't bombs, but they have unintended consequences, which is what collateral casualties surrounding targeted you know, military. That's part of the not logic. And do want to point out that report came from a group of independent experts who are appointed by the Human Rights Council, which is its own bag of badgers. And you know there are there are many many arguments out there about them, overall accuracy of the Human Rights Council and whether it might be rigged because there have been member States on the Human Rights Council in the past who have just astonishingly bad domestic human rights records anyway, so you could there are going to be people who say it's a poison source. But those were independent experts and they did say to the people who make a lot of sanctions, hey, sanctions are bad. You do we get we get what you're going for, but it's bad. And if we go to like what you're bringing up nol on the other side of sort of the octopus here people imposing sanctions. No, they're not perfect, but they believe they're making a call and favor the greater good. The calculus is like, Okay, is it better for us to run the risk of making lives of innocent people measurably worse if it means we can prevent a dangerous government from getting and deploying like an atomic bomb? You know what I mean? Is life going to be less cool for some people so that other people can survive? Or should we just let those ponies ride? You know what I mean? Let those ponies run. Uh. It's it's tough, man. It's a tough question because the question would be a lot easier to answer if the effective sanctions were easier to dickt. But these days, so many countries, especially the US, the overall global West, are convinced that these actions are necessary for continued global peace and security, or for being cynical to continue a profitable status quo. Right like the shadow of colonialism looms large. There's a reason that the West has taken so many actions in the Middle East and so many actions on the African continent, and it's not to help the people who live there. Y. Yeah, So at this point reasonable to ask, where are you talking about this on stuff they don't want you to know, guys. Well, it's it's a problem transparency, it's a problem of consent. The innocent people most likely to be victimized by sanctions are, in theory, some of the same people those sanctions are supposed to help. They don't get essay in international affairs, they don't get to talk in Congress, they don't get to speak to the U N. In fact, I was thinking about this. In fact, the harsh economic conditions, you know, these empty grocery stores, the inability to get a job, all of that kind of stuff, all that fallout can these things can often be directly traced to sanctions, and they can get this, they can run the risk of radicalizing the population, bullstering support for the same regimes this sanction seeks to topple. So it's I don't know, it's a way of adding fuel to the fire. And it seems such a transparent problem in logic here that it must be impossible for at least some of the people imposing sanctions not to know this, which calls their motivations for the sanctions themselves into question. Is that too many? Is that too much of a stretch? No, I don't think so at all. I'm actually really glad we're talking about this, Ben, because sanctions are in the news prominently right now with regards to Russia, and you know of some actions of the United States and the u N may or may not be taking against Russia because of their actions with regards to Ukraine, and then I'm just glad we've got a better understanding of it. Though it does feel like it may not be the best move, because if you don't want to radicalize someone further. You don't want to cause further tensions. It seems like sanctioning someone is maybe a bad idea, and it can also I mean, if you push a government to a desperate place, it starts considering other options, right like when whenever you have any and we don't like those options cornered. Yeah, well, and honestly not a lot of people do. UM, So you're right when we talk about this, Look, we don't We don't have the answers. These can be dangerous situations. Um, the right level of economic sanctions can absolutely just wreck a country, and that means it will be very dangerous for the people who live in that country. When elephants make war, it is the grass that suffers, and so on. So with this, we want to leave it to you. What do you think sanctions? Are you for them? Are you against them? Are they worth it? Do they work? What would be the alternative? Oh, they're coming, that's the alternative. I guess we're keeping that one in. Uh. The streets are hot, folks. Uh. 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