Economic sanctions as a tool of foreign policy have been around for a long time. The first recorded use of sanctions was in Athens by Pericles in 432AD against the Megara; these lead indirectly to the Peloponnesian Wars. The first use of sanctions by the US was by Thomas Jefferson with the Embargo Act of 1807, which was passed to try to maintain neutrality in the war between France and England. Since then sanctions have been employed in numerous ways by different countries - Napoleon’s France against England; US against Cuba in 1958; OPEC against the US to punish us for support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War; the UN against South Africa to punish apartheid, to name just a few.
Many question the effectiveness of sanctions. Do they harm the citizens of a country without changing the behavior of the government of that country? With the strength and international importance of the US banking system, sanctions implemented by the US are more likely to be effective. Today the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) administers no less than 29 sanctions programs, most notably against Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
Ambassador Daniel Fried, our speaker in December, is extremely well qualified to address the design and implementation of sanctions. As the State Department coordinator for sanctions policy, Fried helped lead the West’s response to Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine starting in 2014. He crafted US sanctions against Russia, the largest US sanctions program to date, and negotiated the imposition of similar sanctions by Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia.
Ambassador Fried’s talk will cover the use of economic and personal sanctions as a foreign policy tool, from the perspective of a policy practitioner. Sanctions have become a tool of choice for recent US Administrations, used with growing sophistication. But sanctions are no magic bullet: they can be poorly applied or misapplied, and are no better than the policy which they are intended to support. The Iran and DPRK sanctions programs illustrate the potential and problems that sanctions present. The Russia sanctions present special challenges, given the size of the Russian economy, the breadth and complexity of the West’s relations with Russia, and Putin’s own aggressive policies toward his neighbors and resentment of the United States.
Ambassador Fried retired from the State Department last year after 40 years of distinguished service. Among his many roles were Special Assistant to President Clinton on the National Security Council; US Ambassador to Poland; Principal Deputy Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for the New Independent States; Special Assistant to President George W. Bush; Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs; and Coordinator for Sanctions Policy at the State Department.
Ambassador Fried graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University and earned a Masters degree from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.
6:00 Cocktails 6:45 Dinner 7:45 Address and Discussion