Book Club - Sanctions: What Everyone Needs to Know by Bruce Jentleson

It's hard to browse the news without seeing reports of yet another imposition of sanctions by one country on another. Sanctions: What Everyone Needs to Know provides a concise, authoritative overview of a little-understood yet extremely important phenomenon in world politics: the use of economic sanctions by one country to punish another. The United States has sanctions against more than 30 countries. Russia has repeatedly imposed sanctions against former Soviet republics. China has developed its own approach, including targeting private entities such as the NBA. And it's not just major powers – smaller countries have sanctioned each other over colonial legacies, conflicting political interests, and climate change.

Bruce Jentleson, one of America's leading scholars on the subject, provides answers to important questions: Why are sanctions used so much? What are their varieties? What are the key factors affecting their success? Why have they become the tool of first resort for states engaged in international conflict?

About the Author

Bruce W. Jentleson is a William Preston Few Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science at Duke University, a 2022 Distinguished Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He received the 2018 American Political Science Association Award for Distinguished Public Service. He has served in a number of US foreign policy positions, including as Senior Advisor to the State Department Policy Planning Director. He is Co-Director of the Bridging the Gap project promoting greater policy relevance among academics. His other books include The Peacemakers, American Foreign Policy, The End of Arrogance, and Pipeline Politics.