Are U.S. Sanctions Helping the Enemy?

How effective are economic sanctions in shaping global behavior—and what happens when they backfire?

In this episode of the At the Boundary podcast, host Jim Cardoso is joined by Dr. Zachary Selden, a leading expert on U.S. foreign policy and economic sanctions from the University of Florida. Together, they explore the evolving role of sanctions in diplomacy and global security, using both historical and current examples to examine when sanctions work—and when they don’t.

Key topics include:

• The U.S. embargo on Japan before WWII and its strategic consequences
• Sanctions on Russia and Iran: impacts, workarounds, and domestic responses
• How sanctions can unintentionally drive local production (like rare earth metals)
• Why sanctions are more effective when tied to specific goals—not regime change
• The challenges of sanctioning authoritarian regimes with access to alternative suppliers like China

Whether you're a policy professional, student of international relations, or just curious about how sanctions shape global events, this episode offers clear, timely insights into one of the most debated tools of modern statecraft. 

Links from the episode:
• Future Strategist Program Cyber Frontier Summit

At the Boundary from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.

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The mission of GNSI is to provide actionable solutions to 21st-century security challenges for decision-makers at the local, state, national and global levels. We hope you enjoy At the Boundary.

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Transcript

Jim Cardoso: 0:12

Jim, hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of at the boundary, the podcast from the global and national security Institute at the University of South Florida. I'm Jim Cardoso, Senior Director for GNSI and your host for at the boundary. Today on the podcast, we're going to be talking about economic sanctions and the role they play in US foreign policy. I'll be talking with Dr Zachary Selden, author and associate professor at the University of Florida. But first couple quick notes, we're less than 24 hours out from the GNSI future strategist program hosting its first student led conference here at USF. It's called the cyber frontier Summit, and features an outstanding lineup of speakers and discussions. There's no cost to attend, but registration is required. It kicks off Tuesday morning at the Marshall Student Center. We'll drop the link in the show notes for more information. And since cyber security isn't going away as a hot topic, I also want to highlight our partnership with the University of Paris at clay for a cyber and computer security forum on June 23 this virtual forum will connect the great researchers and experts here at USF with some of France's leading cyber and computer security practitioners for four hours of high level analysis and insight. Keep your eyes on our website, social media and newsletter for more information as we finalize the agenda. Again, that's June 23 GNSI USF and the University of Paris at Clay cyber and computer security virtual forum. Don't miss it. All right. It's time for today's interview. Dr Zachary Selden is an associate professor at the University of Florida. Yep, those same gators that just won the men's college basketball national championship. Congratulations, that's okay. Our USF Bulls are in their first top 25 ranking last season, and they'll get there in a few years. Dr Selden shared time with GNSI strategy and research manager Dr Tad schnaufer to talk about his book, economic sanctions as instruments of American foreign policy, while tariffs and sanctions are two very different things, the global argument about tariffs over the past few weeks has brought much attention to the importance of economic actions in foreign policy. In addition to being one of the country's foremost experts on economic sanctions, Dr Sheldon was the director of the defense and security committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly TED talk with him about the overall effectiveness of sanctions and what role they should take in US foreign policy.

Tad Schnaufer: 2:57

Well, Zach, welcome to the podcast. I look forward to our discussion

Zachary Selden: 3:00

today. No, thank you very much for having me. So today, we're going to focus

Tad Schnaufer: 3:05

on the nexus of sanctions and critical natural resources and rail Earth, rare earth, metals, and how they interact. So how you could you possibly use sanctions to limit an adversary's access to these critical resources, or vice versa, how an adversary could limit yours via sanctions. So why don't we start back historically? Are there some historical examples Zach of where sanctions, or maybe even boycotts, have been used to deny an adversary critical natural

Zachary Selden: 3:33

resources? Yeah, sure. I mean, there's plenty of examples, some which have been used against the United States and some which the United States has used against others. So the classic example I think people turn to is back before World War Two, the United States tried to deny Japan, Imperial Japan, given its war in China and its brutal occupation of Manchuria, access to critical aspects of what the United States was exporting at the time? So these were certain metals, but also oil, right? And for many people who look back on the history of World War Two, you know? And obviously there's a debate here, but this was one of the things that that drove Imperial Japan to seize the Dutch East Indies and really launch a broader war that dragged European powers in the United States in so that's one example. You know, if you want to think about an example where sanctions, in a way, or export controls were used against the United States, look to the history of the you know, the great airplane, the SR 71 the Blackbird. You know the still, I think, one of the fastest aircraft, if not the fastest aircraft ever, ever built. But the thing about an aircraft that moves at that speed, you know, the skin of it had to be made out of titanium. That was the only thing that was going to withstand the kind of heat and that that speed would generate. But here's the thing, at that time, in the early 1960s Almost all the titanium in the world we knew about was coming out of the Soviet Union, and they obviously weren't going to be selling it to the United States, so the CIA set up, there's a whole string of fake buyers to gobble up titanium from the Soviet Union through shell corporations. And it's a bit of mythology. I'm pretty sure it's true. I've read it from a at least in a number of reputable sources, but one of the most effective ways of doing this was they set up a company that was supposedly buying titanium for making pizza ovens, but this was actually being, you know, funneled into the SR 71 project. So, you know, states will always find ways around these kinds of restrictions, right? And the United States really found a creative way at that point.

Tad Schnaufer: 5:48

So if we're looking at the let's just start with the economic basis. Obviously, we have the current war in Ukraine out of sanctions on Russia and Iran. What keeps them from getting those, you know, critical resources at this point. I mean, obviously from the West,

Zachary Selden: 6:03

well, I mean, it's a good question. You know, it's always a matter of cost, right? So things are always available from alternative suppliers if you can't manufacture it yourself. And I think, you know, we sometimes make an error in thinking about things like sanctions and tariffs and all these things are sort of separate things, but they're actually, you know, based on the same economic logic, right, right? So what am I doing? I'm making it more expensive or difficult for you to get something from outside your country, which creates a distinct incentive to produce it inside that countries, you know. So my sanctions against you are kind of like you imposing a protective tariff, right? It's going to help you develop your domestic industry to produce that thing, if you can do it right now. The thing about critical minerals is that not everybody has access to them in their own country, so it's not like producing a widget, right? It has to be dug out of the ground or something. But even here, you know, in many cases, it's not that a country can't produce a critical mineral, it's just that it happens to be more expensive to do that, and so it's cheaper to buy it from abroad. But if that's denied to you, you will find ways to get it out of the ground at home, and that's currently one of the things that's happening in the United States on rare earth metals.

Tad Schnaufer: 7:27

And that's why we see these discussions about the untapped natural resources, whether in the Arctic or otherwise, where, you know, countries looking to compete for those mining resources,

Zachary Selden: 7:38

absolutely. But even beyond that. I mean, you know, in the continental United States, for example. So, you know, two that I'm aware of, that China has put export restrictions on the United States to China is actually, I think, the world's largest, by far, exporter of gallium, which is one of the rare earth metals, also antimony. And so what has happened is that you're seeing a lot of development in these in the continental United States. So there's a mine in Idaho that have been dormant for a long time that produces antimony. I mean, did so during World War Two, and it was a critical mineral then. And now it's doing it again. And now there's a big development in Texas, I think, areas called round top, that estimates are it could produce, you know, all the gallium that the United States could need for the foreseeable future from that one area. And see, the thing is, is that with those minerals, they're in very low concentrations in many, many places. And so it's a question of the effort, the environmental impact, the cost of getting that stuff out of the ground and refining it. China, with very low environmental standards, is willing to put a lot into pulling lots of gallium out of the ground, which is, like I said, in very low concentrations, and then going through the refining process the United States, we weren't willing to do that. But you know, if you can't get it from somewhere else, you'll get it here. So, you know, once again, it's just a matter of the cost and benefit ratio to these things. And so, yeah, that's been that's been changing, that's been driving a lot of production the United States. The flip side of that, of course, is that if you sort of follow the economic incentive down the line, once people have invested a lot into mining these things out of the ground, whether it's in Texas or Idaho, we're talking billions of dollars of investment, they're not going to want to see that go away. So my guess is 10 years from now, if China were to drop its export restrictions on rare earth metals to the United States, the United States would probably put some kind of tariff in place to protect those producers right for strategic purposes. So yeah, it's, you know. We could look at these things as kind of different aspects of policy, but in fact, from an economic logic, they're quite similar.

Tad Schnaufer: 10:07

So it almost ties into tariffs as well, where you drive home industry, but that industry would not like to see those tariffs lifted, because once they invest building exactly the infrastructure is there. This takes a long time, though as well. There's a time horizon which is not immediate, yeah,

Zachary Selden: 10:22

yeah. And, you know, it can vary a lot. Obviously, you know, under wartime conditions, countries do extraordinary things. You know, the United States certainly did during World War Two, and others will as well under normal conditions. Yeah, it's gonna take a long time to build up, and the infrastructure is expensive. But you know, things can happen pretty rapidly. So for example, you know, the United States was a net importer of major fossil fuels, whether it was natural gas or or oil. For a long time, we're now a major net exporter, right? And we're looking at seeing the increase, the significant increase in the export of natural gas from the United States in the form of liquefied natural gas. Liquefied natural gas, which really, when you sort of look at it in terms of our relationship with Russia, and our ability to sort of contain Russian revenues, government revenues, this is actually a really important area. So the ramp up the United States has been able to make in the export of liquefied natural gas has pretty significant impacts, I think, geopolitically. And yeah, you're right. It's an expensive infrastructure. It's billions of dollars of private investment. But it happens. And it happened pretty quickly over I mean, if you consider over a span of 10 years quickly, you know, it happened quite quickly.

Tad Schnaufer: 11:39

How do you then, you know, as we look at these critical natural resources, or fossil fuels, or whatever it may be, how do you impose a sanctions regime? And then also, in this case, like we're talking about with oil, the US is able to offer an alternative. So you sanction Russia, deny its sale, and then you offer an alternative to further deny the Russians to be able to, let's say, you know, use a unflag ship or a third party flagship to get it sold around. So how does that work?

Zachary Selden: 12:07

Yeah, I mean, so in the case of the United States and in liquefied natural gas, I mean, it's a global market, right? So an enormous amount of what the United States produces goes to Asia, right, or Latin America. But when demand really skyrocketed in Europe, because Europe tried to shut off the, you know, the gas taps essentially coming from, from Russia. After the invasion of Ukraine, a lot of it started going towards Europe. So, you know, the price went up. The demand in Europe went up. The price that Europeans were willing to offer went up. So naturally, you know, gas started to flow in that direction, you know. So it's all about supply and demand and prices and so, yeah, as prices hit a certain point, producers are willing to invest more in the infrastructure to get this stuff out and onto ships and moving around. It's an expensive process. But you know, if the alternative is is more expensive than this is what where we are. So, yeah, it's entirely possible that the United States can, can play this role in it. As it starts to change the whole sort of market structure, it puts Russia in a very different position, where now almost all of its energy is, I wouldn't say all of it, that's probably an overstatement, but, you know, the vast majority is going towards China and or India to a lesser degree. Well, with

Tad Schnaufer: 13:30

that in mind, looking at China and India and how they've dealt with these resources, you know, obviously countries want to be, you know, resource independent. If they can, they can have a home source, or an organic source to these critical natural resources. So that way they can, sanctions aren't even an option. You can't place sanctions on a country if they already have it. And China has done this in part through the BRI the Belt and Road Initiative by, you know, helping build mines around the world, lithium mines and Chile things like that. So how has that process worked and are how secure are? Do you think those supply lines actually are? Are they unsanctionable? You

Zachary Selden: 14:07

know, that's a really good question. And this is, I think it's been a huge part of China's strategy, and particularly in Africa. So, you know, a lot of what they've been trying to do. And I think, in terms of, I think we mentioned, we talked about gallium earlier. Ghana is a huge source of this, right? And China has just sort of hoovered up land to mine gallium in that region. Yeah. I mean, but at the end of the day, these are our, you know, sovereign countries, and we've seen a lot of sort of pushback against Bri in some of these countries as they start to see the negative impact of Chinese involvement, whether it's Sri Lanka or some countries in Africa, you know, and there's a limit to what China can do if countries start to push back on this, or say, you know, we don't want to be part of this deal anymore, because it's entirely possible that the countries do started pulling out, and we've seen that, right? So yeah, you can sort of secure supplies of these things from outside your country through various agreements. But you know, there's always the possibility that that's not your sovereign territory. And you know, unless you're willing to sort of truly use gumbo gumbo diplomacy, you know, you may not be able to actually always get that.

Tad Schnaufer: 15:22

So for the United States, in this case, how resource independent could the United States be if it was a all out conflict, let's say in the US had to really produce. What do you think the overall critical natural resources, whether fossil fuels or rare earth metals? How well could the US fare?

Zachary Selden: 15:39

Yeah, I mean, once again, it's all a question of how much are you willing to pay, right? And not just in terms of, you know, actual financial costs, but you know, environmental cost and opportunity cost. So if you're going to sink a lot of money and time and effort into one thing, you're not obviously doing it in something else. And of course, all this is a little bit more complex in the United States than in sort of authoritarian systems, because we're talking about private industry, right, and there's a limit to what government can do to sort of direct private industry. There's got to be sort of financial incentives there, so, but yeah, we we've clearly seen that when export restrictions are put in place on things like rare earth metals. Suddenly, there's a lot more exploration, and people find a lot more in the US. You know, it's sort of out there if you're willing to look and if you're willing to pay the cost. And you know, so once again, it's just sort of a supply and demand and what cost you willing to pay? So can the United States be independent on many of these things. Sure, right? It's not economically necessarily the best way to go in a peacetime situation. But if you argue that you're approaching a period of great power conflict and that these things are strategically necessary, then that's a very different kind of context, right?

Tad Schnaufer: 17:04

Because the economic model, obviously you said the private industry needs to make money, and it's it's just often cheaper just to import it from overseas and make whatever device you need this critical resource for. But the Chinese and the Russians don't necessarily have that same calculation, as you noted, because they subsidize a lot of these industries, or the government just straight up owns the industries that are out there doing it, or, yeah.

Zachary Selden: 17:27

And in fact, oftentimes the government is actually a primary beneficiary of the sales that those, those, you know, for example, you know, I the the oil and gas industry in Russia has been described as sort of the Kremlin's piggy bank, right? I mean, a huge amount of Russian federal revenues come off of those extractive industries and their ability to export. So, yeah, these things are completely sort of interdependent government and an industry within sort of authoritarian structures. Yeah. I mean, I think another thing we have to sort of keep in mind, though, is that when the United States uses sanctions against any country, it can sometimes have a perverse effect. And I think we've been kind of pointing to this in a certain way, which is that when you impose sanctions on a on a country, you're creating an incentive for them to produce whatever it is that you're sanctioning in that country, but then producers in that country have a distinct incentive to make sure that sanctions stay in place, right, right? And so this can be and that can actually make things really difficult to change. And we've got, I mean, plenty of historical examples of that when the United States or others have tried to sanction countries. So you know, my my favorite example of this is South Africa under the apartheid regime, which was under pretty strict sanctions. These were un based sanctions, so pretty much across the board, many you know, most of the countries in the world, and most of it targeted the south what could go into arms exports to South Africa, right? Because it was a very repressive regime, and so no one wanted to be sending any kind of military supplies or things that could be sort of bolstering security forces of South Africa. So South Africa being, you know, reasonably capable country in terms of industrial capacity, set about developing an arms industry, and they didn't just produce light arms. They did at first, then they started to realize that, hey, they could actually produce armored vehicles and mobile howitzers. And this actually became a big export industry for them. And ironically, they were exporting most of their product to Sub Saharan Africa, but South Africa went from not having an arms industry to being the fifth or sixth largest exporter in the world in about 10 years, right? And you can imagine at that point in time, and this was definitely the case, that the people who were involved in that industry didn't want to see it go away, right? And this. Happens in other countries as well, right? If you're benefiting from the effects of sanctions, they're essentially like a protective tariff for your industry, and you're not going to want that to go away. So there are times when we've made it more difficult to actually change the behavior of states through sanctions, because we've actually created a sort of a group of powerful and wealthy individuals within those countries or industries that have a vested interest in seeing sanctions stay in place. So it's a very tricky balance. When you use these things, it's

Tad Schnaufer: 20:32

interesting, because a lot of times you just see people talking about kind of that surface level effect, oh, we're going to punish this country this way. But what you're not taking into calculations is that secondary, tertiary effect of, okay, well, industries are going to reorient themselves. They're going to find other trading partners, if they can, and they're going to adapt their economy. They're not just going to take the sanctions and just, you know, sit with them. Yeah,

Zachary Selden: 20:54

exactly right. And once again, it's a, I think a bigger question is, Who are you punishing, right? Um, you know. And I think this is a really big question when we're talking about the kinds of countries that we're trying to impose sanctions on Currently, most of them are authoritarian or certainly non democratic, right, whether it's Russia or Iran. And so you have to ask yourself, how do you translate that economic pain into something that really affects the leadership of the country? You know, maybe one thing that you do that actually creates economic pain to the general population. And you can argue that there's sort of a logic to sanctions, kind of a transmission belt. I impose economic pain on the population, and that population is angry at the government for doing whatever it's doing that's causing this, and so they take action to get a new government. Right? Well, that could work in a democratic country, right, right? But in an authoritarian regime, that's going to be a little bit different, right? Because what can people do? Well, they can protest, but a great risk to themselves. So how do you sort of translate economic pain into something really impacts on the leadership of a country and forces them to moderate their behavior? That is not an easy thing to do,

Tad Schnaufer: 22:19

particularly when, again, it's not worldwide sanctions. So they can oftentimes just be what they want from somebody else, or like we've discussed, they just create a homegrown industry. I mean, there's look at drone development. You know, the Iranians had advanced drones. Now they're developing them in Russia, you know. So, yeah,

Zachary Selden: 22:33

exactly right. And so, yeah, you know. And once again, you know, the drone technology that Iran I mean, what they have done, essentially, is take, you know, Western, in particular, German technology, and sort of adapt to their own purposes and add to it. But yeah, they developed a very effective, you know, cost effective, relatively cheap drone business. That pretty good, right? So, yeah, they now have, frankly, an export industry and drones, right? And Russia is buying them, so they didn't have that before,

Tad Schnaufer: 23:06

right? So the impacts of sanctions, or in this case, really tariffs, because you can see that relationship between sanctions and tariffs, and how the effect it actually has on domestic the domestic industry of the country either imposing tariffs or the one who's under sanction?

Zachary Selden: 23:22

Yeah, no, exactly. I think, you know, I think you're just sort of getting back to my original point is, like, you know, you can look at tank sanctions and tariffs is, it's really very similar things in a lot of ways, in terms of the economic effects, just kind of a question of who's imposing them, right,

Tad Schnaufer: 23:37

right the direction of the supposed money in the in a sense, going using the legal term of intent. What's the intent? Yeah,

Zachary Selden: 23:45

yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. I think that's a that's a good way of phrasing it, right? So

Tad Schnaufer: 23:49

when we look at that, then we look at, you know, we talked about resource independence. We've talked about international trade, how, how does the US and and the West in general, look at natural resources now going forward, is it, do you think there's a policy of denial to try to deny these things to the Chinese and Russians and some, you know, through sanctions or other means, or is it just not really feasible, given the current global situation?

Zachary Selden: 24:16

You know, honestly, I think the place where you're more likely to see effective pressure is going to be not so much critical strategic resources. Because once again, as far as I know, the things which, which we now have today, is sort of critical resources, whether it's rare earth, metals, lithium, things like that, I don't see that you're going to be able to to effectively impose some kind of sanctions regime on those countries, because with a lot of the rare earth stuff, China already has a lot of it, and is willing to, you know, to take it out of the ground at whatever environmental cost. And the same is true of Russia to a large extent. So I think really, the places where you're going to have any kind of effective sanctions is probably going to be on things you. Very, very high end manufacturer products, in particular, chips, superconducting materials, you know, they're very on that very high end of semiconductors. There are very few places capable of producing those things, right? So most of that production is where it's in Taiwan, it's in the United States, it's in the Netherlands. There really aren't too many places capable of it. And in fact, China has had a difficult time developing its own very high end semiconductor business, right? They've tried, right, but they haven't been able to really effectively do this. And I think in part, that's because, yeah, they have been denied some rather, you know, critical materials and equipment for that. So there, I think you can probably have some kind of effective sanctions on the sort of highest end of the technology spectrum, but in terms of sort of the critical minerals and things like that, I don't think that's going to be a very effective path,

Tad Schnaufer: 26:10

right? And as you mentioned about causing, you know, in a sense, you're imposing sanctions to deny resources, possibly, but also to impose pain, in a sense, on a society or maybe a group of leaders. But we haven't really seen that be necessarily effective. So let me just as you just mentioned, natural resources is pretty hard, because you can go a lot of other places, or you can mine in your own country at an increased cost. So where, where does that infliction of pain work? Do we have some successful cases of sanctions around the world? You know, we're thinking of North Korea, of Cuba, countries that have just been under sanctions for decades. Are those reaping results?

Zachary Selden: 26:45

Yeah. I mean, if you mentioned, you know, North Korea and Cuba. I mean, these are countries that have, you know, probably under leadership that has done everything possible to shoot themselves in the foot economically. So I'm not sure the sanctions are really the critical thing, right? I mean, if they had completely free trade, I'm not sure that it would, you know, really make much difference now. So I think if you want to look at effective sanctions, you'll find that sanctions tend to work. And this isn't, you know, necessarily my own work. There's Gary Huff Bauer and and some others have done. You know, enormous amounts of work on this. Sanctions are often effective when you have sort of very, not huge strategic goals, but rather sort of very specific goals, like, Hey, you went and nationalized this piece of property that belongs to, you know, a company from our country. We don't like that, so we're imposing sanctions until you turn that around, that sort of thing. You know, if you can impose some economic disruption on a country, you can oftentimes get a leadership to kind of change things, but that's very discreet, right? And it's very targeted, and there's a there's a clear answer what they need to do. It's very different if you're imposing sanctions on a country because we don't like your government and what you do, right? They're not going to change everything, right? So it can be very difficult to sort of get those kind of huge changes. But you know, you can put pressure, and you can do things that affect even authoritarian countries, which are basically insulated from public pressure to a large degree. So, you know, for example, with Russia, you know, back to once again, they're a huge amount of their the federal government's revenue, so the money that it has available to fund its war effort in Ukraine comes from the sale of oil and gas. And yes, it's true that they've been able to find new buyers in the form, particularly of China, but also India. But that doesn't make up for all of it. And So Russia has had to sort of struggle and find ways to get out from underneath the sanctions and sell oil and yeah, it has come at a cost to them, right? Is it enough to push them No, but you know, if you're able to deny them 100 billion a year, you know, over time, one hopes that that starts to have some negative impact on what they can do in terms of resupplying their military in the long run. So, you know, is it the solution? No, but can it contribute? Sure,

Tad Schnaufer: 29:31

and that, you know, makes one wonder about the long term impacts of sanctions, as we talked about, as economies react to sanctions. So, you know, looking at Russia again, it's reacting to the sanctions placed on it. It's looking for other outlets, looking for other trading partners, other markets to export to. Is there a time factor here where the sanctions have the most impact right away and they start losing effect, if you will, over time? Have we seen that? Play out, particularly when it comes to resources,

Zachary Selden: 30:03

yeah, I mean absolutely in terms of Russia, and here, you know, I think the initial sort of effect was, was quite a shock on the Russian economy, if you, if you look at, you know, there's a blip there, when, when sanctions hit. And in particular, it really is more sort of the financial sanctions, right? You know, things were imposed that really made it very difficult for Russia to engage in international financial transactions. And that was a real problem. But, you know, once again, others stepped in, China stepped in to really sort of facilitate financial transactions so that Russia could really sort of participate in the international economy that became its major buyer of its major export. And so, yeah, it's kind of like, you know, you can squeeze a balloon and it's just going to kind of move in a different direction. And, you know, economies are elastic, right? We talk about elasticity and economics all the time, and things adapt. So yes, there was an initial shock, and certainly it affected the Russian population. And one could imagine that this would, you know, drive an opposition to rise to the fore and try to change things in Russian governance. Obviously, that didn't happen. And over time, Russians have adapted, right? They have switched how credit has done. They have changed suppliers, they have changed purchasers of major products. And in the end, they're doing okay, right? So it's a new normal, and it doesn't seem to have changed things that much,

Tad Schnaufer: 31:40

right? Well, and also to, you know, put it into context, the Russians knew that a number of sanctions were coming before they started the conflict, because, as they were able to prepare some of the, some of their system for that blow as well. You know, it wasn't just out there they

Zachary Selden: 31:54

were. And, you know, another thing that people have tried is so called Smart sanctions aimed at individuals, influential individuals in governments or private business, who are connected to government, but once again, those individuals have, you know, pretty good intelligence of what's coming down the line, and they're very good at finding ways to sort of park their money in relatively safe places. So many of them may be constrained in some ways, but have simply found, you know, alternatives to what they were doing. So what

Tad Schnaufer: 32:27

overall sounds like? Yeah, sanction is absolutely a policy tool. It does have effects. Those effects are time sensitive. They change over time. It's not going to be a lasting effect one way or the other. And then what I'm also hearing is that for when it comes to natural critical resources, you can try to deny it to a country, you can try to sanction it, but likely it's just not. It's not going to completely stop the flow.

Zachary Selden: 32:52

No, I mean, it's highly unlikely. And like I said, you know, with many of these resources, it's not a matter that they are impossible to get from, you know, from either your your own domestic territory, or from countries that are friendly to you. It's just that it's more expensive or environmentally risky, but if you drive up the cost, then it's worth it,

Tad Schnaufer: 33:14

right? Yeah. And it's really just, you know, this happens when you think about policy making. Quite often, don't ask more than what your policy can deliver the sanctions can't deliver impacts. Just don't expect them to be a Plan C at pancia,

Zachary Selden: 33:26

yeah, no, it's not a panacea. You know, is it part of a package of tools? Sure, but you know, once again, always be aware of the secondary effects of whatever you do. And you know, that's generally good policy advice, right? What? What are the possible secondary effects? Right? Always a good question to ask yourself, yeah, who else

Tad Schnaufer: 33:43

is this going to affect? And really, like we talked about with sanctions here, how soon can they work to circumvent it? Yeah, yeah, that's so if we were going to, as we wrap up here, what would you say are the big takeaways going forward as we look at the expansion of these rare earth metals, the need for microchips and other technological things that can be sanctioned more easily and can be restricted and denied to adversaries more easily, as we discussed, what would be the big takeaway?

Zachary Selden: 34:11

Yeah, I mean, I think the big takeaway is that the United States is going to, I think, find many ways to become more self sufficient in these critical minerals. I mean, there have already been steps that have been taken, I think, and I I expect under the current administration, you'll see a deliberate green lighting of mining operations and perhaps a less attention to environmental regulations and sort of green light projects so this can move ahead more quickly, as well as green lending projects that allow the United States to export more oil and gas, and therefore sort of deprive Russia of that leverage of the international environment. So I think you'll see more of that. You know, there's always been, or I shouldn't say, always been, but for the last, you know, several years, and certainly under the previous presidential administration, a focus on restricting the export of high technology items, particularly the semiconductor field, and also trying to encourage much more domestic production of these things to to ensure the United States is highly self sufficient in high end semiconductors. So once again, I think that's going to continue too. So I would expect to see more of that over time. We'll

Tad Schnaufer: 35:40

have to keep a look out for that, and in the meantime, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you.

Jim Cardoso: 35:53

That's Dr Tad schnaufer genoci, strategy and research manager, talking with Dr Zachary Selden, one of the country's foremost authorities on sanctions, and author of the book, economic sanctions as instruments of American foreign policy. Special thanks to Dr Sheldon for his unique analysis and perspective on a key and often misunderstood tool in global foreign policy. Later this week, with the Houthis in Yemen dominating recent headlines, we're dropping our first special episode of the year, we have an opportunity to sit down with nadwa al daswari, a veteran researcher and foremost Yemen expert between the controversy of senior administration officials discussing military plans on an unsecured signal application and the success of those strikes themselves. There's a lot to discuss. Al daswari is an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Institute and the founding director at Partners Yemen, amongst many other high profile roles in the region. Look for that special episode to drop little later this week. Thanks for listening today. If you like the podcast, please share with your colleagues and network. You can follow GNSI and our LinkedIn and X accounts at USF, underscore GNSI, and check out our website as well, at usf.edu/gnsi, where you can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter that's going to wrap up this episode of at the boundary. Each new episode will feature global and national security issues we found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall, just worth talking about. I'm Jim Cardoso, and we'll see you at the boundary.