Audio Explainers
Spoken-word analysis — listen while you commute or multitask.
SWIFT explained: messaging versus settlement
A walk through what SWIFT actually does and why removal from it is a slow-acting sanction rather than an instant cutoff. Covers messaging, correspondent banking, and the limits of alternative networks like CIPS and mBridge. Includes a quick tour of how the 2022 Russian-bank removals propagated through global settlement and why the operational effect was real but partial.
Daniel Drezner on sanctions — the 30% number and what it means
The Fletcher School professor on the Hufbauer-Schott-Elliott dataset, his refined success-rate estimates, and the three structural variables — cost concentration, demand specificity, coalition breadth — that distinguish the sanctions episodes that achieve their stated goals. Applied to the post-2022 Russia regime, the framework predicts partial industrial degradation over five-to-ten years, not a policy reversal.