Sanctions and war

I've come across some interesting reading lately.

Firstly, a cautionary article pointing out that "War is Not Over", at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-10-15/war-not-over. The author's view that the work of people like Steven Pinker ("The Better Angels of Our Nature") is being interpreted by some people to assume that war and violence are no longer problems is news to me (and, I think, everyone else on the planet), but he does make some excellent points about the fragility of some of the statistics being used to assess levels of violence.

It is well worth a read.

The other reading is a report, authored by Hilary Mossberg and published by "The Sentry" - at https://cdn.thesentry.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/SanctionsEffectiveness_TheSentry_Oct2019-web.pdf (press release at https://thesentry.org/reports/beyond-carrots-better-sticks/) - about ways to improve sanctions.

This is a well laid out, objective, and well-researched document, in my opinion, and also well worth a read. It's fairly long, at 76 pages, but does contain a stack of information. This is the sort of report that I will refer to whenever I next write to a politician about sanctions. 

One caution I would make is that I'm not sure all the possible actions to improve sanctions seem to be mentioned in the conclusions section - in particular, I'm not sure that the recommendation to "improve messaging" adequately covers what I read in the body of the report on this aspect. 

Also, please note that I need to finish reading the case studies.