The Geneva International Sanctions Network brings together scholars, students and practitioners interested in international targeted sanctions and draws on expertise developed through the Targeted Sanctions Consortium.

For the second event of the semester we are happy to welcome the two co-editors of Sanctions for Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation: Moving Forward.

About the book: 

This book examines the interplay between sanctions and nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. The volume aims to tackle three separate but closely intertwined issues: It aims to revisit the debate on, and deconstruct the concept of, sanctions; to provide a working theoretical framework; to differentiate between positive sanctions (or incentives or carrots) and negative sanctions; to identify the actors who may initiate sanctions (i.e. states, regional, and/or international organizations); to ascertain the legality and legitimacy of such sanctions taking place; to problematize and discuss the utility of sanctions; and so on. It aims to disentangle the concepts of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, particularly in light of the most recent geopolitical global shifts on nuclear powers-interplay taking place in the background of the war in Ukraine and rising tensions in Southeast Asia, and so on. Finally, it aims to conjoin the cause-and-effect cases between the application of sanctions, on the one hand, and the decision by states to pursue nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, on the other. By doing so, the volume helps to update and stimulate the academic and policy debate on the inter-relation between sanctions and nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear non-proliferation, economic sanctions, security studies, and International Relations. 

Presenters: 

Armend Bekaj is a researcher at Working Group 2 on International Measures for Compliance to Nuclear Disarmament Regimes at Alva Myrdal Centre for Nuclear Disarmament (AMC), Department of Peace and Conflict Research (DPCR), Uppsala University, Sweden. He combines academic and policy experience on peace and conflict and democracy and autocracy, with a focus on sanctions and nuclear disarmament/non-proliferation. 

Peter Wallensteen is Dag Hammarskjöld Professor Emeritus of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, Sweden, and Richard G. Starmann Sr. Research Professor Emeritus at Kroc Institute, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. He served as the first Head of the Uppsala Department of Peace and Conflict Research and now leads AMC’s Working Group on International Measures for Compliance to Nuclear Disarmament Regimes.

Thomas Biersteker is the Gasteyger Professor Honoraire at the Graduate Institute, Geneva and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He previously taught at Yale University, the University of Southern California, and Brown University, where he directed the Watson Institute for International Studies from 1994 until 2006.  Author, editor, or co-editor of eleven books, his next book, co-edited with Oliver Westerwinter and Kenneth Abbott is Informal Governance in World Politics (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2022). He is also co-editor of Targeted Sanctions: The Impacts and Effectiveness of UN Action (Cambridge, 2016), Countering the Financing of Global Terrorism (Routledge, 2008), International Law and International Relations: Bridging Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2006), The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance (Cambridge, 2002), and State Sovereignty as Social Construct (Cambridge 1996). His research focuses primarily on international relations, global governance, and international sanctions. In addition to providing annual sanctions training for incoming members of the UN Security Council, he is the principal developer of SanctionsApp, an interactive tool for the design and analysis of UN targeted sanctions.

Discussant

Grégoire Mallard, Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology and Director of Research, Geneva Graduate Institute