Good afternoon and welcome. My name's Elise Grundy. I'm the head of the United States Institute of Peace. We were established by Congress in 1984 as a non-partisan public institute dedicated to helping prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict abroad. As many of you are aware, the UN Charter adopted reforms to the international legal system in 1945 that enabled the UN Security Council to mandate sanctions that might previously have been understood as a violation of neutrality and as an act of war. Although initially reluctant to impose sanctions, the Security Council has been much more forward leaning since the end of the Cold War, starting with sanctions on the former Yugoslavia and then in short order on Libya, Liberia, Somalia, parts of Cambodia, Haiti, parts of Angola, Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Eritrea. Dr. George Lopez, who is here with us today, wrote a very famous book many of us have read it called The Decade of Sanctions, and it was during this extraordinary period that you saw the UN Security Council just move with determination in the use of these sanctions. Sanctions are broadly credited with helping to advance mediation, for reinforcing peace talks, and for incentivizing negotiations. They are also seen as a concrete mechanism for constraining the behavior of malign actors. At the same time, however, there are persistent questions about the coordination and the effectiveness of the sanctions themselves. Within the Security Council, there are debates about when sanctions should be levy and when or if they should be modified and lifted. The aim of today's discussion will be together for about an hour, is to explore the track record of UN sanctions and to consider options for using them more effectively in peace building. We're delighted to welcome two distinguished experts for our discussion. Director Josh Black is the Special Assistant to the President of the U.S. He's the Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs on the National Security Council. Josh advises the President on a broad range of multilateral issues. He leads the White House team responsible for our engagement with the United Nations. In his many years of experience, he has worked at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where he led the Mission Sanctions and Counterterrorism Team. The Director was the lead negotiator for UN Security Council resolutions on the Iranian and North Korean nuclear threats, the 2011 conflict in Libya, the civil war in South Sudan, and the ISIS terrorist threat. We're also very pleased to welcome Dr. Tom Bierstecker, who is a professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute and a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars here in D.C. Dr. Bierstecker's current research focuses on reform of UN targeted sanctions. He trains incoming members of the UN Security Council and developed Sanctions app, an interactive tool that is used to design and analyze UN sanctions. So during the discussion, what we would like to do is to focus on several key points and then of course any questions that colleagues from the floor risk to raise. What we want to do is to look at examples of when UN sanctions have concretely contributed to peace building. We are likewise interested in the reverse question, which are examples of where UN sanctions have done the opposite and resulted in unintended negative consequences. We'd also like to discuss what conditions have to be in place for sanctions to succeed and how the effectiveness of sanctions can be improved. Professor, we'd like to start with you. So some analysts, including you, have described sanctions as a tool that is both overused and underutilized. Is this your view of UN sanctions and what has your research told all of us about how they can be better adapted going forward? Well, thank you for the invitation to be here and to be able to talk about these issues with a very distinguished audience. And it's great to be on the podium with Josh. We indirectly worked together on a few things. Well, he was at the US mission of the UN on quite a number of important sanctions reform issues. So it's a great pleasure to be here. I suppose technically I wouldn't say UN sanctions are overused, particularly not at the current moment given the current political situation, geopolitical situation. But I think in general sanctions, I'm talking about international sanctions, thinking of the combination of what I call G7 plus sanctions on Russia, for example, there's a tendency to make sanctions the instrument of choice for all sorts of threats to international peace and security, be it proliferation, counterterrorism, resolving armed conflicts. There are plenty of, obviously, human rights violations. So the instrument is being used largely as another colleague of George and I, Peter Wallenstein described sanctions as this instrument between words and war. And it is in that space between words and war. But it's, of course, not a choice. Oftentimes sanctions are being applied with diplomacy and with in the midst of negotiations. So I think that's one of the reasons why we see the use of sanctions for so many challenges, both for foreign policy, but also for international peace and security. Yet, in reaching agreement at the UN is a difficult process, especially, it's always difficult, but it's been made much more difficult recently because of the increase in geopolitical tensions amongst the P5. But reaching agreement at the UN and the design or adjustment of a sanctions regime is not all that's entailed in creating an effective sanctions regime. You want to talk a bit about effectiveness. And so paradoxically, I think it may sound like a contradiction, overused but underutilized, the argument I'm making is that there are three aspects that I think could be, one could focus on to try to increase, not just getting the sanctions in place. Now, granted, that's a lot of what, a lot of energy and effort goes into getting the regimes in place. My concern is that once they're in place, there's not sufficient utilization of the restrictive measures. And I'll give three examples of what I mean by that. The first is that I'll list them first and I'll elaborate on each. I'm talking about, first, the absence of what I call strategic communication. Why are these sanctions in place? What are they intended to do? Who's responsible for communicating why restrictive measures are there? Second, we're too focused, I think, on design, implementation, unintended consequences, effectiveness, and not focused enough on how sanctions relaxation or sanctions relief can be used to facilitate negotiations. So that's my second sort of theme. The third is the need to adapt existing sanctions regimes on an ongoing basis to try to make them fit for purpose. The conflicts are changing very rapidly, but the regimes are very slow to change. So my three, let me elaborate on each. With regard to your strategy, and now I will focus almost exclusively on UN sanctions since that's been the focus of most of my research for the last 20, 25 years. No one, and correct me if I'm wrong, since I know there are some friends and colleagues from the UN here, no one in the UN really has responsibility for strategic communications about the sanctions regimes. If you look at the guidelines, I see Teresa here, if you look at the mediation support units' guidelines from UN mediators, in effect, indirectly caution or warn them about getting too close to sanctions because it might affect their impartiality. SRSGs, we did a project a few years ago looking at the relationship between UN sanctions and UN mediation. We found that SRSGs, for the Secretary General of Special Representatives, usually want to keep a distance from sanctions because they're viewed as coercive and they're controversial domestically and they see themselves as somewhat separate from this domain. Peacekeeping operations often do the same. They're in the field, they're interacting with, so they also want to keep their distance, although oftentimes they do have an enforcement rule. Panels of experts, well, panels of experts are sometimes called upon to explain why the sanctions are in place, but that's not mandated. That's not part of their mandate. The only entity that really does this, and it's relatively infrequently used, are when the sanctions committees actually go into the field and go to the country and meet with people. So in those contexts, yes, they would be there to explain the logic, but this isn't institutionalized within the UN system. So basically, it means that the targets of sanctions end up explaining or interpreting, defining the discourse around sanctions. And so there isn't a concerted effort to try to say why are they in place? What's the purpose? What's the counterfactual alternative? What if nothing had been done? So there isn't that level of engagement, and oftentimes, of course, the targets of sanctions are going to use them to say this is an attack not on us or our policies, it's an attack on the entire nation. Now, to be sure, the UN does, of course, have press releases. The texts of Security Council resolutions are translated and made available. Information at press conferences right after resolution is passed, but I don't think that's sufficient. I think one has to go a little bit more and be more strategic. So that's my first sort of underutilization. Second is using sanctions relaxation or sanctions relief to try to facilitate negotiations, mediation or negotiation efforts. As I already said, most of the focus, and certainly we as scholars are responsible for this, our focus is on the threat of sanctions, the design of sanctions, the implementation of sanctions, the unintended consequences of sanctions, the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of sanctions. But nobody really looks at how sanctions end. There's one exception. There's a project in Germany and Hamburg right now, Jürgen Vogel and Hannah Atia's work on how sanctions end. But that's exceptional. There's very little on this, at least in the scholarly literature. And I think we should look a little bit more about how they could be relaxed again strategically in order to facilitate negotiations. Because we know again from the sanctions literature that the threat of sanctions, if you're trying to change behavior, which is only one in my view, one of the purposes of sanctions, they're also intended to constrain, as you mentioned, as well as to send normative signals. Those are really the three main purposes in my view. But the literature on sanctions tells us if you're trying to change behavior, a threat is more likely to change behavior than the actual application or implementation of the sanctions themselves. So if you're trying to cause a change in behavior, it's very difficult in any circumstance to force a change in behavior. But threats are more effective than the actual application of the measures. And from some of the work we've been doing on the relationship between sanctions, mediation, and negotiation, we found that the potential promise of relief of measures can also facilitate changes of behavior. And so we need to think about, once we have these measures in place, how can we use them flexibly to not give everything away at once? Because that's not what I'm talking about. When I say sanctions relief, what I'm talking about is a gradual incremental process by which you could actually relax, rollback, scale back the existing restrictive measures that you have in place. And it can be used to bring parties to a table for negotiation. It can be used to get parties to be seriously engaged in negotiations. It might be able to facilitate reaching an agreement. It might be used, it could be used, the promise of sanctions relief, could be used to keep people in the agreement. So there are a number of ways in which you could think about utilizing sanctions relief. And the big caveat, and Erin knows as we talked about this in a seminar I gave a couple of weeks ago at the State Department, it depends on the regime. If you look at UN sanctions regimes, I see a bifurcation in the scope of impact of existing regimes. At one end of the continuum, we have DPRK. North Korea is that's approximating a comprehensive sanctions regime at the UN level. At the other end of the continuum, we have many of the recent sanctions regimes, Yemen, Mali, while it's still existed, CAR, a whole series of very, very highly targeted, small number under a dozen people designated, sometimes not even an arms embargo with them. So very, very highly targeted and very, very non-discriminating on that continuum. The good thing, if I could say it that way, about the DPRK sanctions regime is that you have a lot to work with. You have extraordinary numbers of restrictive measures in place. So you could actually do everything from since we're in the U.S., I'm in the U.S. now, normally not, but the U.S. of course has all sorts of additional measures that it applies in virtually every one of these UN sanctions regimes. The U.S. can voluntarily decide to relax enforcement of claims of extraterritorial control over certain regimes. So the U.S. can voluntarily decide to lift some of its autonomous measures. There are gestures that could be taken. So the U.S. is in a unique position because it has so many different individual sanctions and could actually act in this way. So that's the first thing. But you can go beyond that to various use of things like increases in exemptions. Actually, back up, something that Joshua worked on. Very significantly, when the U.S. declared that it would not apply any new sanctions on the Iranian nuclear program prior to the deal, that's a public statement. And of course, there were additional sanctions applied, but that was always legal under the deal as well. So there is an example of things that I think could be done in a positive way. But beyond that, you can suspend the implementation of additional autonomous measures. You could expand exemptions. You could engage in selective delistings, perhaps symbolic delistings in certain contexts or cases. Controversial in terms of the implementation, but you could either impose a cap rather than banning an entire sector. Or you could actually increase or decrease a cap depending on what the caps are in place for. You could also engage in, I think, significantly underutilized is the use of suspensions. Where you simply say, OK, for the next year, we're going to suspend the implementation of this particular restrictive measure and see what response we get from the other side. It doesn't lift the sanctions. It doesn't require a snapback. It doesn't require another negotiation of the Security Council. So think about utilizing time-limited, time-based suspensions for periods of time. Not for every case, obviously, and this has to be. So suspensions, I think, are underutilized. And then, of course, you're going to have partial lifting or full termination. But there's a very long menu of things to do. Now, one thing for me to suggest all these menu items is very difficult to do in practice. So I'm not saying this is something easily enacted upon. Yes, you've got the menu. By the way, in Yemen, you had a very limited menu of what you could do. And part of the S&P, the Sanctions Mediation Project, we had looked into specific recommendations to Martin Griffiths about what he could do when he was the SRSG in terms of negotiation mediation there. But I'd say there are four significant challenges to engaging in sanctions, relaxation, or relief. The first is calibration. How much do you offer in exchange for what types of concessions? So what should the US have put on the table in Oslo? Or Stockholm, sorry, Stockholm, I'm thinking of. After DPRK offered to destroy Yongbyon. All right, well, there's a question of calibration. How much do you put forward under what context for what period? And that's the standard classic bargaining problem in any kind of bargaining situation. The second problem goes back to my first statement about communication. How clearly is what you're offering understood by the person you're negotiating with? So the communication becomes very significant as well. Third, you need coordination. And here I'm now thinking down the line, hopefully at some point with Russia, Ukraine, the G7 plus sanctions, you need to have a level of international coordination. Who's going to make the first move? Who's going to lead the effort? Is there going to be an effort under what circumstances? And of course, that's all in the future at this point. There's also, of course, and you're very familiar with this in Washington, domestic coordination differences between state, between Treasury, between NSC. We can talk about that part of political coordination, but also significantly, there's coordination with the private sector. And here's where I go to my fourth point. So thus far, you see the alliteration here. Calibration, communication, coordination, and credible commitments. If you're negotiating sanctions relief, can you deliver on what you're putting on the table? Could the US deliver on the US financial sector after the JCP away? So these are, I'm not saying sanctions relief is easy. I'm just saying we should think about it more often and then think through these kinds of challenges. I'll be brief. I don't think I'm going on too long, but I'm professorial. So I could take a whole hour, but I won't. The fourth is the need for constant adaptation of the existing sanctions regimes. And I understand the politics of this in New York, the difficulty of, especially these days, of even getting consensus on anything. But over the last five years or so, I think there's been a tendency, either more than five years now, to roll over existing sanctions regimes. This was chewed during, at least during the COVID years. Everything just got rolled over, very little adjustment. Or if there is some new concern, add it to the list that we've been accumulating over the last 20, in some cases, 30 years in these contexts. So you basically, and take the Taliban as an example, you could start with what was the initial demand on them and then add everything over the last 20 plus years, almost 25 years. To see that it's easier to do that than it is to revisit the sanctions regime itself. And of course, the conflicts that we're dealing with are constantly changing. So the priority issue today is not for the Taliban to release Mr. Bin Laden for prosecution because of the embassy bombings. So the priority today is the situation, treatment of women and the treatment of girls' education. Fundamentally, different issues. So the existing regimes need to be recalibrated on a regular basis, to keep them what I call fit, not me alone, everyone would call them fit for purpose. And I think the introduction to benchmarking is promising. I understand it's complicated and challenging as well, but that's a way of making them somewhat more current. But we should think of some prior examples that the UN has used. Back in early 2000s, the Liberia regime was no longer fit for purpose. So what happened? The existing regime was terminated, and then a new regime was created in the same resolution. So sometimes it might be useful to hit the restart button, rethink, recalibrate, renegotiate, because otherwise what you end up with is a set of restrictive measures that are applied for very good reasons in their time but are not adjusted or adapted over time. And that delegitimizes the UN sanctions. So those are my three. I'm happy to talk more about conditions under which you can see them as complementary or contradictory. We have all essay on that, but I'll save that for later, maybe in the Q&A. But thanks for your attention. Professor, thank you. Josh, from your vantage point, you've had experience both in designing sanctions regimes, and of course you've also been deeply involved in the mediation and peace processes in the UN. Do you think that that's a successful link between sanctions and these peace processes? What would you like to see changed or done better? Thank you, and it's an excellent question. It is great to be here. Thanks, USIP, for convening a UN sanctions reunion. A lot of colleagues that I've worked with for many years, and especially, it's a privilege to be here with Tom, with George, academics who I think have really emulated the best of cooperation and support with practitioners. We've just had a great professional relationship. It's also good to be here today. Like a lot of my colleagues at the National Security Council, our lives have been a little upturned since October 7th. It's been a very difficult time for us all. And so I think it's even more timely for us in these difficult times to think about how we use all of the tools in our toolkit and war to achieve peace. So, yes, I worked on UN sanctions for most of the Obama administration in New York. When I came back into government with the Biden administration, I came to work for our ambassador on European security, but our ambassador's deputy who knew I had worked on these issues, he looked at me and said very solemnly, you realize you're never escaping UN sanctions, do you? And I said yes, and I accepted that and I have stayed plugged in and I'm still fascinated by the use of this tool. So I will answer a few of your questions, talk about what I think is a tough time for UN sanctions and I will try to end a little optimistically about how we go forward. First, I will start with confession. The way I ended up on UN sanctions was a little random. In my early 30s, I really wanted to live in New York City. I was young and single, I've been working at the State Department, DC was boring me and there was one job that fit the bill, it was the UN sanctions position in New York and at the US mission.  Well, I was over 15 years ago and what happened was by working on that issue, by seeing the world through the lens of UN sanctions, I worked on some of the most challenging issues of the Obama years. You mentioned Libya, the rise of ISIS, many, many North Korean nuclear tests and missile launches and it was a really enriching period for me personally and professionally. The defining moment though was working on the Iran nuclear issue. I worked on the big push at the beginning of the Obama administration to increase pressure on Iran and then a few years later in 2015, I spent about six months in poorly ventilated European palaces actually negotiating with the Iranians about how we would scale back the UN sanctions in exchange for their agreement to impose constraints on their nuclear program. They knew I was the UN sanctions guy that got a few extra dirty looks but to see the world and to see these issues through their eyes really was a very interesting experience and helped to understand better I think how sanctions targets see this. So what is the value of the tool? I, when I was in New York, I spoke to a lot of student groups, they always would come by the mission and I would talk about my work on UN sanctions and there would always be the one smart ally kid who would just kind of raise his hand and say, but do sanctions work? As if you can reduce that question, a very complicated question to something that simple. And the answer I gave is an answer that largely is drawn I think from the academic work and I always talked about the different purposes and goals that this tool achieves. So first, you have the purpose of coercion. This is kind of the traditional understanding of sanctions, right? You impose some pressure and you seek to coerce a change of behavior. The second broad objective, which Tom mentioned was constraining. You can use these measures to make it harder to get the money, to get the weapons, to have the people move around who might contribute to instability and conflict. And then third, sanctions can actually be an effective political signaling device. So by putting designation criteria, by putting political language, you can signal what kinds of behaviors the security council is approving or disapproving of. And so just for an example, I mentioned North Korea. Yes, part of the sanctions' goal is to apply pressure to get Pyongyang to the negotiating table. But at the same time, these sanctions are playing a really important role, preventing Pyongyang from getting the money it needs to move with these illicit programs, from exporting arms where it could get additional funds, and from importing the proliferation-sensitive nuclear items that it needs for the programs. Take another example, the DRC. This is a tough time in the DRC right now, where there is an alarming rise in tension between Rwanda and DRC on the border in the Eastern Congo. But for many years, those sanctions have played a role limiting the arms that are going to arm groups in the Eastern Congo. And they've also played a role, as I said, signaling. We have really clear designation criteria about things like sexual and gender-based violence or other kinds of atrocities in conflict. And so it's achieved those multiple goals. So where are we now on sanctions? I will be honest, I think we're in a dark place. I think that there's some real challenges on the horizon and I think they have to do with some old problems, but also with some new dynamics on the Security Council. So first, the old problem. For reasons, and Tom touched on this as well, it is just really hard to effectively, dynamically integrate this tool into conflict and mediation processes, to have them be synced. Tom mentioned a few of the reasons. I do think that sanctions, even just the word, has a bit of a bad reputation in some corners, including the UN system. There's a hangover from the humanitarian impact of sanctions on places like Iraq in the 90s. There's a lack of understanding. This is a complicated tool, how it works, how countries implement them, how they're monitored, it's not well understood. I think sanctions have a bad reputation in the global south. A lot of times they're seen as a tool of the rich to coerce weaker states. And I think in a lot of mediation processes and a lot of UN officials, and Tom alluded to this, you do have UN officials that just lean toward the carrots that they want, that they're more naturally aligned through some of those tools. So yes, I can theoretically imagine a world where your mediators, your UN officials on the ground, your peacekeeping missions, your humanitarian actors, that all of these tools are in real time coordinated, where you're using sanctions, sanctions threats, the inducements of limiting sanctions. Yes, that could theoretically happen. I think in practice it's been very hard. It's been very hard for the Security Council to move dynamically, it's been hard to integrate this. But the second problem, which you might call the new problem, is the blindingly obvious problem that we are in an era of geopolitical tension that has been rising over a period of a number of years. And it is hard for the Security Council to do much these days. Iran and North Korea, these are issues I worked on for many years. It is really hard to imagine the Security Council coming together in the way that it did way back in 2006, which is how old those sanctions programs are. And I think for a country like Russia or China, increasingly they see those issues in a different way. Maybe they would have seen this more through a non-proliferation lens. Now I think they're seeing some of these big conflicts in a geostrategic competition lens. And that's changing what they're willing to agree to. Take Russia. So Russia has also shown what I think is a disturbingly comfortable willingness to violate sanctions. Some of you may have tracked in the context of pursuing its illegal war against Ukraine, Russia procured from Iran drones, UAVs, that it was throwing at the Ukrainians, including its civilian infrastructure. And that procurement of drones was in violation of the Security Council resolution that we negotiated alongside the Iran nuclear deal. That was my resolution. It was my baby. I took this very personally. They agreed to that resolution. And then a few years later, they violated it. Similarly, with North Korea, we, the United States government, have released information that we know Russia is interested in procuring arms from North Korea. Russia has repeatedly agreed to different Security Council resolutions to try to stop the proliferation threat. Now they're openly violating it. In September, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov was confronted with this and was talking about Russia's relationship with the DPRK. And he said, sanctions against North Korea were adopted in a completely different geopolitical situation. And I read this to a colleague of mine. And she said, he realizes that's not how this works. You don't agree to something. And then you get to change the terms. My theory is for Mr. Lavrov, a former UN ambassador, does realize that that's not how this works. But that is where Putin has brought Russia, unfortunately. We've seen also some backtracking from China. This was a big part of my job in New York. I spent untold hours at the Chinese mission with some very skilled and thoughtful Chinese diplomats negotiating a very elaborate sanctions program that went after all aspects of North Korea's proliferation. It's different pressure points. There were asset freezes, banking measures, measures to interdict arms. And what we've seen is, again, China is losing some enthusiasm for implementing effectively those measures. And China has even blocked very routine action in New York just to refresh the sanctions and update them and keep them going. So I promise to end a little optimistically. On my desk, I have a stack of think pieces, doom and gloom for the UN, that we're in this new era and the UN is going to be hamstrung. I am lucky to work for a president who is a congenital optimist. And I also work for a president who believes in multilateralism in international organizations and international cooperation. And so we are thinking hard about what we can do to make this system work well. And so I want to end a little optimistically. Three ideas. First, and again, this goes to some of Tom's points, I think we need collectively to continue studying and extracting empirical evidence from the experiences that we've had with sanctions. As every year goes on, we have more data points about what has worked, what has not worked. I am a policy practitioner. I can give you some of my gut feelings and initial assessments. But you have people in the room like Tom, academics, people trained in research who I think can perform a very valuable service in studying the conditions in which these tools can be effective, can support peace processes. And even as Tom was speaking, I wanted to take notes because, again, I think that the academic and civil society think tank community have an important role to play here. The second thing we should do and something we are doing and working very hard at is we need to make sure that UN sanctions in particularly are applied fairly and have ample humanitarian exemptions. I mentioned earlier about the bad rep that this tool has in some corners. If we have fair procedures to add and remove individuals who are sanctioned, if we make sure that sanctions are not impeding humanitarian assistance and hurting people on the ground, well, then the tool gets to be more credible. And that'll make it easier to integrate into other conflict resolution strategies. We, the United States, spearheaded a major initiative in both our US domestic and UN sanctions to introduce more standardized exemptions to make sure that this tool did not affect humanitarian assistance. The NGO community, humanitarian groups, they warmly welcomed that. And it helped get buy-in. And we need to keep doing that and keep that as a priority. And the third, I hate the word retrenchment, but I think looking at the geopolitical realities of the Security Council across all of its tools, we are going to have to double down on the areas where we can find a tenuous consensus. We need to figure out where is the comparative advantage? What is the utility of the UN's tools in this new era where Russia and China and us are going to be at loggerheads? And so I would just mention a couple. One is Haiti. The Chinese actually supported and were quite enthusiastic about a Haiti sanctions regime. For those of you filing the situation in Haiti, it is a deeply disturbing tragedy with gang violence. Can we use this tool effectively to marginalize the spoilers, to isolate those who might undermine a political process to get the government back in running? I mentioned DRC. Again, this is a period of really troubling tension on the border. Very troubling tensions in Eastern DRC with a massive displacement crisis. So what more can we do there? I think we can find some common ground. And then also on what we sometimes call the crown jewel of the UN sanctions programs, which is al-Qaeda ISIS. And using that tool in an effective way to get buy-in and find ways to use it. So look, as I said, I stumbled on this world of UN sanctions somewhat randomly, but I really have come to see the value of this tool in advancing and promoting peace and promoting these processes. The United States, our G7 partners, we have this fantastic ability to sanction. Under our domestic authorities, we have done that. We have held Russia accountable. We use it in other circumstances. But UN sanctions, a tool expressly authorized in the charter of the United Nations, it will remain the gold standard and it will remain an important mechanism for collective action throughout the world. And so for that reason, I really appreciate you hosting us here today to talk about the future of the tool and how we're going to navigate this challenging new era. Josh, thank you. Professor, thank you. The floor is open and I'm gonna start with George. Thank you and thank you to the audience size that's assembled for this, both virtually and here in the room. One of the things that Tom talks about in terms of absence and adaption and various things and Josh, you mentioned the ability to involve and get in empirics on what's worked before. One of the things that strikes some of us is that with the number of the sanctions that have been successful, the earlier days with DPRK or Liberia and some other internal conflicts in Africa is the UN and implementers like major states like the United States were able to rely on and even build into the resolutions a first step, not complete denuclearization but coming to the six-party talks or you were able to use demobilization and arms embargoes because the OAU or the Arusha agreement set that up. One of the things that strikes many of us about looking at where we are even in this dark day is a lack of creativity, maybe in Tom's words, it's adaptation of those intermediate regional or other newly created organizations that can at least get people back to the table as opposed to no sanctions, more sanctions, stalemated security council and everybody goes on their way. Where do you think is the low hanging fruit in let's say UN security council sanctions on Haiti or elsewhere where we can help create and stimulate those coming together for the creative diplomacy and adaptation that Tom's calling for? You know, as we were asking that, I was kind of thinking of the dynamics on the security council and I mentioned three sanctions regimes that I think have some traction or at least will going forward, Haiti DRC and the al-Qaeda ISIS program. You know, one thing they all share in common is essentially they're targeting non-state actors, actors who are, it sounds like criminal, committing atrocities or terrorism. It's almost interesting thought experiment that for state action, like the DPRKs in Iran, I think it would be very hard for the council to come together on a sanctions program targeting a government like that again, just given the geopolitics. And you know, here's an example, Mali. You would have thought Mali would be pretty straightforward. No one wants instability in the Sahel, but Russia has now seen that through geopolitical competition, through their Wagner mercenary set.  So I think that the question is how do you get creative in these resolutions to actually spur, you know, what you want in terms of peace processes? So I guess my first point would be, I think those big state-based sanctions programs are probably very difficult to get for the foreseeable future in this, you know, more challenging dynamic. So then I think you've got to look at when you're trying to marginalize spoilers within a conflict, how can you do that? And I think, you know, Haitian gang members, right? I think to a certain extent, that's not where the council's brain is right now. They're just literally trying to marginalize the worst actors. I don't think there's a big reasonable expectation that we're gonna be in a negotiating process with them. So I don't mean to be, to duck the question, it's just I'm trying to imagine like when we'll have the political alignment. Maybe in the DRC, I think there might be some areas where we can, you know, be a little bit more explicit on the kinds of things that we're looking for, especially given the tensions between Rwanda and the DRC right now. You know, are there things that you could put in resolutions regarding de-escalation or withdrawal of military equipment on the border? So I think that the spirit of your question is, you know, seeking innovation. And I think that it's just hard to innovate in that, in this geopolitical environment, but it's a good question and it's a question for all of us to think hard about, how do you have sanctions regimes that aren't all or nothing, that are incremental and that, again, go a big step in the direction of being integrated into a dialogue process or a demand to get to the table or a power sharing agreement or something like that. So it's a good question. Professor. Yeah, it is a good question and it's a difficult one. In terms of identifying low-hanging fruit, I would maybe not be as optimistic on DRC, but I agree, and the other two. Haiti is interesting in part because of, it's not just China went along with, but China seemed to have been quite significantly behind the idea of applying sanctions. That struck me as, wow, this is something new because I've been following sanctions-related issues for about 20-plus years, not quite as long as George, but almost. And it's a real change to see China coming forward. Why? And maybe because they can make the U.S. look bad in its own neighborhood. That's one area, that's a cynical argument. The other one could be, well, maybe it is taking global responsibility seriously and wanting to show leadership and it's a very difficult situation. So I can see a number of, you can read it in perhaps a combination. Maybe it's both, actually. And of course, historically counterterrorism is the one area where the P5 have had, at least counter-Islamist-based terrorism has been a common theme across over a long period of time. If they perceive a common threat, that's a possibility. So those are the areas I would say. But in terms of specific measures, actually I've almost reacted a bit to Joshua about, I would say never ever reject the idea of discussions with someone. And I would include groups that have committed acts of terrorism and for all sorts of reasons. I know it's very difficult these days to talk about this, but the idea that you exclude, one of the things I referred to this project we had on sanctions and mediation, looking at UN sanctions mediation cases. And one of the real challenges we found from looking comparatively, only at six cases, so I can't say with 12 episodes or 13 different episodes. So it's a very small sample, I won't go into the methods, but it gives some interesting ideas of some different types of lessons one can learn. So one of the lessons was that when the UN intervenes on one side of a conflict, okay, let's sanction the Houthis. Let's sanction al-Shabaab, well even pre-al-Shabaab, UIC in some, you actually start going to those details. You realize that you're actually closing space for discussion and mediation. And so that kind of a, I'm not saying that it obviously this is context specific, so there are some, I wouldn't make this a general point, but the exclusion of being willing at some point to discuss at some point and understand that actors might change or that they're more complicated than we project onto them, that would be one point. That we oftentimes look at actors as if they're uniform and unitary, but in fact they're often divided. That leads to my second reform idea, so my reform idea. And here's where you really need intensive, detailed knowledge of the actors, especially if you're dealing with non-state armed groups. Trying to figure out where the differences are within those groups. Use sanctions to drive wedges within regimes. I sometimes say this when looking, I mean, I don't know if we have time, this is not on the subject here, it says the UN related, but what is the reason for designating oligarchs in Russia? Now, I think it's a good idea. I think they probably are all criminal in origin. So it feels good, but what's the strategy here? What's the end game? What's the purpose? What's the point? Could they be utilized to actually articulate an alternative to the official Russian government position? Could you use selective delistings in some way to create this kind of uncertainty or division? And there are rare cases where this has been done, but I think not enough. But that being said, I don't wanna be too idealistic about this because it's always a political process. In New York, you have to negotiate this, you have to get people to agree on this kind of, this may be far too refined in terms of things to be done within the existing institutional structures, but those are the kinds of things I would think about. Are there other questions? Sir. Thank you very much. This is fascinating. I'm really interested in the credibility of commitments problem that was brought up earlier, both in terms of credibility of threats. If you don't do XYZ, we'll punish you with sanctions and in the credibility of assurances. If you do what we want, we'll undo the sanctions. And it seems like that's a real problem if actors think that you will then reimpose sanctions later, kind of irrespective of their behavior. So two-part question. The first part is, what do you think about the credibility of assurances? Are there differences between UN sanctions and sanctions that are just from the US or from outside the UN? Are there differences in how we should think about assurance credibility there? And then second is, are there interesting or novel aspects of assurance credibility, specifically in the context of peace negotiations or incremental negotiation steps? Thank you very much. I think that, well, I mean, first of all, part of your question goes to the challenge of lifting these measures at any point. Take Iran, for example, something I lived through. The entire purpose of the UN sanctions, the argument we used for the UN sanctions was to get the Iranians to the negotiating table to agree to limits on their nuclear program. And again, in exchange for us lifting those sanctions. That is always hard to do when dealing with bad actors because in July of 2015, when we finished the Iran nuclear deal, the Iranians were still a deeply problematic actor involved in lots of bad behavior. But that was the deal. That was the rationale. We needed to scale back. It didn't feel good. But we believe that that was appropriate at the time to get these very significant constraints on Iran's nuclear program. Now, you go to the commitment issue. If the Iranians were here, they would say, well, and then the United States had an election and everything went in reverse. And so how can we trust you? And that's actually been a challenge with the rounds of nuclear diplomacy in this administration. I think that the Security Council has a reasonably good, like if you can get all members of the Security Council to commit to make an assurance, I actually think that that is taken quite seriously, incredibly, potentially more than the United States. Again, given that we have our domestic politics, we have a congressional dynamic, we have a Congress that can do its own thing on sanctions if it should so choose. And so I actually think that the Security Council, because it requires a degree of political consensus, that it is more credible. It does have more of an impact, again, more than just the latest round of Treasury OFAC sanctions. Yeah, very interesting question. I agree with Josh. I think in general, I guess as a multilateralist, I would say that the multilateral guarantees are to some extent more stable than guarantees coming from any single country. And, well, the Iran case does say it. And I think, I can't speak for Europe, but I live there, it's, there's a lot of apprehension about where the world is going in 2024, based on the U.S. election at this point in time. And so the whole question is everything up for grabs. Again, what happens to Ukraine? What happens to NATO? What, this is the level of, but it's a problem and it's a broader problem. I think it's a broader problem of the breakdown of a bilateral consensus on foreign policy in the United States. I agree with Richard Haas, and he makes the argument that it is precisely that disagreement domestic internally, the breakdown of foreign policy consensus that makes the U.S. less effective globally as a result. I think that's the problem of domestic politics feeding into what the U.S. is able to, but I think broadly speaking, there is a fair amount of nervousness about this. And it also, yeah, I think you have more stability in the guarantees coming from multilateral agreements than you do from individual states. Sir. Hi, thank you for good education. I've tried to take good notes, but I have particularly your criteria, the four points you gave us, number two is the question of whether or not sanctions are applied fairly. That in my mind assumes that there is established criteria where decision will be made whether or not to apply one. If that is the case, what exactly are the criteria? Can you cite some examples? More importantly, your example was about interstate conflicts, but what happens when a government simply does all kinds of crazy things against its own citizens? For example, in Ethiopia now, the government has denied access to basic technology, internet, telephone, or education services. What happens then? In other words, is this really a subjective decision on the will of the big powers, or is it really a UN sanction that is applied on based on a fairly clearly stated criteria? Josh, with your permission, given our time, may I take another question? Ma'am. Thank you. I used to work at the UN, very nice to see you, Tom. I headed up the post-immediation division, so we worked very closely with Tom and George and others on the work on the intersection between sanctions and mediation, which we all learned a lot for. From a couple of points, for the UN, obviously for UN, SRSGs and envoys leading processes, the issue is their impartiality, and so generally, there are a few SRSGs, who I won't name, who have directly threatened sanctions, which many of those of us within the UN would make us cringe and worry about, and I think it was entirely inappropriate in terms of their impartiality. There are many more who in the past, particularly when UN sanctions were more of an active thing than they are now, for the reasons they would have heard, would talk to the member states on the Security Council and have smarter discussions about the possibilities and pros and cons of threatening or possibly thinking about sanctions, so those conversations go on. But otherwise, I agree entirely with what Tom was saying about the lack of strickey strategic coherence in the approach. I think where my question is around the Al Qaeda and ISIS list, one of the things that's happened since 9-11 with the increased focus on counterterrorism, the listing of terrorist groups, of non-state armed groups that elicit as terrorists by individual states, the creation of that list, and that kind of has had a chilling effect on mediation and engagement. UN officials are immune, they are able to engage with anyone who they think can help bring peace and indeed they're bound to, it's part of their job. But the existence of the lists and the existence of the prescription regimes cast a pall over it and make it much easier for states to fall back on counterterrorism narratives and for some envoys to also feel themselves supported by that. So I'm wondering whether and it's, I know it's a very difficult question at this moment, but what are the mechanisms to try and introduce some of the kind of things you've been thinking, you've been talking about in terms of relaxation, at least in theory around the Al Qaeda and ISIS lists so that we can start thinking about and putting on the table the possible kinds of things that could be offered and then pull back. If they don't work, you can always reimpose sanctions if to encourage and work with some of those groups who in some cases there are signs of internal shifts, HTS in Syria, al-Shabaab at different moments, there's a sense and there are many humanitarian actors and NGOs and others who are already engaging with them. But are there things that we could put forward now that an offer as a menu, even if not necessarily tied to individual groups? Thank you. Joshua? So on the question about kind of the standards or the criteria, since the end of World War II, the UN Charter gave the Security Council this very specific mandate to respond to threats to international peace and security. Now when that charter was created, I think there was some old-fashioned ideas about what that meant. It was mostly focused on states going to war with states, but I think over the years, the Security Council and certainly United States, we've come to see peace and security in a deeper way and to recognize that if you have atrocities in a country, if you have gross violations of human rights, that that is what creates and fosters threats to international peace and security that inevitably spread and cause problems. So we have been the ones to try to bring in criteria related to things like whether it's sexual and gender-based violence, which I mentioned earlier, being responsible for atrocities or for oppression and putting that in very specific language using the well-known principles of international human rights. Next month is the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which I hope is on everyone's radar. It's actually a very significant anniversary and it's a great American story with Eleanor Roosevelt working on the drafting committee. So we believe those principles are truly universal and should be brought into this discussion. But that is not universally believed and it is no secret because they say it, but China and Russia frequently do not like us bringing those things into the Security Council. And under the invocation of sovereignty, say that what happens in that country is not an international threat and so there's consistent pushback on that. So ultimately, this is going to be political and I mentioned the Security Council and its unique mandate. The Security Council has flaws. Everyone knows that. I work for a president who believes that his membership should be reformed to be more representative. Our president last year said very explicitly, we need African representation on the Security Council. We need permanent representation from Latin America. And so we're trying to make that process better. But again, fundamentally, like many things in life, this is about politics and this is about working in this political body. I take your point on al-Qaeda and ISIS.  And so I believe to my bones that the United States government and international community should be open to talking with people, even really bad people who are doing bad things. I think it's an interesting question in the context of al-Qaeda, ISIS on the listed groups that are there. I don't think anyone's really thought or has done much of kind of a scrub about like, might there be some groups? You mentioned HTS in Northern Syria. It's worth the thought. And I think it's the kind of thing that we should at least be open to. I have a little bit of skepticism just knowing that to get through the Security Council it's gotta be pretty bad. You know, I mean, these are pretty atrocious groups and in that specific sanctions regime there was never the idea that this would be an inducement to dialogue. I mean, there was a sense that this is a very serious threat to our countries. We're gonna stop them from having money. We're gonna stop them from being able to travel, prevent them from getting weapons and that's the way that we're going to manage what is essentially a criminal activity. But I'll be the first one to concede that there are blurred lines between, you know, what is an irredeemable group that we just want to constrain and isolate and limit and what we would view as someone that we might want to talk to is part of a legitimate process. And again, I just for the record, I believe in dialogue even with bad folks. I've done a bit of it in my career and it can go poorly, it can go well but I don't think that it's something we should be afraid of. I actually think we should be very open to it because that's how you move forward. That's how you find peace by talking to people you disagree with and really judge. Interesting. First, the question, are sanctions applied fairly? No, I think I usually don't have a single word answer, but no, it depends on who's sending the sanctions, who's applying the restrictive measures. When we do the training for the incoming members of the council and even the summer course in Geneva, I always end up chairing the discussion about security council dynamics. And I always begin by quoting Adam Roberts from Oxford University who said, we should always think about the UN not as a collective security system but as a selective security system. And there are plenty of issues, if you look at the range of conflicts across the world, look at those conflicts that are taken up by the United Nations Security Council for whatever reasons, not even 50%, I'm now thinking of the data from colleagues in Sweden, the conflict database. I think it's something like 42% of all the conflicts in the world are actually taken up by the UN. So at one level, is it fair, is it even fair in the dealing with the cases? No, because permanent members have ways of keeping close allies off the agenda. That's simply, and we can go country by country up on that one. Josh's answer about, I like, I usually describe the security council's approach to redefining the meaning of threats to peace and security. It's elastic. You're right, absolutely. It was interstate aggression. That was the whole pounding purpose, we the people, to start reading the charter. That's where it comes from. And I say the council is actually reformed, maybe not so much in membership but in what it defines as constituting a threat to peace and security. And so last year we had gang violence. Well, this is quite a significant move away and not being critical of it from not just focusing. It would be even more outdated and more problematic if it hadn't adapted like this. But it does very much depend, I think, on the center of the organization. And it's important also to keep in mind, think of the, I'm interested in the practice being taken particularly by African regional organizations and their use of sanctions, which I think is very, very under research. You said we need more research. We were thinking, here's a topic. I don't know if there are any grad students in the audience, but this is something that I really think we need systematic analysis of. Of course, the AU has a standard practice. It's clear, non-constitutional change of government. All right, you're not invited, you're suspended, your membership is suspended, you can't come to the meetings about you. Very clear, systematically applied. Whether it changes, that's another matter ECOWAS, fascinating, an economic community of West African states that applies comprehensive sanctions like that, without any, no one goes after it. It's very interesting. And they actually lift them very quickly as well. It's much more flexible and adaptable than the UN. So again, I think one has to look at who's sending the sanctions and what, in terms of are they being applied fairly? There have been recurring efforts, one more point on this point, to try to make the UN, I would say make them, maybe not fair, make UN sanctions more legitimate. And one issue that Josh and others in the room know I'm very close to is the idea of fair and clear procedures due process for individuals being designated for sanctions. I know I'm on the Swiss program now, so. Now I won't lobby at this point, but it's that, I think, the CAUTI case, those legal cases coming up to the European Court of Justice early 2000s, created a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of United Nations individual designations. And the UN reformed, the UN changed. It was a struggle, it took a long time. There are some people who might regret to this day some of these reforms, but the creation of the Office of the Ombudsman, the establishment of the focal point, these were all institutional adjustments to a legitimation crisis, or at least perceived that way by many. I think the last decade, we've seen the same happen on the humanitarian front. Josh alluded to it earlier, the leadership the U.S. provided on Resolution 2664, and then its own autonomous, the OFAC, release of its new guidelines from Treasury, those are significant developments. In my view, again, a response to concern that targeted sanctions were not targeted in their consequences, and they were actually through implementation, through a variety of different mechanisms, both public but often private sector voluntary initiatives, they were becoming much broader and non-discriminating and having a humanitarian unintended, I believe, for the most part, humanitarian consequence. And so again, we've seen this kind of reform. So the institutions are capable of adaptation and change. Now I'm coming with a more optimistic Joshua Stony argument, but anyway, I could go on. Teresa, thanks. It was fascinating for me to learn about mediation in this project that we had, and it was basically both the sanctions branch and the MS mediation support unit that teamed up to look at UN experiences. And the great thing about the research was that we had people on your staffs going over our draft reports and pointing out, no, that didn't happen at that meeting, or this, I interpreted it this way. It was a fascinating research project. It gave us insights, and I don't want to be, I would imagine within the mediation community, they might be considered rogue mediators. We have one case where a mediator was literally making up sanctioned threats, saying, why just came back from New York? And I can tell you that your name's being mentioned as a possible, completely. I mean, if the person that's a mediator is speaking to had any access to what was going on in New York, they could have completely rebutted it. So it's a pretty risky, dangerous thing to do. And then we had the classic case, so the young case in Jamal Ben-Omar, and the fact that he had an interim or potentially interim agreement between the Hadi government and the Houthis, and the very same day the UN Security Council passed sanctions, applied sanctions, only to the Houthis. And the whole agreement broke down and the classic case of complication or contradiction between the different measures. So I think it's important to examine. I think a lot of it just requires, another point Josh made earlier, more knowledge.  I hear this all the time. They're bad, they don't work, they hit the wrong people, they violate human rights, they have humanitarian effects. But actually, if you can just educate people on what their limits are, what they're intended to do, and I think the mediation community needs to know more about sanctions just as the sanctions community needed to know more about mediation. And I would apply that same argument to the humanitarian community, by the way. Exactly, the amount of ignorance in the humanitarian community about sanctions is legion. I won't get on that soapbox. The chilling effect on mediation, I think it's an overreaction on the part of mediators to concerns or single examples of, well, we can't serve water at the meeting because that would be material support. I mean, that kind of very simple-minded interpretation, I think, again, more education about, it's not illegal to sit down with someone on the sanctions list. I've done it, I've talked to people on the 1267 list as part of my research. They live in Switzerland, not all of them, some of them. But I think that was an overreaction in the part, and there's an interesting project currently with the ICG, and if you're familiar with this project, okay. I attended a workshop with them just a couple months ago in New York. I think it's very interesting, and it gets into the whole question about designations of groups versus designations of individuals, and they're qualitatively different and create very different dynamics that need to be brought into consideration. And last point on this, HTS is very interesting to look at in particular, I think. But I think rather than worry about reimposition, I'll go back to my point about, let's think about utilizing sanctions suspensions more often, because then you don't have to renegotiate the agreement.  Sorry. Professor, thank you. Colleagues were at the end, we'll take one, we'll take two more questions. Please. Three, four. Quickly. Thank you very much. My question is, the sanction concept for developing and developed countries might, I didn't get some points on that. But about the representation issue, especially in Africa, and having the reliable, wide, perfect peace process, especially most sanctioned countries in Africa, like how can we achieve the standard or the goal we set on the council, without representation? And the other thing, and from Ethiopia, and I'm here for academic purpose, and I didn't get the sanctioned concepts and an authoritarian government or a dictator. And just, we have these questions that are related to the humanitarian interventions. So I want to have some things on that, and thank you. Gentlemen, right next to you, and then we'll take our colleague in the back. Hi, Brandon with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Democrats, also building off her question, very supportive of reforming the UN Security Council to be more inclusive of the world. How would a more representative UN Security Council potentially improve the sanctions regime? What reforms are China, Russia, willing to agree to just in brief status of those negotiations? And our colleague in the back for a final question. Hi, my name is Shafiq Al-Gumay and I'm a Democrat. I am with the reform of the UN as well. I want to raise a point that how get to choose the countries who manage the sanctions on countries of war or wars, how they designate countries beneficiary from wars actually in these countries. And as example for in Yemen, they designated the United States and Britain and the Emirates and Saudi Arabia who are benefitting from, they have certain kind of interest in Yemen and that's complicated solution for generally in anywhere get country get sanctions. Thank you so much. And then the final question. For decades, the United Nations didn't use sanctions. Yes. And then there was this incredible period of global cooperation, starting at the end of the Cold War, arguably over now. And it was precisely in that period when sanctions were used. Well, we're out of that period now. Does it make sense for us to recognize that, take sanctions, put them on the shelf until they can be used again? We'll ask you to conclude with that before you answer these colleagues questions. Just first to you, Professor. I think your question goes well with actually some of these other questions by an institutional reform. I mean, essentially is asking like, what are we doing here?  I guess I would answer this in a, let me answer your question and then go to the institutional reform in the representation piece. Yes, there was a long period where the Security Council did not impose sanctions. There were years in the 50s where the Security Council didn't adopt a resolution, where you had times where the Security Council was so divided in the Cold War that it was absolutely dysfunctional and did not do much to solve problems in the world. We're not quite there. And I have a colleague in a think tank who says, if you just look at the work that the Security Council is doing on a day-to-day basis, it's really extraordinary what is happening in terms of sanctions regimes that are being renewed, peacekeeping missions that are being renewed, work that is getting done, even at a time of just extraordinary division among and tensions, especially with Russia and China and the United States and the West generally. So I don't think it's a matter of, you know, giving up on the enterprise, but I do think it is a matter of right-sizing our expectations about what the Security Council can achieve. And I think that for a country like the United States, where we have lots of tools, lots of ways to influence the world, it can be sometimes a little tempting to, you know, skip the UN and to go right to the tools that are under our authority. But I think that for the long-term security of the United States, we have an interest in these institutions being functional, playing the role they were designed to do and remaining very committed to them. And again, I'm very proud to work for a president who believes in that and has made that point. The one strand of these questions on representation, on Security Council reform, it's something we're thinking a lot about. And, you know, you mentioned Africa in particular. I don't know if you read that. The Times had a great piece about two, three weeks ago about the demographic trends on the continent. And the number that is getting quoted a lot is by 2050, one in four human beings will live in Africa.  And so I don't think it's tenable to have a world where you have huge parts of it that are not being represented in global governance. And it's not just the Security Council, that's the whole range of institutions. And increasingly, you're hearing that message on international financial institutions. And that is also part of the global conversation. So I think for us, for the president, you know, we want to, we need to have these institutions be more inclusive, represent a broader range of interest and perspectives. And we think that that is good for the world, even with all the divisions, even with where we're at. Security Council reform. I got to ask this from time to time. We put the president out there. We propose that he make a statement in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly saying that the structure, the membership of the Security Council was outdated. It was not sufficiently representative and we need to make changes. And again, for the first time ever, he explicitly mentioned Latin America and Africa as two regions that need better representation on the Council. When we did that, we were under no illusions. This is a difficult issue. A lot of the countries that you would want to bring on have strong opposition. We have long supported India. China is not enthusiastic about that. We have supported Japan. I mentioned some of the other regional regions that we think deserve to be represented. This is an extremely, extremely, extremely difficult problem. Previously, the United States, you know, we supported in principle reform, but it wasn't something we thought a lot about. And I think especially given what you're hearing, especially in the Global South, the demand for more representative institutions, our credibility globally, our ability to lead on a lot of issues in the world will depend on us standing up, standing on the right side for institutional reform that brings in more perspectives, especially from countries whose voice has not been adequately heard on the multilateral stage. It's hard. Our ambassador in New York has done listening sessions. We've sent teams to key capitals, including countries that we have said previously. We support permanent membership. We'll continue that conversation. We didn't think this was something we were gonna get done by, you know, the end of the year or maybe even the end of the president's term, but we wanted to put ourselves on the right side of that issue and I'm very proud that we did it. Now, your question though, well, what does that mean if you haven't expanded Security Council? It'll be harder in some ways because you'll have more voices at the table and that will be difficult. And it's, you know, we live in a world where for a long time a lot of decisions were made by very small groups of countries and that's easier, right? It's easier to get agreement among the G7 or even the G20 but we're entering a new era of our world where we need to have institutions that are willing to do the hard work to mobilize global consensus, not just around the peace and security issues but on questions of development, on questions of climate, on food security, on all of the issues that a lot of countries are struggling with especially in the global south. So that is our approach. That is our vision. It is a messier world. It's gonna be harder to find consensus with more voices in the room but we don't see an alternative. We need to adjust and we need it to, as Americans, we need to think about how we lead, how we defend and how we listen to other countries and other perspectives and that's a big part of the animating philosophy of President Biden's administration. Great. Well, I agree with most of what almost everything Josh was saying so I'm not gonna just repeat it. Couple of points, I guess in particular to the question about how to make existing arrangements more effective, I think, and this is something that came out of our study of mediation and sanctions, you need to work at the regional level with the regional organizations. If you have regional organization opposition to everything you're trying to do with sanctions, good luck. If you don't, so I think a lot of this needs to be coordinated through the regional organizations. That's one way, and I think we're seeing the sort of transformation of peacekeeping operations away from UN to UN authorized but under regional. I think that's the trend and that's one way to have the region more involved in the decision making. Not that it's always benign, by the way, because regions and countries in regional organizations have their own interests that oftentimes work to undermine both the effectiveness of the sanctions and efforts to try to mediate conflicts. On your broad question, in fact, usually, I'm not doing this, usually I do something with Security Council report and SCAD on the incoming five ambassadors, I think it's tomorrow. And I do a little sort of history of use of sanctions. It's really interesting. You go back 1945 to 1990, there are two sanctions regimes. Radition in South Africa. Exactly. And in fact, during the Cold War, very little agreement on anything veto use, but even on knowing that it would be blocked, so very little collective security activity underway. It was interesting even to see how different those two cases are at the UN level because Rhodesia was comprehensive. South Africa by the UN was extraordinarily narrow sanctions regime. So they're not equivalent in some ways, but it was the one thing East and West could agree on at the time was the idea of white minority rule being illegitimate. And it was actually a regime change agenda, interestingly. In fact, oftentimes you don't think of the UN as being involved in regime change, but those were the characteristics of those two. Between 1990 and 2015, we had 25 new sanctions regimes. It's more than the sanctions decade, George. Sanctions decade plus. And I used to make these comments about we have a new sanctions regime every year. We had a perfect fit in a model, just a linear model. You can see one new sanctions regime every year until 2015. We can explore why that happened when, but I think some of the challenges that we're dealing with today go back to Libya, the aftermath of Libya, 2014, Ukraine. I mean, I think we can see some of the origins back at that point in time because there were only two regimes created after 2015 and only one of those two is still in place. And as Erin knows in our course, I would say things like, well, over the last five years, I think we're now four years in a row, the UN Security Council is delisting more people than it's listing. So the instrument is being used less frequently. Not only is there not consensus to create new regimes, but they're actually winding down. Now, some of that, it's just Iraq specific. I mean, I can go through why these numbers change this way, but these are kind of macro trends. And I don't want to conclude with a shameless plug. I have a forthcoming book called Informal Governance in World Politics coming out with Cambridge next year. And it really is, I think where sanctions are going generally, not, I don't see big expansion at the UN. I don't see the end of the UN. I don't see anything like what we've experienced in the past. I think we're moving to an era of what I call informal multilateral arrangements. The G7 plus sanctions on Russia. And it's not just Western, it's G7 plus. That's important to emphasize. But it's, I think that's the world of sanctions that we're entering into in terms of where things are going. And it's kind of depressing because I really am a multilateralist and I do think the UN ones are the only ones that are legal and fundamentally legitimate. But it's not, I don't see the kind of activity that we had there historically. On the other hand, the UN, if we didn't have it, we'd have to create it. The UN is there. The UN still plays a very central, I think, coordinating role. And that's where I think greater effectiveness will come if, in fact, it's able to deal in this new kind of environment. But it will be a challenging one, to be sure. Thank you all for being with us. I hope everyone joins us in thanking Senior Director Black and Professor Beersaker. Thank you all. Thank you.