A new history of sanctions has unsettling lessons for today

JUST AFTER the end of the first world war and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, one observer noted that “every clock in Prague [was] gone, melted for the metals.” Another, in Vienna, saw children “wrapped in paper, for want of sheets and blankets”. At the time much of Europe was under strict economic sanctions, as western powers tried to hold the post-war peace and restrain communism. It was the first time that the “economic weapon”, the title of Nicholas Mulder’s new book, had been used, but by no means the last. By the 2010s a third of the world’s population lived under sanctions. Prominent among the current targets is Russia, which will face further sanctions if it invades Ukraine. Mr Mulder, of Cornell University, looks at sanctions over the three decades after the first world war—and reaches unsettling conclusions.