Adapted from a shorter article published in February 2026 in The Sanctions Age, authors Alistair Millar and Nathanael Tilahun argue that the evolution of sanctions into instruments of systemic economic isolation and punishment demands a normative consolidation that arrests and reverses this trend.
Podcast — 14 April 2026
The Sanctions Age: The Decades-Long Effort to Make Sanctions ‘Smart’. Esfandyar Batmanhelidj’s conversation with Alistair Millar.
Listen (42:02)
“Moving Beyond the Security Council’s Impasse to Support Afghanistan,” by Aref Dostyar, CJ Pine, and George A. Lopez, IPI Global Observatory, (25 March 2026).
Journal Article — 19 September 2025
“How to Toughen Russia Sanctions,” by David Cortright, The National Interest, (19 September 2025).
“Turning Trump’s Peace Overtures into Sustainable Deals,” by Peter J. Quaranto and George A. Lopez, Just Security, (19 September 2025).
“A Framework for Proactively — and Rapidly — Lifting Sanctions on Syria,” by Alistair Millar and Stephen J. Fallon, Just Security, (5 June 2025).
This study by the Fourth Freedom Forum’s 2024 Howard S. Brembeck Fellow, Amina Ahmed, emphasizes the critical role the Afghan diaspora plays in lobbying their host nations for meaningful support for Afghans in Afghanistan, refugees, and those trapped in limbo without legal status in countries like Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. In essence, this brief serves as a call to action for the diaspora to organize and advocate effectively for their fellow Afghans.
Webinar — 8 March 2023
Presented by the Keough School of Global Affairs and its Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and Pulte Institute for Global Development and by Alliance for Peacebuilding, Fourth Freedom Forum, the Costs of War Project, Win Without War, MADRE, the International Civil Society Action Center Network (ICAN), and Our Secure Future.
Made possible with support from the European Union, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the German Federal Foreign Office, the Securing the Future Initiative (a project of The Soufan Center and the Fourth Freedom Forum) launched in September 2021 on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
This report provides an independent review and assessment of the United Nations Security Council’s counterterrorism activities over the past two decades. The report’s findings and recommendations are informed by desk research, surveys, and numerous off-the-record interviews with experts and practitioners, and the authors’ combined experience of working on multilateral counterterrorism issues for more than 50 years.
“Five Goals For Ethical Post-sanctions Peacebuilding,” by George A. Lopez and Beatrix Geaghan-Breiner, Peace News, (September 2022).