Do Economic Sanctions Work

[CRedskinsRule]

This is a bit of a spinoff from the What would it take thread. I made a comment about giving a bully a bloody nose. It made my mind dwell on what could any administration - Bush/Obama/Trump - do that really would give Putin a bloody nose that would not lead to all out Armageddon. That led me to wonder about sanctions. Which led to this post.

We have sanctioned the heck out of regimes for the last 2 decades. Iran/NK/Russia probably another dozen or so that don't make the news all the time. And without any research on my part, it FEELS LIKE (not fact just personal opinion), the bad regimes could give a rat's ass about economic sanctions.

Without a stick of some sort, no administration can effectively curtail bully regimes, so do Economic Sanctions create a big enough stick? Can they if a leader doesn't care about the poverty class of a nation (except that it's not big enough/strong enough to overthrow the leader)?

As Trample used to say -- What sayeth the mob?