A little bit as the morning goes on but then get right back up after the morning rush it's 41° right now at O'Hare 43 at midway We have cloudy skies right now across the area It's 39 up in Waukegan 39 as well down in Kankakee 34° on the lakefront I'm James Sears on Chicago's very own 7 20 WGN We'll talk to my next guest Ian Hurd and then we will get to the Wikipedia description of the lobster you'll want to stick around for that In her joined us a few days ago he is a Professor of political science and the director of the Weinberg college center for international and area studies at northwestern university He wrote a book called how to do things with international laws suddenly he is a most expert person on how sanctions may or may not persuade Vladimir Putin to behave Or is he expert on this Ian you're on WG and radio again how are you today I'm doing well Thanks for having me How about that introduction Are you expert on what the pliability is of Vladimir Putin here I think there is things in the future that nobody knows So there's no experts on that But I do think the sanctions can raise the costs on Putin and the people who keep them in power And that made in the medium term shift what's happening in Russia What do you mean shift Well it might be a way to convince some of the people who help keep Putin in power that he's not worth their effort anymore And so that might add some cracks to the structure that Putin has built where he's basically got no opponents and there's no grass roots movement against him He's crushed it all but there might be cracks in that if the oligarchs are the people who benefit from him find it hard to do the sort of stuff that they like to do around the world like by Mercedes and go to Switzerland for skiing send their kids to college in the U.S. Thomas Friedman referred to that in his New York Times piece today He said the least likely of three scenarios though is one that could have the best outcome and that is the Russian people maybe who you're talking about maybe not demonstrate as much bravery and commitment to their own freedom as the Ukrainian people have shown to theirs and deliver Salvation by ousting Putin from office many Russians must be starting to worry that as long as Putin is their present and future leader they have no future And then he talks about how these rich people these rich Russians who plundered the country over the years he says if Putin goes ahead and levels Ukraine's biggest cities and its capital Kyiv he and all of his cronies will never see London or New York or their apartments again He said there will be no more Davos no more saint Moritz instead they will be locked in a big prison called Russia with the freedom to travel only to Syria Crimea Belarus North Korea and China may be their kids will be thrown out of private boarding schools from Switzerland to Oxford Well I think it's right to focus on those elites because those are the people who have profited from Putin's rule and in a way they're probably the people who enable him to stay in power One wouldn't want to blame the regular people in Russia who are forced to live under this rule It's not their fault that they've got this dictator But those elites get away with a lot And they get away with a lot in part because the global financial system allows them to They can buy the apartments in London and they can park their yachts in Malta and hide their assets in the Cayman Islands So I think one of the most encouraging things to come out of this whole disaster is the way that the world might finally be taking some real action against that recycling of crooked dollars But it does seem then that the only way to punish Putin is to punish the people And would you agree Maybe you wouldn't I don't know if there's any truth to this but the Russian people are victims of Putin too Maybe there's no truth to that right They elected him but I don't know how true the elections are The elections are fake I think you're right The Russian people aren't to blame for Putin He has taken over and he puts his opponents in jail or kills them whenever he can find them So they are his first victims I think you're right the Russian people It's this one percenter class the oligarchs of Russia who are the beneficiaries of his rule and also in a sideways sort of way the ones who make it possible for him to stay in power I think a lot of the American sanctions the European sanctions now are designed to convince those people that it's not worth propping up Putin anymore It's amazing that we have these economic tools and other I guess means that aren't soldiers on the ground to get his attention to maybe try and move the needle I still wonder why we didn't just use every last one of them on Monday It does look like the Biden administration has been really doing its homework over the last few months to get ready worried that this might be what's happening and that they've got pretty good plans in place I think to cut off the financial flows that the oligarchs use to get their money out of Russia But you're right It makes you wonder why these tools weren't used before It's a really interesting comment on the state of the world isn't it that we have these governments that seem so powerful And we have these banks that seems so separate the financial system but when it comes down to it if the U.S..