Sanctions are now a central tool of governments’ foreign policy

Mr Biden is likely to make use of America’s Magnitsky Act (named after a lawyer who died in a Russian prison) to move against foreign officials accused of corruption or serious human-rights abuses. Western countries—including Britain as it looks to forge a post-EU sanctions policy—are increasingly adopting “thematic, values-based policies” that target such miscreants, says Emil Dall of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a think-tank.