2007 Reports

Odious debts or odious regimes?

Bolton, Patrick; Skeel, David A.

Odious regimes have always been with us. That there is no silver-bullet solution that will prevent odious regimes from arising, or stymie them once they do, is evident from the plethora of responses employed by the international community once a regime’s odiousness becomes clear. Trade sanctions may be used to try to choke off a malignant regime’s access to weapons or other goods. In egregious cases, such as Milosevic’s Serbian regime, the international community may take military action. Still another strategy, more talked about than implemented, is the one considered in this article: the use of the odious debt (or, we will argue, odious regime) doctrine to cut off, or at the least to complicate, an odious regime’s access to outside funding.