Although the answer for these types of ques­tions is usually “it depends”, interactions from different sovereign countries ultimately do have explicit effects on the affairs of all global governments. External pressures from other countries can range from simple condemnations to large-scale military interventions depending on the situation within a country and the will­ingness of other governments to be involved. Because of the recent increase in globalization, every country depends on each other in some manner and the phrase “no man is an island” perfectly describes the inter relatedness of mod­ern states. For the reason that many countries are dependent of each other, sanctions and condemnations are more effective than that of the past.

Burkina Faso, a Western African country facing poverty, depends on the cotton trade for much of its economic exports. When the coun­try faced a military interim leader after popular uprising against its long-term leader Blaise Compaore, The African Union and the United States condemned the takeover and the pros­pect of sanctions has seemed to prevent another military leader from controlling the government. Burkina Faso’s acting military leader has recently agreed to a transition plan with opposition groups. Aspro­spective economic sanctions would have drastic consequences on the country, Burkina Faso seems to have changed the way it would be run by allowing a greater access to politics to ordinary people rather than just hav­ing commanders from the military only. Another case that could be ob­served is from Russia. The Russian government has been hit with crip­pling economic sanctions over its involvement in the Ukraine crisis. Measures on Russia’s energy, de­fense, and certain finance sectors have inflicted substantial damage to close allies of President Putin and increased prices for necessities to the people in the Euro­pean Union and Russia. Although current ac­tions from Russia suggest to some that there is no effort to change the government regardless of external pressures, in another sense the eco­nomic sanctions from the United States and the European Union are causing significant changes within the Russian government. Because the sanctions from the Western allies crush trade from Russia, Putin is gearing his government to find allies else where and planning more long-term economic activity with them. Since all countries rely on each other, there is no doubt that governments change due to ex­ternal pressures from other countries in order to survive.