CAMBRIDGE
– With Western economic sanctions against Russia, Iran, and Cuba in the
news, it is a good time to take stock of the debate on just how well
such measures work. The short answer is that economic sanctions usually
have only modest effects, even if they can be an essential means of
demonstrating moral resolve. If economic sanctions are to play an
increasingly important role in twenty-first-century statecraft, it might
be worth reflecting on how they have worked in the past.
As Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott note in their classic book
on the topic, the history of economic sanctions goes back at least to
432 BC, when the Greek statesman and general Pericles issued the
so-called “Megarian decree” in response to the abduction of three
Aspasian women. In modern times, the United States has employed economic
sanctions in pursuit of diverse goals, from the Carter administration’s
efforts in the 1970s to promote human rights, to attempts to impede
nuclear proliferation in the 1980s.
During
the Cold War, the US also employed economic sanctions to destabilize
unfriendly governments, especially in Latin America, though they do not
appear to have played more than a minor role, even where regime change
eventually occurred. Economic sanctions on Serbia in the early 1990s did
not deter the invasion of Bosnia. Certainly, the US government’s
symbolic punishment of chess legend Bobby Fischer (for playing a match in Belgrade that violated sanctions) provided no relief for the besieged city of Sarajevo.
The
old Soviet Union played the sanctions game as well – for example,
against China, Albania, and Yugoslavia. It, too, did not have much
success, except perhaps in the case of Finland, which ultimately bent
its policies to gain relief from sanctions imposed in 1958.
Most
modern cases of sanctions pit a large country against a small country,
though there are a few cases involving countries of equal size, such as
the long quarrel, from the 1950s to the 1980s, between the United
Kingdom and Spain over Gibraltar.
As
Hufbauer and Schott, among others, have illustrated, the effects of
sanctions are often fairly disappointing – so much so that many scholars
have concluded that such measures often are imposed so that governments
can appear to domestic audiences to be “doing something.” Certainly,
severe US sanctions on Cuba failed to bring the Castro regime to heel;
indeed, President Barack Obama’s move to reestablish full diplomatic
relations may have more effect.
But
sometimes sanctions do work. The strong international consensus to
impose sanctions on South Africa in the 1980s eventually helped bring an
end to apartheid. Likewise, sanctions have helped bring Iran to the
bargaining table, though it is not clear how long its government will be
willing to defer its nuclear ambitions. And the Russian economy today
is in big trouble, though this might be described as a lucky punch, with
the real damage being done by an epic collapse in global oil prices.
Some
in Russia, where the price collapse has hit government revenues hard,
claim that the US and Saudi Arabia are conspiring to bring Russia to its
knees. But that gives US strategists far too much credit. A more likely
culprit for the steep price decline is a combination of the
shale-energy revolution in the US and the sharp slowdown in Chinese
growth. China’s slowdown has helped precipitate a broad-based fall in
commodity prices that is having a devastating effect on countries like
Argentina and Brazil, with which the US authorities presumably have
little quarrel.
One
of the major reasons economic sanctions have fallen short in the past
is that not all countries have complied. Indeed, significant differences
of domestic opinion in the imposing country often undermine sanctions
as well.
Moreover,
countries imposing sanctions must be prepared to address their own
vulnerabilities. North Korea is perhaps the most noxious regime in the
world today, and one can only hope that its cruel government collapses
sometime soon. The Kim regime has clung to power despite being subject
to severe economic sanctions, perhaps because China, fearing a united
Korea on its border, has not yet been willing to withdraw its support.
Yet
it is easy to forget that there are different viewpoints in
international relations, even in the most extreme situations. Though
North Korea’s alleged attack on Sony
Pictures’ computers has been rightly condemned, it must be admitted
that from the perspective of the North Korean elite, their country
simply applied economic retaliation much like anyone else does. Sony
Pictures had produced a satire poking fun at North Korea’s leader, the
“Young General” Kim Jong-un. This was an intolerable affront, to which
the elite responded with economic sabotage rather than military action.
Let
us also not forget that Russia, too, has deployed cyber attacks in the
service of foreign-policy goals. Indeed, Russia has far more formidable
hackers than North Korea (though much of the top talent currently is
employed in mafia rings, rather than in strategic operations).
In
a world where nuclear proliferation has rendered global conventional
war unthinkable, economic sanctions and sabotage are likely to play a
large role in twenty-first-century geopolitics. Rather than preventing
conflict, Pericles’s sanctions in ancient Greece ultimately helped to
trigger the Peloponnesian War. One can only hope that in this century,
wiser heads will prevail, and that economic sanctions lead to
bargaining, not violence.
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