Conditional Sale Final Draft June 25 2016 Pre Proofs.pdf (original) (raw)

This paper is due to appear in a collection of essays edited by Michael Gross and Tamar Meisels, Soft War (Cambridge University Press, under contract, forthcoming). Although just war theory occupies centre stage in the political theory of international relations, non-forceful instruments of foreign policy are often both more effective and less destructive than widescale military action. In this paper, I focus on a particular kind of economic sanctions which (to my knowledge) has not been given separate treatment in the relevant political-theoretical literature, and which I call Conditional Sale. To illustrate, suppose that some political actor – call it Affluenza – has in its possession commodities or goods, G, which some other actor – call it Barrenia – badly needs or wants. Suppose further that Affluenza wants something from Barrenia, though is not willing, able, or justified, to go to war for it. Instead, it threatens to raise the price of G to a level - p100 - that Barrenia can ill afford, unless Barrenia gives in to its demands. If Barrenia does give in, Affluenza will lower the price of G to p1. Affluenza, in other words, makes its willingness to sell at an affordable price conditional on Barrenia’s bending to its will. On what grounds and under what conditions may it so act? A sale is conditional by definition: when I offer to sell you G at a given price p, I offer to transfer to you my property rights over G on condition that you pay me p for it. Call this the price-condition. My concern here is with cases where Affluenza is willing to have Barrenia acquire property rights over G on condition that Barrenia should meet both its price-condition and what I shall call its politics-condition. In other words, sales, in this paper, are doubly conditional. In section 2, I bring the question into sharper focus by highlighting differences between conditional sale, economic sanctions, and conditional aid. All three are forms of economic statecraft, but they differ in morally salient ways. In sections 3 and 4, I make a first pass at the question, on the assumption that Affluenza has full control over G and trades directly with Barrenia’s regime. I argue that Conditional Sale is permitted under strict conditions, as a means to redress a justified grievance against Barrenia, or to pursue foreign policy goals more widely. In section 5, I relax that simplifying assumption and briefly highlight some of the difficulties raised by Conditional Sale for private economic actors in both communities.