Should Economic Sanctions be Viewed as a Viable Foreign Policy Instrument that is Likely to Achieve their Objectives (original) (raw)

Economic sanctions: the kinder, gentler alternative?

Medicine, conflict, and survival

Economic sanctions are often considered to be a legitimate, more peaceful alternative to war. Using examples, particularly that of Iraq, it is evident that this is not necessarily so. As attempts are made to design coercion on nation states short of war, we must heed these examples and consider sanctions as a form of siege warfare. This paper attempts to refine criteria to allow the imposition of sanctions. These would be similar to those allowing the imposition of war. In the realm of international governance, not only must sanctions be employed by the authority of international society, after other less coercive measures have been attempted, they must be supported by the people whom they are meant to protect, and efforts must be made to minimise and to monitor their consequences.

The Power and Consequences of International Sanctions

2020

The imposition of politically motivated restrictions on trade, financial flows, the ownership of assets, communication, or travel by governments – prominent forms of international sanctions applied in the recent past – are hotly debated issues of international politics. One of the main topics in these discussions is the question of the effects of sanctions. Are sanctions attaining what those mandating them aim for? Or do they primarily have other effects? Or no effects at all?

Economic sanctions as deterrents and constraints

Journal of Peace Research, 2023

This article analyses economic sanctions starting from the perspective of a target that has to allocate its income between spending on resources to pursue a contentious policy and consumption goods. By studying the target's consumption problem, it demonstrates how sanctions could backfire causing the target to shift its spending to resources to pursue the contentious policy, thereby increasing the severity of the policy. Whether this will come to pass depends on the elasticities of substitution, which are determined by the target's utility function. Therefore, even sanctions that seem like they could do no harm, such as embargoes on luxury goods consumed by only the target's dictator, could aggravate the level of the policy given the right utility function. Considering the target's consumption problem also illustrates how sanctions could (depending on the form of the target's utility function) reduce the resources it could allocate to pursuing the contentious policy, thereby moderating it. If the benefits of this constraint outweigh the costs of sanctions to the sender, it could be in the sender's best interest to impose sanctions. In these cases articulating a demand and waiting for the target to consider it would simply provide the target with additional time to continue the contentious policy, so the sender would impose constraining sanctions without warning. Constraining sanctions, therefore, provide an explanation for sanctions imposed without a threat stage. Constraining sanctions can occur even with complete and perfect information and may persist indefinitely, explaining the existence of long-term costly sanctions as well as sanctions that occur in cases of full information.

Strengthening the Economic Arsenal: Bolstering the Deterrent and Signaling Effects of Sanctions

Center for a New American Security , 2019

Economic sanctions have become the tool of choice for U.S. policymakers to influence international affairs. On issues ranging from nuclear nonproliferation to human rights, the United States typically imposes sanctions with the goal of inducing a government to change its behavior. Yet sanctions often have more potential to deter unwanted actions than to compel policy reversals, and the greatest impact of sanctions sometimes involves the signals they convey about likely future U.S. steps. Maximizing the overall effectiveness of U.S. economic pressure therefore requires concerted efforts by policymakers in the executive branch and Congress to make sanctions more effective instruments of deterrence and signaling. Doing this will also have positive knock-on effects, helping to limit the unintentional escalation of international competition and preserve the utility of sanctions as a vehicle for addressing security challenges and protecting universal norms. This report highlights several areas for action by U.S. policymakers.