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Economic Sanctions |
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DO ECONOMIC SANCTIONS WORK? ABSTRACT Invariably economic sanction will directly and indirectly affect a country’s ability to conduct free trade. The indiscriminate use of economic sanctions can be counterproductive to the parties involved and has had a poor track record. ... is by far THE major user of economic sanctions with meager results attributed to ill conceived goals and an even worse implementation tracking system. Many sanctions have been imposed against nations and most recently against individuals for a number or reasons with indefinite timelines. This paper intends to research the nature of sanctions and how they are applied in three specific situations of renewed interest and whether the sanctions have been effective or not. ... has not refrained from using economic sanctions of one sort or another in the past. ... Advocates of sanctions regard them as an important weapon in the foreign policy arsenal. Skeptics question whether sanctions are an effective stand-alone instrument and whether the costs to the users of sanctions are worth the benefits derived (Hufbauer, Schott and Elliot, 1990). There are eight widely accepted economic goals in the United States and abroad which are the target of economic sanctions (McConnell and Brue, 2002). The effectiveness of sanctions to adversely affect any number of these eight economic goals in the target country will determine its success. Sanctions on food, medicine and medical equipment do not generally advance any of these policy goals and may have adverse consequences in the humanitarian realm. In addition, sanctions can have a detrimental effect on our own economy, especially in the agricultural sector. The economic goals are: Economic Growth- Produce more and better goods and services, or, more simply, develop a higher standard of living. ... Economic Efficiency- Achieve the maximum fulfillment of wants using the available productive resources. ... Economic freedom- Guarantee that businesses, workers, and consumers have a high degree of freedom in their economic activities. ... Economic security- Provide of those who are chronically ill, disabled, laid off, aged or otherwise unable to earn minimal levels of income. ... SANCTIONING DEFINED The deliberate, government inspired withdrawal, or threat of withdrawal, of customary trade or financial relations "Customary" does not mean "contractual"; it simply means levels of trade and financial activity that would probably have occurred in the absence of sanctions. ... An economic sanction is any restriction imposed by one country (the sender) on international commerce with another country (the target) in order to persuade the target countrys government to change a policy (Anderson, 2001). ... These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.” Such measures are considered to be sanctions. Sanctions are punitive in nature. Over the course of the last three decades, the global community has noticed a dramatic increase in the use of economic warfare as a policy in international affairs (Kotowski, 2000). Even more so in the post-cold war era, economic sanctions have offered political leaders a seemingly effective alternative to military force when negotiating foreign policy. ... CHARACTERISTICS OF SANCIONS Sanctions are contrary to world trade policy by reducing or eliminating trade between countries or people. ... However, sanctions are by definition an arbitrary imposition of unequal trade for substantially the same good or service. Sanctions often fail because they are not properly enforced. The United Nations has not been given the means to enforce sanctions in its own right. ... In many recent sanctions, the UN has had scarcely any monitoring capacity, much less the military forces necessary to interdict trade or the legal powers to make travel bans strictly binding. ... Sanctions also cause hardship outside the target country, in what is known (borrowing from military terminology) as "collateral damage" (Paul and Akhtar,1998). Sanctions invariably hurt countries that are neighbors or major trading partners, who lose export markets, government revenues, and employment opportunities. Sanctions may harm big business interests and they tend to cause suffering among the poorest and most vulnerable. Article 50 in Chapter VII of the UN Charter directly addresses the right of countries to appeal for financial assistance as compensation for their losses when sanctions are applied. Article 50 states: "If preventive enforcement measures against any State are taken by the Security Council, any other State, whether a member of the United Nations or not, which finds itself confronted with special economic problems arising from the carrying out of those measures shall have the right to consult the Security Council with regard to a solution of those problems." On the other hand, sanctions intended to serve important domestic political purposes in addition to sometimes changing the behavior of foreign states. ... Indeed, domestic political goals increasingly appear to be the motivating force behind the imposition of many recent sanctions. Nevertheless, in judging the success of sanctions, literature confines the examination to changes in the policies, capabilities, or government of the target country. VALIDITY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF SANCTIONS Historically, economic sanctions have a poor track record. Between 1914 and 1990, various countries imposed economic sanctions in 116 cases, see Exhibit A. ... Since 1973, the success ratio for economic sanctions has fallen precipitously to 24 percent for all cases. Even with this performance ratio, economic sanctions are consistently used as tools of foreign policy intended to, along with diplomatic pressure, effect change in the target country and in the worst of cases can become a prelude to military action. Comparing the economic and political circumstances across these episodes, literature reveals that sanctions tend to be most effective when: The goal is relatively modest (thus lessening the importance of multilateral cooperation, which often is difficult to obtain, and reducing the chances a rival power will bother to step in with offsetting assistance). The target is much smaller than the country imposing sanctions (the average senders economy was 187 times larger than that of the average target), economically weak and politically unstable. |
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Title: Economic Sanctions
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