Failure of economic sanctions

Iran is once again under sanctions. I sympathise with those who believe that sanctions can work. The experience of the past is contrary to this notion.

Economic sanctions are measures directed to achieve political objectives. Liberals like Woodrow Wilson conceived them as an alternative to wars with the firm conviction that they are an effective instrument of foreign policy and work more efficiently than military force. The liberals explored the very unique relationship between economic activity and political actions. When sanctions affect economic activity, political authority gets affected and leads to the desired results.

Economic sanctions may be used to change a target state’s policies or to dismantle minor military adventure, amongst other objectives.

The 1990s were declared the ‘sanctions decade’ primarily because the UN imposed comprehensive sanctions on more than a dozen countries including Iraq(1990), Former Yugoslavia(1991,92,98), Libya(1992) and Afghanistan(1999). If the aim was to restore democracy, to promote human rights or to promote disarmament without engaging military force, the sanctions failed in most cases and the UN had to execute force. Even in the case of punishing terrorism, the US had to intervene militarily in order to expel the terrorist regime of the Taliban. If the main aim of sanctions is to prevent civilian deaths in the target state, that also failed, paralysing the UN’s charter that insists on the deliverance of good governance and good quality of life for citizens of member states because sanctions deteriorated the standard of living from difficult to unbearable in countries like Iraq and Haiti. Economic sanctions in Iraq caused a major health crisis that led to severe illnesses and deaths of thousands. Political science professor George Lopez noted that US sanctions against Baghdad trespassed all moral and humanitarian standards as they killed more than 200,000 children under the age of five. In Haiti the current Unicef chief of global policy, Elizabeth Gibbons, observed that the child mortality rate increased comprehensively during the UN sanctions. Keeping this in view, sanctions emerge as the worst expression of international punishment.

Economic sanctions claim to intensify the element of hatred among suppressed masses of the target country against their autocratic regime. But instead of invoking rebellion, they tend to create among the masses a psychological climate that is truly national in character. People feel humiliated and consider economic sanctions as an international punishment levied by foreign countries against their national pride. The situation actually strengthens the hands of the dictators rather than weakening them. Domestic opposition from various sections unite and support the ruler, whether elected or autocrat, and thus commences a battle of national pride between the civil society of the target state and the powers imposing sanctions. The dictators, in other words, manipulate the very nature of economic sanctions in their favour and strengthen their regime. The continuing fame of Castro and Gaddafi are striking examples in this regard.

Published in The Express Tribune, June  26^th, 2010.