Economic Sanctions

Punitive trade or investment policies pursued by one nation against another in an effort to change the target nation's policies. The United States uses economic sanctions to foster several national security policy goals. The objectives most often pursued through economic sanctions include promoting democracy and human rights; ending civil wars; and combating drug trafficking, terrorism, and weapons proliferation.

The United Nations has also used sanctions frequently. Chapter VII of the UN Charter allows the Security Council to apply measures such as the complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, as well as the severance of diplomatic relations. Economic sanctions sponsored by the United Nations throughout the 1980s contributed to the fall of South Africa's racist apartheid regime in the early 1990s.

Historical Use of Sanctions

Economic sanctions are one of the oldest nonmilitary tools for applying political pressure against an opponent. As far back as 432 BCE, Athens imposed a trade ban on the city-state of Megara. Throughout most of the second millennium (1001–2000 CE), Muslim caliphs would close Middle Eastern ports to Christian commerce in response to political or religious disputes. During the Napoleonic Wars (1800–1815), the British Empire fought France primarily by imposing a naval blockade on French-dominated Europe. The Northern naval blockade of Southern ports during the American Civil War deprived the Confederacy of needed supplies. It also helped prevent the British from interfering in the conflict by convincing them that the South could not win the war.

However, it was only after World War I that economic sanctions became widely perceived as an effective alternative to the use of force. U.S. president Woodrow Wilson was a leading advocate of the use of economic sanctions to impose one nation's will on another state. The growth of international business and finance after World War II made nations more dependent on one another's business and fostered trade and cross-border investment. This growing interdependence made sanctions a more effective weapon than ever before. Countries could no longer think of isolating themselves economically from their neighbors. Economic penalties also could now be as devastating to a nation's power and national security as military ones.

The 1990s are commonly referred to as the sanctions decade, given the widespread imposition of sanctions during this time. Perhaps the most noteworthy and punitive economic measures taken during this period were imposed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. To prevent Iraq from rebuilding its armed forces and developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the United Nations imposed a strict oil-for-food sanctions program. Under this program, the United Nations administered all the proceeds from sales of Iraqi oil and used them to purchase food supplies for Iraq's citizens. This ensured that the money would not be used for the development of arms or WMD.

Iraq is just one of several countries targeted by U.S. economic sanctions in recent years. The United States has imposed sanctions on Iran, accusing the country of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons technology. Sanctions are also in place against North Korea in an attempt to end that nation's production of nuclear weapons. The success of these efforts has been mixed. In the case of Iraq, the sanctions appear to have been successful in preventing Iraqi rearmament and WMD [Page 228]efforts. The Iraqi army crumbled quickly in the Iraq War of 2003, and postwar inspections revealed no evidence of active Iraqi WMD programs. But as of 2005, North Korea, refuses to renounce its nuclear arsenal and Iran continues to assert that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.

...