Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T14:45:11.825Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Sanctions as Punishment, Enforcement, and Prelude to Further Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Abstract

This article looks at some major goals that have been set for sanctions and evaluates how effective sanctions have been at reaching those goals. It also examines the costs of sanctions, i.e., the impact on civilians and on international support for sanctions. Clawson concludes that sanctions are useful only as a short-term response in situations in which the world community is prepared to use force in the likely event that the target regime does not change its behavior. If there is not will to use force to back the sanctions, then the sanctions are morally dubious: they impose suffering and may cause deaths without offering a reasonable prospect of accomplishing good.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The relevant sections of the Covenant is in Royal Institute of International Affairs (RHA), International Sanctions: A Report by a Group of Members of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (London: Oxford University Press, 1938). The chairman of the group was Sir John Fischer Williams.Google Scholar

2 Brief but informative accounts of the League's sanctions experience are found in ibid.; Daoudi, M.S. and Dajani, M.S., Economic Sanctions: Ideals and Experiences (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), 5672Google Scholar; and Doxy, Margaret, International Sanctions in Contemporary Perspective (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987), 2431CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 In response to General Assembly resolutions beginning in 1961, the Security Council in 1965 recommended (but did not order) a ban on arms shipments. It did not act on further General Assembly resolutions calling for a mandatory arms ban. There is no evidence Western states followed the 1965 recommendation. The episode is described in Doxy, International Sanctions in Contemporary Perspective, 34–5.Google Scholar

4 Hufbauer, Gary, Schott, Jeffrey, and Elliott, Kimberly Ann, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: Supplemental Case Histories, 2nd ed. (Washington: Institute of International Economics, 1990).Google Scholar A full listing of U.S. sanctions in the period 1979–91 is found in Galdi, Theodore and Shuey, Robert, U.S. Economic Sanctions Imposed Against Specific Countries: 1979 to the Present, 2nd ed. (Washington: Congressional Research Service, 1992).Google Scholar

5 For a history of UN sanctions resolutions, see Fifoot, Paul, “Functions and powers and inventions: UN action in respect of human rights and humanitarian intervention,” in Rodley, Nigel, ed., To Loose the Bands of Wickedness: International Intervention in Defence of Human Rights (London: Brassey's, 1992).Google Scholar

6 Nossal, Kim Richard, “Economic Sanctions in the League of Nations and the United Nations,” in Leyton-Brown, David, ed., The Utility of Economic Sanctions (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987).Google Scholar The more usual view is in chap. 1 of RIIA, International Sanctions, cited above in footnote 1.

7 Locke, John, An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government, sec. 179.Google Scholar See Johnson, James Turner, Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts 1200–1740 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975Google Scholar).

8 Howard, Michael, “Can War Be Controlled?” in Elshtain, Jean Bethke, ed., Just War Theory (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 30Google Scholar. See also Bailey's, Sydneyclassic work, Prohibitions and Restraints in War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972Google Scholar).

9 Dulles, John Foster, “Practicable Sanctions,” in The Committee on Economic Sanctions, Boycotts and Peace: A Report by the Committee on Economic Sanctions (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1932), 256–57Google Scholar. The Committee was chaired by Columbia University president Nicholas Butler and had eleven members, including Dulles. The Committee was set up by the Twentieth Century Fund to evaluate whether the United States should promote the use of sanctions as means to enforce the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war.

10 Resolution 661 of August 6, 1990, par. 3(a). Paragraph 4 permitted “payments exclusively for strictly medical or humanitarian purposes and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs.”.Google Scholar

11 Report to the Secretary-General on Humanitarian Needs in Iraq in the Immediate Post-Crisis Environment by a Mission to the Area Led by Mr. Martti Ahtisaari, Under Secretary-General for Administration and Management, March 20,1991.Google Scholar

12 Iraq News Agency, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) NES-92-141, July 22, 1992, p. 20.Google Scholar

13 George Will, Washington Post, December 2, 1990.Google Scholar

14 Enkel, Edwin, “General Conclusions and Recommendations,” in The Committee on Economic Sanctions, Boycotts and Peace, 256–57.Google Scholar

15 Frank Prial, New York Times, November 25,1992, cites U.S. Representative Edward Perkins as saying UN-authorized imports had been 13 million tons, which is one-third the pre-crisis annual level.Google Scholar

16 Personal communications with John Parker, U.S. Department of Agriculture.Google Scholar

17 See the complaints of Congressman Tony Hall, op-ed, Washington Post, October 6, 1992.Google Scholar

18 Patrick Tyler, New York Times, December 1, 1991.Google Scholar

19 John Goshko and Ruth Markus, Washington Post, October 20, 1992.Google Scholar

20 Resolution 778 contains many options for states holding the assets, designed to meet a variety of objections about releasing them. The amount available for humanitarian operations may be anywhere between $500 million and $800 million.Google Scholar

21 Editorial as reported in Mideast Mirror, December 2, 1992.Google Scholar

22 Report to the Secretary-General on Humanitarian Needs in Iraq in the Immediate Post-Crisis Environment by a Mission to the Area Led by Mr. Martti Ahtisaari, Under Secretary-General for Administration and Management, March 20,1991.Google Scholar

23 Baghdad Radio, FBIS NES-92-201, October 16, 1992, p. 17. See also Paul Lewis, New York Times, July 14, 1992, on the July 1992 rations.Google Scholar

24 Statement of Edward P. Djerijian, assistant secretary of state for Near East and South Asia, before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, November 20, 1991.Google Scholar

25 Frank Prial, New York Times, November 24, 1992.Google Scholar

26 Jean Dreze and Harris Gazdar, “Hunger and Poverty in Iraq, 1991.” Development Economics Research Programme Discussion Paper 32, Suntory-Toyota International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines of the London School of Economics and Political Science, September 1991, pp. 4, 36.Google Scholar

27 Ascherio, Alberto, et al. , “Effect of the Gulf War on Infant and Child Mortality in Iraq,” New England Journal of Medicine, September 24, 1992, p. 931.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Ibid., 935.Google Scholar

29 Trevor Rowe, Washington Post, November 7, 1992.Google Scholar

30 Paul Lewis, New York Times, October 29, 1992.Google Scholar

31 Howard French, New York Times, January 28, 1992; Lee Hockstader, Washington Post, May 31, 1992.Google Scholar

32 Henry Carey in Wall Street Journal, January 10, 1992.Google Scholar

33 John Goshko, Washington Post, May 27, 1992, cites 150,000 out of work in May; Economist, February 8, 1992, estimated 140,000 in February.Google Scholar

34 John Goshko, Washington Post, September 30, 1992.Google Scholar

35 Editorial, “Haiti: The Burdens of Embargo,”Washington Post, May 25, 1992.Google Scholar

36 Patrick Tyler, New York Times, June 3, 1991.Google Scholar

37 Report to the Secretary-General dated July 15, 1991 on Humanitarian Needs in Iraq, Prepared by a Mission Led by Sadruddin Aga Khan, S/22799.Google Scholar

38 The 87-member International Commission on the Gulf Crisis that visited Iraq from August 23 to September 5, 1991 prepared a number of technical reports, including separate reports on the water/ sewage and electrical systems. The moving spirits for the Commission were at Harvard University; the reports were available for a time from the Law School.Google Scholar

39 Paul Lewis, New York Times, July 14,1992. See also Economist, September 5, 1992.Google Scholar

40 Iraqi New Agency in FBIS, NES-92-84, October 22,1992, pp. 20–21.Google Scholar

41 François Chipaux, quoting Magdi Masri, Le Monde, April 8, 1992.Google Scholar

42 Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, and Peace-Keeping,” SC Doc S/24111, June 17, 1992, reprinted in Rodley, To Loose the Bands of Wickedness.Google Scholar

43 Middle East Economic Digest, October 2, 1992.Google Scholar

44 Financial Times, January 21, 1992.Google Scholar

45 Hufbauer, et al., Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, chap. 3. Different lists of goals for sanctions are given in Lawrence Brady, “The Utility of Economic Sanctions as a Policy Instrument,” and David Leyton-Brown, “Lessons and Policy Considerations about Economic Sanctions,” both in Leyton-Brown, The Utility of International Economic Sanctions.Google Scholar

46 News release from the Institute for International Economics, dated November 20, 1992.Google Scholar

47 Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, November 11, 1992.Google Scholar

48 Kaempfer, William and Lowenberg, Anton, International Economic Sanctions: A Public Choice Perspective (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1992), 133–34Google Scholar. The public choice school argues that public policy is shaped by the decisions of individuals on the basis of rational maximizing behavior; it rejects the characterization of public policy as expressing the interests of “the state.”

49 “A good sanctions guide,”Economist, June 6, 1992.Google Scholar

50 Charles Krauthammer, “Sanctions Fallacy,”Washington Post, June 19, 1992.Google Scholar

51 On the debate about whether the United States should aim for the elimination of Saddam Hussein's rule, see Dan Balz and Al Kamen, Washington Post, and Andrew Rosenthal, New York Times, both from March 24, 1991.Google Scholar

52 Washington Post, January 17, 1992. Fitzwater also said ousting Saddam “was never an objective.”.Google Scholar

53 See the strong arguments that Haitians want sanctions maintained despite the negative effects in op-eds by William O'Neill, Washington Post, August 23, 1992, and Amy Wilentz, New York Times, August 13, 1992. See also Congressman Tony Hall (D-Ohio), “Haiti: Keep the Embargo, Help the Poor,”Washington Post, October 6, 1992. All three argue that the appropriate step to aid the poor is effective enforcement of the embargo, not lifting it. In Congressman Hall's words, “It is not the embargo that is responsible for the current plight of the poor or the continued political stalemate. Rather, these conditions owe much to the failure of the international community to fully utilize and enforce the terms of the embargo.”.Google Scholar

54 See, for example, Baldwin, David, Economic Statecraft (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar, and Martin, Lisa, Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992Google Scholar).

55 The phrase “world customs officer” is from Jim Hoagland, Washington Post, November 26, 1991.Google Scholar