The Challenge of Targeting Economic Sanctions

Abstract

Smart Sanctions: Targeting Economic Statecraft,, edited by David Cortright and George A. Lopez (Lanham MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2002, xvi, 259pp, US$72.00 cloth, ISBN 0-7425-0142-6, US$27.95, ISBN 0-7425-0143-4)Sanctions and the Search for Security: Challenges to UN Action, by David Cortright and George A. Lopez (with Linda Gerber), (Boulder CO and London: Lynne Rienner, 2002, xii, 249pp, US$49.95 cloth, ISBN 1-58826-053-4, US$18.95 paper, ISBN 1-58825-078-X)IN THE POST-COLD WAR ERA, ECONOMIC SANCTIONS have become the international community's preferred instrument to ensure compliance with international law, the protection of human rights, and a host of other multilateral objectives. The use of sanctions has become more sophisticated and complicated, however, as the United Nations confronts a host of new challenges (failed states, transnational terrorist groups, and so on). Moreover, it is under increasing pressure to minimize the humanitarian costs of sanctions. In this context, David Cortright and George A. Lopez offer two books that examine the state of the art of economic sanctions.Smart Sanctions is a collection of essays that investigates the utility of targeting economic sanctions against the leadership of a target state rather than its people. The contributors focus on financial sanctions, arms embargoes, and travel bans. The volume evaluates targeted sanctions on two grounds: 1) the humanitarian impact of the measures; and 2) the effectiveness of the sanctions at causing pain to the target government and achieving the desired policy change.The overall tone of this well-constructed book is cautiously optimistic. A chapter on financial sanctions by Cortright, Lopez, and Elizabeth S. Rogers argues that financial sanctions hold considerable promise as a means of pressuring target state elites, but that greater efforts to enhance their speed and secrecy, improved tracking of offshore and virtual holdings, and better multilateral co-ordination are needed. Loretta Bondi and Michael Brzoska both suggest that although arms embargoes must overcome problems of enforcement, disorganization, and private interest, they too can be effective tools of multilateral action. Richard W. Conroy points to the utility of travel bans - used in tandem with other targeted sanctions - in ostracizing target governments, with minimal humanitarian consequences. The volume's overall assessment, stated in the introductory chapter by Cortright and Lopez and echoed in a chapter by Kimberly Ann Elliott, is that targeted sanctions have been less successful than general trade sanctions and that they must overcome major obstacles if they are to become effective instruments of multilateral policy; nonetheless they are potentially powerful tools for achieving compliance with international law.Sanctions and the Search for Security sets a similar goal for itself. It explores the contemporary use of economic sanctions in light of increasing innovation by the United Nations and increasing efforts to reform sanctions to avoid humanitarian costs by targeting leaders rather than populations. It also explores how sanctions can be used against failed states and shattered economies, which are not conducive to traditional, comprehensive trade sanctions.The book proceeds in an empirical manner, with chapters examining prominent recent United Nations efforts that have defied the traditional approach to economic sanctions: against Iraq, in Afghanistan, against Angola, and to resolve the crisis in West Africa. From there, the authors present thematic chapters on targeted financial sanctions, using economic instruments to combat terrorism, travel sanctions, arms embargoes, and commodity sanctions. The book concludes with a speculative chapter on the future of United Nations sanctions policy.The book is quite well-written and well-researched, and it reaches a number of interesting and often counter-intuitive conclusions. …