Use Of Economic Sanctions Research Articles

Economic Sanctions and Human Rights/Preferential Trade and Human Rights

The law of trade liberalization found in WTO agreements and the protection of human rights are intimately bound through the use of economic sanctions. While the general international law perspective on economic sanctions is one of permissiveness within the limits of humanitarian and human rights law, the law of the World Trade Organization restricts its Members from applying economic sanctions against other Members unless the trade restricting measures fall within the general exceptions provisions. This leads to a constellation where potentially human rights-violating sanctions programs are explicitly excepted from WTO oversight, whereas sanctions by single Members, that are unlikely to impose human costs by virtue of their limited scope, face high barriers under WTO laws.

Designing Institutions to Deal with Terrorism in the United States

The explosion in the 21st century of terrorist activities by Islamic radicals in the United States, Europe and Asia requires reforming the institutions for domestic counterterrorism (CT) and new international relations among individual national CT organizations. This paper discusses the institutional reforms for CT in the United States, focusing particularly on the changes in the FBI. These changes are compared with the way that the British CT activities of the MI5 and MI6 have evolved in response to terrorism in Britain. The paper also discusses the reasons why there is strong cooperation among the CT activities of all the major governments and with the United States in particular, even when those governments do not agree about military cooperation or about the use of economic sanctions.

ECONOMIC SANCTIONS: FAILED FOREIGN POLICY TOOL AND A COST TO AMERICAN BUSINESS

In recent years the US government has increased its use of economic sanctions in order to punish countries, organisations and individuals. This form of foreign policy has become an increasing burden on US business and adversely affects US competitiveness and perceived reliability in the global marketplace. In addition, economic sanctions are generally ineffective in producing the desired changes and often harm the people they were intended to help. This paper argues that economic sanctions are an increasing menace to US business, represent an ineffective tool of foreign policy, and do not meet generally accepted ethical standards.

Democratic Sanctions: Connecting the Democratic Peace and Economic Sanctions

The democratic peace literature has focused primarily on militarized conflict; however, aspects of the democratic peace may influence how states use economic sanctions. This article investigates how democracies sanction both each other and other non-democracies. Because economic sanctions are very different from military force, some aspects of the democratic peace, such as the more peaceful nature of democracies, do not apply to the decision to sanction. However, several democratic peace factors should influence the use of economic sanctions, such as institutional constraints, shared values, and quick resolutions often found between two democracies. Using updated economic sanction data from 1978 through 2000, the article employs rare-event logit analysis to show that the democratic peace does influence the use of economic coercion - democracies are less likely to sanction each other. It also shows that democracies employ sanctions more than other regime types, in part because democracies pursue human rights and democratization goals with economic sanctions. The results further reveal that unlike other countries, the United States is not hesitant to sanction its allies.

The Effectiveness of Economic Sanctions: The Case of North Korea

IntroductionThe phrase means restrictions on normal commercial relations with a target country, including trade, investment, and other cross-border activities. Economic sanctions are either unilateral or multilateral. A unilateral sanction is imposed by one country, such as the U.S., against another country, such as North Korea. Multilateral sanctions require the cooperation of at least two nations. The clearest examples of multilateral sanctions are those imposed by the Security Council of the United Nations.The UN has imposed economic sanctions no more than 13 so-called or states throughout its existence. These sanctioned nations include Afghanistan, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Rhodesia, South Africa, and Yugoslavia. When a UN sanction is imposed, all UN member nations are required to comply with the order and to enforce the sanction against the outlaw country (Addis, 2003, p. 575). The U.S. has frequently used unilateral sanctions against many countries as a regular tenet of its foreign policy since the end of Cold War. According to Addis (2003), about 75 percent of the world's nearly 200 countries were subject to U.S. sanctions as of 2000. Garfield (2002) found that the U.S. had placed 68 percent of the world population under economic sections.The U.S. has turned to sanctions or the threat of sanctions to achieve political objectives, such as the overthrow of hostile regimes, the termination of interstate aggression, the protection of human rights, the elimination of weapons of mass destruction programs, a halt to nuclear testing programs, and the encouragement of domestic and foreign policy changes (Ripsman and Blanchard, p. 15i). The U.S. has used sanctions in the hope that they would lead the sanctioned nations' citizenry to rebel against their leaders or at least compel them to comply fully with U.S. demands. However, none of the sanctions has achieved its intended purpose. In fact, sanctions have backfired and tarnished the credibility of the U.S. as a leader of the free world. Meanwhile, the U.S. has created miserable economic conditions for tens of millions of people around the world whom it intended to help through its economic sanctions. Thus, the time has come for the U.S. to recognize that economic sanctions represent a failed policy. The U.S. must build economic and diplomatic ties with its adversaries to ensure world peace and stability. A case study of U.S. economic sanctions against North Korea may help clarify why a policy of engagement and reconciliation with North Korea could be the best approach to accomplish significant improvements in North Korea's social, political and economic condition.A full context for analyzing a change in U.S. policy toward North Korea requires an understanding of (i) the types of sanctions against rogue countries; (2) reasons why most experts oppose the use of economic sanctions as a political tool; and (3) reasons why economic sanctions have been ineffective. Therefore, the following three sections review the existing literature on economic sanctions, with particular attention to the matter of why they often fail. This literature also provides a basis for the specific evaluation of U.S. sanctions against North Korea, and a foundation for evaluating alternatives for dealing with a nuclear North Korea.Types of SanctionsTo achieve political goals, the U.S. has historically used a wide variety of coercive actions against outlaw regimes, including military actions, economic sanctions, and diplomatic protests with or without military threat or covert action. Among those actions, economic sanctions have generated the most heated debate among academicians because they have been notoriously ineffective and have caused irreparable harm to innocent civilians. For example, a 13-year UN embargo against Iraq from 1990 to 2003 spearheaded by the U.S. caused at least i.5 million Iraqis, including 500,000 children, to lose their lives (Alnasrawi, 200i, p. …

Financial and economic sanctions ‐ from a perspective of international law and human rights

Discusses the use of economic sanctions against terrorism and organised crime. Focuses on the low evidentiary threshold adopted by the United Nations Security Council’s Resolution 1267 to freeze the assets of those associated with al‐Qaeda, with the result that some individuals and organisations have found themselves unjustifiably subject to sanctions like frozen assets or travel bans. Considers what is needed to strike the right balance between effectiveness in combating terrorism and protection of individual rights of alleged terrorists, concluding that a satisfactory level of evidence and a proper legal defence are necessary principles.

Criminalizing Consequences of Sanctions: Embargo Busting and Its Legacy

The upsurge in the use of economic sanctions in the post-Cold War era has prompted much scholarly and policy debate over their effectiveness and humanitarian consequences. Remarkably little attention, however, has been devoted to their criminalizing consequences and legacy for the post-sanctions period. In this article, I develop an analytical framework identifying and categorizing the potential criminalizing effects of sanctions across place (within and around the targeted country) and time (during and after the sanctions period), and apply and evaluate this framework through an in-depth examination of the case of Yugoslavia. For comparative leverage and to assess the applicability of the argument beyond the Yugoslavia case, the analysis is briefly extended to other cases both within and outside the Balkans (Croatia and Iraq). The article suggests that sanctions can unintentionally contribute to the criminalization of the state, economy, and civil society of both the targeted country and its immediate neighbors, fostering a symbiosis between political leaders, organized crime, and transnational smuggling networks. This symbiosis, in turn, can persist beyond the lifting of sanctions, contributing to corruption and crime and undermining the rule of law. The article is one of the first efforts to integrate the study of sanctions and transnational crime, and suggests that the criminalized collateral damage from sanctions and its post-sanctions legacy should be made a more central part of the evaluation of sanctions.

Imperial geographies and topographies of nihilism

In this first piece, Eduardo Mendieta considers the relationship between empires, cities and war. It focuses particularly on the emergence of geopolitics as science at the service of empire building and the 20th‐century escalation to total war against cities. The focus, however, is not on European empires, but the American empire, which since the 19th century has developed its own type of geopolitics and means of waging war. Mendieta discusses strategic fire bombing of the Second World War, the implementation of suburbanization policies in the USA after the War, and the recent use of economic sanctions aimed at crippling cities, as in the most recent case, Baghdad. In tandem, he discusses the complicity of world‐historical and ontologizing philosophical perspectives that see wars as conflagrations between forces and fates, leading to the trivialization and exculpation of the devastation of cities and extermination of humans.

A Theory of Economic Sanctions and Issue Linkage: The Roles of Preferences, Information, and Threats

A realistic theory of economic sanctions should be built on the facts that sanctions are a game of issue linkage involving two or more issues, players may not know each other's preferences for the outcome of the game, and threatening sanctions may be as important as imposing sanctions as a strategy in international disputes. The threat and use of economic sanctions are modeled as a multistage game of two-sided incomplete information between a target and a coercer. The threat stage is critically important for understanding the outcome of sanctions, and current empirical studies suffer from a case selection bias. Economic sanctions are likely to be imposed when they are not likely to succeed in changing the target's behavior. Sanctions that are likely to succeed will do so at the mere threat of sanctions. Despite the unlikely success of sanctions, coercers must sometimes impose sanctions, even after the threat of sanctions has failed to change the target's behavior.

Economic sanctions: examining their philosophy and efficacy

This is the first of three related, empirically based studies examining the broad range of issues raised by the use of economic sanctions. This volume addresses the philosophy behind economic sanctions: why they are used and what they are meant to achieve. Ashari, Forrer, Teegen, and Yang go back through history to analyze whether or not economic sanctions have ben sucessful by measuinrg their historical impact and modeling their effectiveness, and they offer an analysis of the international and domestic business implications of sanctions in today's global economy. Of particular interest to scholars, students, researchers, and the public policy community involved with international busienss and economics and international relations.

Economic Cold War: America's Embargo against China and the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949– 1963

This is a fine book, rich in new materials from recently accessible Chinese archives and memoirs and United States government documents. I recommend it to scholars of the Cold War, particularly the Sino-Soviet dispute and U.S.-China relations, and to comparativists interested in the efficacy of sanctions, alliance politics, and bureaucratic politics. The volume is most appropriate for graduate-level courses and will be of interest to historians, political scientists, and international relations specialists. Economic Cold War tells in clear, alternating, and interactive chapters how the United States and its allies, and Beijing and its principal ally, Moscow, reacted to Western attempts greatly to curtail economic relations with mainland China in the early stages of the Cold War (1949–1963). Beyond providing new detail of the intricacies of each nation's policies, their implementation, and their effects in China, Shu Guang Zhang self-consciously speaks to several important comparative issues. One such issue concerns the utility of economic sanctions as a tool of foreign policy. Contrary to much of the literature, such as Economic Sanctions and American Diplomacy edited by Richard N. Haass (1998), Zhang comes to the net conclusion that “the use of economic sanctions in pursuit of foreign-policy goals, though difficult to implement, can have major utility.” The author asserts that the embargo had its effect by increasing Chinese dependence on Moscow to unsustainable levels; with its needs unmet, Beijing became progressively more alienated from Moscow. Further, Zhang argues that, by forcing China into the Soviet economic orbit and the planned economy model, the embargo thereby gravely distorted the allocation of resources in China and greatly reduced economic performance below what it otherwise would have been. In short, the sanctions fueled the Sino-Soviet split and weakened Beijing.

The Challenge of Targeting Economic Sanctions

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. …

Just War-Just Sanctions

The use of economic sanctions steadily increased during the twentieth century. Politically, sanctions seem to offer a safe alternative to armed conflict. International chastisement on a nation's unacceptable behaviour is often dealt with by imposing sanctions, the late twentieth-century version of ‘gun boat diplomacy’. However, little account appears to be taken of the devastating humanitarian impact that sanctions can have on the innocent victims of their Government's policies. This article considers the ethical implications of sanctions, using as an example the United Nations' sanctions against Iraq. The possibility of Just Sanctions is discussed against the background of Just War criteria, and questions the assumption that sanctions are a safe and reasonable alternative to conflict.

Use of Economic Sanctions under International Law: A Contemporary Assessment

SummaryThe growth in the use of collective economic sanctions in the post-Cold War epoch calls for a re-examination of the legal basis and constraints on the implementation of sanctions. This article is an attempt to explore, from a legal point of view, the problems and restrictions associated with sanctions, and to suggest the ways in which economic sanctions can be rendered more legitimate in terms of international legal requirements. It is argued that, in addition to the traditional treaty basis of collective sanctions, a breach of an erga omnes obligation is also a legitimate legal basis for economic sanctions. It is also contended that, in addition to traditional economic considerations, sanctions should be subject to other limitations such as respect for principles of international humanitarian law. After determining the restrictions on the implementation of sanctions, the author makes proposals for refining current practices in imposing economic sanctions. In conclusion, it is argued that collective sanctions have the potential of being used in a more humane and institutionally coherent way.

U.S. Presidents and the Use of Economic Sanctions

What conditions lead the U. S. president to use and alter economic sanctions? Both relations with the target country and domestic politics are considered as conditions leading to the employment and later removal of economic sanctions. Using time-series cross-sectional data, the analysis shows that the president considers both the relations with the target country and U. S. domestic factors when deciding to impose economic sanctions, although the relations with the target have a much greater impact on the decision. Once the economic sanctions are in place and the president must decide to maintain or alter them, the domestic political influence disappears, and the president considers only the relations with the target when modifying sanction policy.

U.S. Presidents and the Use of Economic Sanctions

What conditions lead the U. S. president to use and alter economic sanctions? Both relations with the target country and domestic politics are considered as conditions leading to the employment and later removal of economic sanctions. Using time‐series cross‐sectional data, the analysis shows that the president considers both the relations with the target country and U. S. domestic factors when deciding to impose economic sanctions, although the relations with the target have a much greater impact on the decision. Once the economic sanctions are in place and the president must decide to maintain or alter them, the domestic political influence disappears, and the president considers only the relations with the target when modifying sanction policy.

Democracy and the Successful Use of Economic Sanctions

Most analysts argue that economic sanctions are a relatively poor policy tool. In this article I build on a theoretical framework which has the leaders of states being primarily interested in retaining office dometically. Because of this, leaders of some states (i.e., democracies) can effetively tie their hands internationally by using aggressive foreign policy actions. I argue that democracies should be, on average, more successful when using economic sanctions because of the signaling properties of sanctions. This hypothesis is tested using ordered probit analysis of 81 bilateral sanctions episodes from 1914 to 1989. The hypothesis is cofirmed even when controlling for the known correlates of sanctions sucess and other potentially confounding factors (relative power, f. ex.). This finding suggests that we can expand our theoretical expectations on the links between domestic politics and international relations.

Democracy and the Successful Use of Economic Sanctions

Democracy and the Successful Use of Economic Sanctions

Revisiting Economic Sanctions Reconsidered

Hufbauer, Schott and Elliott have written probably the most comprehensive empirical study of economic sanctions in their volume Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: History and Current Policy. They conclude their analysis with several policy recommendations. However, there are problems with their empirical analysis that significantly affect these recommendations. To overcome these problems, I reanalyze their data using ordered logit estimation. In addition to modeling their policy recommendations, I add three hypotheses derived from the sanction literature. The results show that most of the relationships between the variables in their recommendations are insignificant, calling their accuracy and importance into question. In two cases, the original recommendations are accurate only when conditioned by other variables. Cooperation only has a negative effect on success when international organizations are not involved, and nations trying to subvert the sanctions only succeed when the target was originally dependent on the sender for its imports. I conclude by discussing the policy implications these findings have for the future use of economic sanctions.

Do All States Make Equal Use of Economic Sanctions?

Do All States Make Equal Use of Economic Sanctions?