Economic sanctions as a modern tool: Cruel to the most vulnerable?

WASHINGTON (AN) — We are sold economic sanctions as an effective and politically popular way to punish the governments of unruly and frequently brutal regimes, like those of Iran, Venezuela and Syria. Yet recent research likens sanctions to economic “siege warfare” that has little effect on the behavior of targeted governments but is cruel and hurtful to their most powerless and vulnerable citizens.

Food gets more expensive, jobs disappear and medicines and medical equipment become unavailable as foreign credit dries up and currency exchange and import restrictions force previously functioning economies into Depression-era levels of unemployment.

The effects can be far-reaching and sometimes unforeseen. Sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump had the desired outcome: The country’s petroleum-centered economy went into free fall. Millions suffered. Now economic refugees from Venezuela are flooding the southern U.S. border, looking for opportunity and a new home in America.

Sanctions imposed on Syria and its murderous dictator, Bashar Assad, made it difficult for would-be donors to transfer aid money to victims of the recent earthquakes. Financial service firms preferred to play it safe rather than risk running afoul of the complex rules and penalties governing sanctions.

Nations or institutions can impose sanctions with or without international backing. The United Nations Security Council has established 31 sanctions regimes since 1966, ranging from wide-ranging economic and trade sanctions to targeted arms embargoes, travel bans, and financial or commodity restrictions. Fifteen are in effect now, according to the world body, mainly focused on supporting political settlement of conflicts, nuclear nonproliferation, and counterterrorism.

"Sanctions do not operate, succeed or fail in a vacuum. The measures are most effective at maintaining or restoring international peace and security when applied as part of a comprehensive strategy encompassing peacekeeping, peacebuilding and peacemaking," the U.N. says. "Contrary to the assumption that sanctions are punitive, many regimes are designed to support governments and regions working towards peaceful transition."

A ‘hotly debated topic’

A recent study from the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, however, takes a deep look and finds that economic sanctions harm people living in target countries, contributing to increases in mortality, poverty, and inequality, and to declines in per-capita income and human rights.

In the report, economist Francisco Rodriguez reviews 32 studies that assess the impact of economic sanctions on living standards. Thirty of the studies found significant declines in targeted countries.

“Whether sanctions hurt regular people in the target countries is a hotly debated topic,” Rodríguez says, “but it shouldn’t be. The evidence from almost all critical examinations of economic sanctions shows that they are very damaging – and sometimes lethal – for people who happen to be living in any of the many and growing number of countries subject to such measures by the U.S., the E.U., or other powerful actors.”

Rodriguez, an economist from Venezuela and now a professor at the University of Denver in Colorado, says it’s difficult to come up with other policy interventions so rigorously pursued in the face of such overwhelming evidence of their adverse impact on the most vulnerable.

Siege warfare, or collateral damage?

This is even more surprising, he says, when you consider the “extremely spotty record” sanctions have in achieving the ultimate goal of forcing change in the conduct of targeted governments.

It is possible, he writes, to view economic sanctions as “collective punishment of civilians and thus as a violation of international law, akin to the use of siege warfare, which is currently considered a war crime.” Others, he notes, consider the pain imposed on the vulnerable as mere collateral damage.

Rodriguez finds that more than 1-in-4 countries are now subject to sanctions by the U.N., the United States or other Western governments. He says 29% of global GDP is produced in sanctioned countries, up from only 4% in the 1960s.

There are dozens of cases of "ineffective" coercion, constraint or signaling among all of the sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council, the world body's most powerful arm, since 1991, according to the SanctionsApp, an interactive tool for the design and analysis of U.N. targeted sanctions. It finds the most common types of U.N. sanctions are targeted arms embargoes, asset freezes and travel bans.

When it comes to effectiveness, the tool shows effective signaling and target stigmatization is significantly easier than coercing targets to change their behavior. Only 11% of all U.N. sanctions episodes since 1991 were deemed effective in coercing target behavior change.

Some 24% succeeded in constraining targets in pursuing undesirable activities, the tool says, while 29% of all episodes sent a clear signal stigmatizing the target of sanctions.

"All U.N. sanctions are intended to send normative signals to the targets and the broader international community," it says. "Not all are meant to constrain targets or change their behavior."

Assessing all purposes of sanctions, the tool concludes, just 14% of the 15-nation council's sanctions regimes over the past three decades were "highly effective" and 38% had "mixed results." The other 48% were deemed "overall ineffective."

A ‘growing debate’

Rodriguez looks to three targeted countries – Afghanistan, Iran and Venezuela – as case studies for his report. In each case, he finds, “sanctions that restricted governments’ access to foreign exchange affected the ability of states to provide essential public goods and services.”

Those most affected by sanctions are also “voiceless in decisions about their adoption,” Rodriguez says.

There is, he writes a “growing debate” about the humanitarian consequences of sanctions, as well as sanctions’ effectiveness in achieving foreign policy goals. Hopefully, Rodriguez says, his new report “will contribute meaningfully to this debate.”