Pros and Cons - Debbie Newman, Ben Woolgar 2014
Sanctions, use of
Section C. International relations
Sanctions refer to any measures (economic, cultural or diplomatic) which target a country for specific policies or institutional structures (such as dictatorship). In the past, sanctions were applied on a broad-brush basis, to prohibit or severely limit all contact with a country (such as funnelling nearly all the money that went into Iraq through the UN Oil-for-Food programme; or the international prohibition on trade with Burma), but increasingly, those are being replaced by ’smart sanctions’, which shut down the bank accounts and companies of specific individuals within a regime (such as the sanctions on Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwean regime), and often for a specific purpose (for instance, the prevention of Iran’s nuclear weapons programme).
Pros
[1] Economic sanctions are the best method available to the international community for altering the behaviour of unpleasant regimes. Bloodshed is avoided and direct intervention into another country’s affairs is eschewed. By linking sanctions to specific behaviour that we wish to change, we can send a clear message to regimes which abuse human rights, defy democratic election results and proliferate nuclear weapons.
[2] There are limited examples where economic sanctions have been conclusively effective, but that is because sanctions have seldom been applied effectively by the whole international community. However, China’s acceptance of sanctions against Iran and, more limitedly, in Sudan suggests that they are adopting a new turn towards a ’moral foreign policy’, and it will be easier to get their agreement to sanctions in future.
[3] Sanctions can be designed in such a way that the suffering of the people is minimised, and pressure on the leadership is maximised. Oil-for-Food did weaken Saddam Hussein’s regime substantially, and sanctions on North Korea managed to minimise the consequences of famine without expanding the powers of the regime there.
[4] Even if sanctions are often ineffective, to continue to trade with ’nasty’ regimes represents complicity in their actions. Too often in the past we have sold them arms, trained their soldiers or bought their oil, diamonds, gold or crops; that makes us directly involved in their actions in an unacceptable way.
Cons
[1] As with all intervention in dictatorial regimes for whatever purpose, sanctions are fine in theory, but can have serious unintended consequences. The standard example of success against South Africa is questionable; many factors were at work there and change was a long time in coming. Iraq was under sanctions for many years without liberalisation; the same applies to Cuba. It is unclear that sanctions work. But worse still, they can entrench dictators’ powers by allowing them to paint the West as evil interferers, while Western states are just trying to prevent popular suffering.
[2] It will always be difficult to obtain full international consensus on sanctions; and the targets are usually more insular states which depend less on wide trade links in any case. Even when potentially effective, they may be circumvented by smuggling, corruption and other forms of sanction breaking. For instance, there is substantial evidence that many Western companies are still trading with banned Iranian groups through offshore accounts.
[3] Too often the sanctions hurt the people they are meant to help; the poor will always be a last priority in times of economic crisis, while the ruling elite will take first pick of available resources. We simply lack the ability to monitor how and where this money is actually spent, because dictators hide it in Swiss bank accounts.
[4] To claim the moral high ground in this way is pure hypocrisy. Sanctions have invariably been used selectively, putting national interests first — despite their questionable behaviour, China and Nigeria have not been targets for heavy sanctions because they are seen as valuable strategic and economic partners. Serbia, Kenya and Cuba — which are targeted more seriously — are seen as of little value to the West. Perhaps the clearest example of this was the Oil-for-Food scheme in Iraq, which focused on maintaining the flow of oil to the West.
Possible motions
This House believes that sanctions do more harm than good.
This House believes that sanctions are always preferable to war.
Related topics
Democracy, imposition of
Dictators, assassination of