Be realistic about what economic sanctions can do
(Excerpts from Chapter 6 of Economic Sanctions Reconsidered)
Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, Kimberly Ann Elliott, and Barbara Oegg
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Book Description
Economic sanctions continue to play an important role in the response to terrorism, nuclear proliferation, military conflicts, and other foreign policy crises. But poor design and implementation of sanctions policies often mean that they fall short of their desired effects. This landmark study, first published in 1985, delves into the rich experience of sanctions in the 20th century to harvest lessons on how to use sanctions more effectively. This volume—now conveniently available in a paperback format—is the updated third edition of this widely cited study. The authors' unique database on sanctions now covers almost 200 case studies.
Chapter 6. Conclusions and Policy Recommendations
...
Are Sanctions Effective?
Overall, we found sanctions to be at least partially successful in 34 percent of the cases that we documented. However, the success rate importantly depended on the type of policy or governmental change sought. Episodes involving modest and limited goals, such as the release of a political prisoner, succeeded half the time. Cases involving attempts to change regimes (e.g., by destabilizing a particular leader or by encouraging an autocrat to democratize), to impair a foreign adversary’s military potential, or to otherwise change its policies in a major way succeeded in about 30 percent of those cases. Efforts to disrupt relatively minor military adventures succeeded in only a fifth of cases where that was the goal.
...
Thus, in our view, the bald statement “sanctions never work” is demonstrably wrong. That said, there are several reasons why sanctions often do not “work.” First, sanctions are of limited utility in achieving foreign policy goals that depend on compelling the target country to take actions it stoutly resists. In some cases, the security, political, or other costs of complying with the sender’s demands may simply be higher than any pain that can be imposed with sanctions. In other instances, particularly situations involving small target countries and relatively modest policy goals, sanctions have helped alter foreign behavior. Even in those cases, how ever, sanctions may fail if the sender feels less intensely about the stakes involved than the target, since the sender may choose to impose sanctions that are too weak to achieve even relatively modest objectives.
Second, we classify some sanctions as failing to produce a real change in the target’s behavior when their primary if unstated purpose—namely, demonstrating resolve at home, signaling disapproval abroad, or simple punishment—may have been fully realized. As one analyst has noted, when sanctions have been used primarily for domestic political or other rhetorical purposes, “[the imposition of] ‘effective’ sanctions [in an instrumental sense] were not a primary policy goal, and such sanctions were not imposed” (Malloy 1990, 626). This point is clearly illustrated by President George H. W. Bush’s sanctions against China after the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square.
Third, sanctions sometimes fail because sender countries have crosscutting interests and conflicting goals in their overall relations with the target country. Tensions among economic interests in the sender country that could either benefit or lose from a disruption in trade, finance, and investment often lead to tepid measures timidly imposed. Cross-cutting economic and security interests with the target regime complicate the construction of a sanctions package, leading to ambiguous signals of policy resolve and intent by the sender country.
...
Policy Recommendations: Using Sanctions More Effectively
...
It is clear that sanctions sometimes bear fruit but only when planted in the right soil and nurtured properly. We therefore offer seven propositions for the statesman who would act as a careful gardener. These recommendations are intended to maximize the chances of success when sanctions are deployed to coerce changes in the policies of a target country. The same advice is not necessarily optimal for achieving other goals, such as signaling resolve to allies or placating domestic constituencies.
Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
Policymakers often have inflated expectations of what sanctions can accomplish. This is especially true of the United States today and was true of the United Kingdom in an earlier era. At most there is a weak correlation between economic deprivation and political willingness to change. The economic impact of sanctions may be pronounced, especially on the target, but other factors in the situation often overshadow the impact of sanctions in determining the political outcome.
Sanctions are seldom effective in impairing the military potential of an important power or in bringing about major changes in the policies of the target country. Of the 62 cases involving these high policy goals, success was achieved in 19 cases, or 30 percent of the time. This is not a bad record, given the high stakes for the target in these cases. Moreover, sanctions were often necessary to rally public opinion in the sender country. But they are seldom sufficient to achieve even a modest part of the objectives sought in the absence, or the threat, of force. ...
...
Efforts to compel changes in target-country regimes also succeed in slightly less than one of three attempts, while efforts to disrupt relatively minor military adventures by targets against third parties are even less successful. In the regime change cases, senders are on average far larger than their targets, and the average trade linkage is higher for this category than any other, so the problem does not appear to be one of inadequate potential leverage. Rather, in these cases, the costs of complying
with the sender’s demands are generally high, and the target is typically more intensely interested in the outcome than the sender. This divergence seems obvious when the demand is for the targeted government to give up power (in regime change cases) or desist from a military excursion deemed vital to its national security. ...
...
Friends Are More Likely to Comply than Adversaries
While this advice may sound like blasphemy to diplomats, the evidence suggests that economic sanctions are most effective when aimed against erstwhile friends and close trading partners. These countries have more to lose, diplomatically as well as economically, than countries with which the sender has limited or adversarial relations. To be sure, cordial target countries may be less likely to face the threat that a dispute will be escalated or that force will be used, but they are more likely to receive foreign aid or to have extensive trade and financial relations with the sender country. All these economic ties are at risk in a sanctions episode. Furthermore, an ally of the sender will be a less likely candidate for offsetting assistance from black knights and will be less willing to accept assistance if offered.
...
Beware Autocratic Regimes
It is hard to bully a bully with economic measures. The evidence from the cases suggests that democratic regimes are more susceptible to economic pressure than autocratic ones and that economic weakness and political instability in the target country can make it still more vulnerable, but the evidence on this last point is weaker than expected.
...
Slam the Hammer, Don’t Turn the Screw
Political leaders value an incremental approach toward deploying sanctions to avoid immediate confrontation and to justify the subsequent use of force, if all else fails. Our analysis continues to stress the opposite: There is a better chance to avoid military escalation if sanctions are deployed with maximum impact. That was our conclusion in 1990 regarding Iraq and is our policy advice in 2007 in the confrontation with Iran over its ambitions to develop nuclear weapons. Vigorously using the stick, however, does not mean that carrots cannot be part of the package as well.
...
The lesson that sanctions imposed quickly and decisively are more likely to succeed can pose a dilemma, however. When the goal is ambitious, especially involving the target’s national security, decisive sanctions usually require multilateral cooperation, if not from the UN Security Council, at least from the industrial democracies. However, ensuring multilateral cooperation takes time to arrange and often is not achievable. ...
...
More Is Not Necessarily Merrier
A large coalition of sender countries does not necessarily make a sanctions episode more likely to succeed. International support for a sanctions policy can strengthen the political signal and economic threat, but it also can hurt chances of success by diluting the scope and impact of the common sanctions in the process of securing agreement among the senders.
In general, the greater the number of countries needed to implement sanctions and the longer the sanctions run, the greater the difficulty of sustaining an effective coalition. An observation on military alliances made by the great 19th century Prussian strategist Field Marshal Count Helmuth Von Moltke applies equally well to 21st century sanctions. Von Moltke held:
A coalition is excellent as long as all interests of each member are the same. But in all coalitions the interests of the allies coincide only up to a certain point. As soon as one of the allies has to make sacrifices for the attainment of a large common objective, one cannot usually count on the coalition’s efficacy. Coalitions never readily perceive that the large objects of a war cannot be attained without such sacrifices.
...
Choose the Right Tool for the Job
Sanctions often are the first course in a menu of actions against belligerent nations. In many instances, they are deployed in conjunction with other measures directed against the target: covert action, quasi-military measures, or regular military operations. Indeed, in some cases, economic sanctions merely provided an interim governmental response until military action could be organized—as President George H. W. Bush admitted in his memoirs about the first Gulf War.
...
Don’t Be a Cheapskate or a Spendthrift
Senders need to match costs imposed on domestic constituencies (and allies) to expected benefits; otherwise, public support for the sanctions policy may quickly erode. But senders also need to take care not to worry so much about minimizing self-inflicted costs that they devalue the impact of the overall exercise.
...
Although some analysts have argued that imposing a high cost on one’s own economy sends a signal of seriousness, the intended signal may be quickly drowned out by a cacophony of protests from injured domestic parties. Efforts to extend sanctions extraterritorially will very likely produce the same effect abroad—in part due to “blocking statutes” that were introduced in the United Kingdom and elsewhere starting in the 1980s to legally block British firms from complying with US extraterritorial controls.
...
Conclusion: Look Before You Leap
Sender governments should think through their means and objectives before taking a final decision to deploy sanctions. Leaders in the sender country should be confident that their goals are within their reach, that they can impose sufficient economic pain to command the attention of the target country, that they can follow up economic sanctions with the threat or reality of military force or covert action as necessary, that their efforts will not prompt offsetting policies by other powers, and that the sanctions chosen will not impose insupportable costs on their domestic constituents and foreign allies. These propitious conditions arise less often than the leaders of major powers seem to imagine.
Although economic sanctions may be the best or even the only option in some cases where it is politically necessary to “do something,” not just any sanction will do: The sanction chosen must be appropriate to the circumstances. Senders usually have multiple goals in mind when they impose sanctions, and coercion is not always at the top of the list. Prudent leaders will carefully analyze the unintended costs and consequences before choosing a particular measure. Like a fine suit, sanctions should be carefully tailored to the shape of the objective. Equally important, prudent leaders should consider, in advance, how they or their successors will discard or refashion the old suit when it no longer serves its original purpose.
https://www.piie.com/publications/chapters_preview/4075/06iie4075.pdf
Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, Kimberly Ann Elliott, and Barbara Oegg
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Book Description
Economic sanctions continue to play an important role in the response to terrorism, nuclear proliferation, military conflicts, and other foreign policy crises. But poor design and implementation of sanctions policies often mean that they fall short of their desired effects. This landmark study, first published in 1985, delves into the rich experience of sanctions in the 20th century to harvest lessons on how to use sanctions more effectively. This volume—now conveniently available in a paperback format—is the updated third edition of this widely cited study. The authors' unique database on sanctions now covers almost 200 case studies.
Chapter 6. Conclusions and Policy Recommendations
...
Are Sanctions Effective?
Overall, we found sanctions to be at least partially successful in 34 percent of the cases that we documented. However, the success rate importantly depended on the type of policy or governmental change sought. Episodes involving modest and limited goals, such as the release of a political prisoner, succeeded half the time. Cases involving attempts to change regimes (e.g., by destabilizing a particular leader or by encouraging an autocrat to democratize), to impair a foreign adversary’s military potential, or to otherwise change its policies in a major way succeeded in about 30 percent of those cases. Efforts to disrupt relatively minor military adventures succeeded in only a fifth of cases where that was the goal.
...
Thus, in our view, the bald statement “sanctions never work” is demonstrably wrong. That said, there are several reasons why sanctions often do not “work.” First, sanctions are of limited utility in achieving foreign policy goals that depend on compelling the target country to take actions it stoutly resists. In some cases, the security, political, or other costs of complying with the sender’s demands may simply be higher than any pain that can be imposed with sanctions. In other instances, particularly situations involving small target countries and relatively modest policy goals, sanctions have helped alter foreign behavior. Even in those cases, how ever, sanctions may fail if the sender feels less intensely about the stakes involved than the target, since the sender may choose to impose sanctions that are too weak to achieve even relatively modest objectives.
Second, we classify some sanctions as failing to produce a real change in the target’s behavior when their primary if unstated purpose—namely, demonstrating resolve at home, signaling disapproval abroad, or simple punishment—may have been fully realized. As one analyst has noted, when sanctions have been used primarily for domestic political or other rhetorical purposes, “[the imposition of] ‘effective’ sanctions [in an instrumental sense] were not a primary policy goal, and such sanctions were not imposed” (Malloy 1990, 626). This point is clearly illustrated by President George H. W. Bush’s sanctions against China after the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square.
Third, sanctions sometimes fail because sender countries have crosscutting interests and conflicting goals in their overall relations with the target country. Tensions among economic interests in the sender country that could either benefit or lose from a disruption in trade, finance, and investment often lead to tepid measures timidly imposed. Cross-cutting economic and security interests with the target regime complicate the construction of a sanctions package, leading to ambiguous signals of policy resolve and intent by the sender country.
...
Policy Recommendations: Using Sanctions More Effectively
...
It is clear that sanctions sometimes bear fruit but only when planted in the right soil and nurtured properly. We therefore offer seven propositions for the statesman who would act as a careful gardener. These recommendations are intended to maximize the chances of success when sanctions are deployed to coerce changes in the policies of a target country. The same advice is not necessarily optimal for achieving other goals, such as signaling resolve to allies or placating domestic constituencies.
Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
Policymakers often have inflated expectations of what sanctions can accomplish. This is especially true of the United States today and was true of the United Kingdom in an earlier era. At most there is a weak correlation between economic deprivation and political willingness to change. The economic impact of sanctions may be pronounced, especially on the target, but other factors in the situation often overshadow the impact of sanctions in determining the political outcome.
Sanctions are seldom effective in impairing the military potential of an important power or in bringing about major changes in the policies of the target country. Of the 62 cases involving these high policy goals, success was achieved in 19 cases, or 30 percent of the time. This is not a bad record, given the high stakes for the target in these cases. Moreover, sanctions were often necessary to rally public opinion in the sender country. But they are seldom sufficient to achieve even a modest part of the objectives sought in the absence, or the threat, of force. ...
...
Efforts to compel changes in target-country regimes also succeed in slightly less than one of three attempts, while efforts to disrupt relatively minor military adventures by targets against third parties are even less successful. In the regime change cases, senders are on average far larger than their targets, and the average trade linkage is higher for this category than any other, so the problem does not appear to be one of inadequate potential leverage. Rather, in these cases, the costs of complying
with the sender’s demands are generally high, and the target is typically more intensely interested in the outcome than the sender. This divergence seems obvious when the demand is for the targeted government to give up power (in regime change cases) or desist from a military excursion deemed vital to its national security. ...
...
Friends Are More Likely to Comply than Adversaries
While this advice may sound like blasphemy to diplomats, the evidence suggests that economic sanctions are most effective when aimed against erstwhile friends and close trading partners. These countries have more to lose, diplomatically as well as economically, than countries with which the sender has limited or adversarial relations. To be sure, cordial target countries may be less likely to face the threat that a dispute will be escalated or that force will be used, but they are more likely to receive foreign aid or to have extensive trade and financial relations with the sender country. All these economic ties are at risk in a sanctions episode. Furthermore, an ally of the sender will be a less likely candidate for offsetting assistance from black knights and will be less willing to accept assistance if offered.
...
Beware Autocratic Regimes
It is hard to bully a bully with economic measures. The evidence from the cases suggests that democratic regimes are more susceptible to economic pressure than autocratic ones and that economic weakness and political instability in the target country can make it still more vulnerable, but the evidence on this last point is weaker than expected.
...
Slam the Hammer, Don’t Turn the Screw
Political leaders value an incremental approach toward deploying sanctions to avoid immediate confrontation and to justify the subsequent use of force, if all else fails. Our analysis continues to stress the opposite: There is a better chance to avoid military escalation if sanctions are deployed with maximum impact. That was our conclusion in 1990 regarding Iraq and is our policy advice in 2007 in the confrontation with Iran over its ambitions to develop nuclear weapons. Vigorously using the stick, however, does not mean that carrots cannot be part of the package as well.
...
The lesson that sanctions imposed quickly and decisively are more likely to succeed can pose a dilemma, however. When the goal is ambitious, especially involving the target’s national security, decisive sanctions usually require multilateral cooperation, if not from the UN Security Council, at least from the industrial democracies. However, ensuring multilateral cooperation takes time to arrange and often is not achievable. ...
...
More Is Not Necessarily Merrier
A large coalition of sender countries does not necessarily make a sanctions episode more likely to succeed. International support for a sanctions policy can strengthen the political signal and economic threat, but it also can hurt chances of success by diluting the scope and impact of the common sanctions in the process of securing agreement among the senders.
In general, the greater the number of countries needed to implement sanctions and the longer the sanctions run, the greater the difficulty of sustaining an effective coalition. An observation on military alliances made by the great 19th century Prussian strategist Field Marshal Count Helmuth Von Moltke applies equally well to 21st century sanctions. Von Moltke held:
A coalition is excellent as long as all interests of each member are the same. But in all coalitions the interests of the allies coincide only up to a certain point. As soon as one of the allies has to make sacrifices for the attainment of a large common objective, one cannot usually count on the coalition’s efficacy. Coalitions never readily perceive that the large objects of a war cannot be attained without such sacrifices.
...
Choose the Right Tool for the Job
Sanctions often are the first course in a menu of actions against belligerent nations. In many instances, they are deployed in conjunction with other measures directed against the target: covert action, quasi-military measures, or regular military operations. Indeed, in some cases, economic sanctions merely provided an interim governmental response until military action could be organized—as President George H. W. Bush admitted in his memoirs about the first Gulf War.
...
Don’t Be a Cheapskate or a Spendthrift
Senders need to match costs imposed on domestic constituencies (and allies) to expected benefits; otherwise, public support for the sanctions policy may quickly erode. But senders also need to take care not to worry so much about minimizing self-inflicted costs that they devalue the impact of the overall exercise.
...
Although some analysts have argued that imposing a high cost on one’s own economy sends a signal of seriousness, the intended signal may be quickly drowned out by a cacophony of protests from injured domestic parties. Efforts to extend sanctions extraterritorially will very likely produce the same effect abroad—in part due to “blocking statutes” that were introduced in the United Kingdom and elsewhere starting in the 1980s to legally block British firms from complying with US extraterritorial controls.
...
Conclusion: Look Before You Leap
Sender governments should think through their means and objectives before taking a final decision to deploy sanctions. Leaders in the sender country should be confident that their goals are within their reach, that they can impose sufficient economic pain to command the attention of the target country, that they can follow up economic sanctions with the threat or reality of military force or covert action as necessary, that their efforts will not prompt offsetting policies by other powers, and that the sanctions chosen will not impose insupportable costs on their domestic constituents and foreign allies. These propitious conditions arise less often than the leaders of major powers seem to imagine.
Although economic sanctions may be the best or even the only option in some cases where it is politically necessary to “do something,” not just any sanction will do: The sanction chosen must be appropriate to the circumstances. Senders usually have multiple goals in mind when they impose sanctions, and coercion is not always at the top of the list. Prudent leaders will carefully analyze the unintended costs and consequences before choosing a particular measure. Like a fine suit, sanctions should be carefully tailored to the shape of the objective. Equally important, prudent leaders should consider, in advance, how they or their successors will discard or refashion the old suit when it no longer serves its original purpose.
https://www.piie.com/publications/chapters_preview/4075/06iie4075.pdf
