Are economic sanctions an effective instrument of foreign policy?

出自香港新聞網 - 樹仁新傳系學生實習習作

Are economic sanctions an effective instrument of foreign policy? When a country was dominating by a totalitarian government or when a country was holding and developing weapons with great lethality, war would easily sparked. At these situations, international organization such as UN would take action to those countries in order to maintain world peace.

As we look up the history, there was generally three ways to enforce a country to switch the regime or to change the policy, that are, by diplomacy pressure, by economic sanction and by military force.

Economic sanctions were increasingly imposed by the UN Security Council to prevent, manage or resolve violent conflict. However, does economic sanctions really work?

Compare with using military force economic sanctions is definitely running more compatibility, as it’s less expensive and low-risk way of showing concern. After the end of Cold War, the Security Council has imposed comprehensive economic sanctions four times; partial sanctions six times; targeted financial measures twice; and arms embargoes eleven times. Nevertheless in these many times implement to economic sanctions, we can see that there is rare a successful case.

Like the case of UN imposed comprehensive sanctions on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Aimed at halting the war Bosnia, UN freezes the FRY government’s financial assets, a ban on maritime and air traffic and a ban on participation in international sporting and cultural events. FRY was indeed vulnerable to the sanctions, although private citizen had substantial foreign-currency reserves to mitigate the initial effect of the sanctions. However, UN and EU endorsed a peace plan for Bosnia and claimed to tighten the sanctions if the plan was not accepted. The plan though initially agreed by Milosevic, the disagreements among the Western allies made it without any changes. In FRY case, military action was at last coupled with more tightened sanctions against the Bosnian Serbs to ended the Bosnian war. FRY case told us economic sanctions combined with the threat of military force was the key to changing Milosevic’s behaviors that is to achieve the goal. Yet different country has it own unique situation, different proper ways should be used. In 1993 April, the UN Security Council threatened Haiti with an oil and arms embargo in order to return to power the country’s democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted by a military coup in 1992. As Haiti was the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, which was vulnerable to sanctions, it quickly responded and made an agreement of allowing for the creation of a new government. But the agreement turned out was only a dud cheque, which the implementation was forever suspended. Before UN reimposed the sanctions again, Haitian military and its supporters had stocked up on supplies and mustered enough confidence to defy UN, which the junta expelled all UN officers in July 1994. When the final agreement of the strengthened sanctions had been made, it caused only little effect, and as with the FRY, there were also missed opportunities in Haiti. Haiti case shows also that sanctions can be effective if all coercive options, including the use of military for, remain open.

Sanctions are another case for some countries which depend on “specialized” trade, such as UNITA in Angola and Sieraa Leone. Since UNITA guerrilla groups in UNITA was not engaged in normal trade, which they had access to diamonds enabling it to keep its military campaign alive, sharpened the impact of sanctions greatly. The same case is Sieraa, which cooperated with Libya to passé through the diamonds. Sanctions were again got little effect. These cases demonstrated that true ownership of assets can be concealed in many ways, and therefore monitoring and enforcement mechanisms are essentials for a sound sanctions.

From the above cases, we see that using economic sanction alone to switch one’s country politics was never succeeded. Economic sanctions are more likely as a warning signal before using military force then an authentic method. And some may argued that economic sanction would work if implemented soundly. It may be the truth, however, when economic sanctions were carrying out comprehensively, there would also be humanities problems or causing backfires.

As in the comprehensive sanctions against Iraq in 1990, though it seemed work, which the economic in Iraq was greatly deteriorated, the political environment didn’t change any, that Saddam remains in charge in Baghdad. Not only the sanctions did not have the desired effect, but also hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, disproportionately children, died as a result of lacking food and medicine. UN was later adopted Oil for Food programme, however it have not prevented the Iraqi population from suffering and was more later refused by Bagahad in order to make apparent strategy to increase the misery of the Iraqi people. This backfire worked, which by the end of 1999, couples of countries such as China, France were lobbying for an end to sanctions and remain only UN itself to suspending the sanctions. The humanitarian situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate.UN think it is worthwhile to do so, no matter at last the Saddam regime still ended by military force by US in 2003.

Some said sanctions would work if imposed compatibly, just like the case of Libya, which Quaddafi gave up the nuclear weapons scheme in 2003, but is this really due to the economic sanctions in light of the oil-rich nation? An inauthentic economic sanction presented was always a symbolic means rather than an effective solutions, however comprehensive sanctions would cause great humanities problem and also at last need military to achieve the desired effect. Thus, are economic sanctions really needed? The answer would always be yes, it seem contradict, but sanctions have its functions to act , not be expected to shift any regime, not to be maintained a huge long period, that are a good helper of the military force.

Military force must always be the last resort to maintain world peace. And world peace should be the only reason of using military force. I do agreed that while country like Iran which prompting the nuclear scheme as a great threat of the world safety should be stroked. Since economic sanctions as we discussed above was rarely useful, especially in oil-rich country like Iran, sometimes there are alternatives except military force. However, it should be proved by sufficient evident that the country has broke the international law, and whenever using military force should be passed by the permanent members of the Security Council of UN, but not only one country act. If not, it is very possible that developing nuclear weapons was only an excuse of invasion of a country.