January, 1999 / February 1999
Senator Jesse Helms
Foreign Affairs

What Sanctions Epidemic?;
U.S. Business' Curious Crusade

In the past year, a handful of Washington business lobbyists have waged a blistering campaign to persuade the world that Congress has been engaged in a spasm of sanctions proliferation.

Reliance on unilateral sanctions, these lobbyists warn us, is a disturbing new epidemic. Their campaign has sparked dozens of news articles and editorials decrying the "sanctions frenzy" and castigating Congress' "voracious appetite" for sanctions. Normally responsible journalists parrot statistics -- conveniently furnished by these business lobbyists -- alleging that in the last few years the United States has placed anywhere from one-half to two-thirds of the world's population under the yoke of unilateral economic sanctions. The New York Times clamors that "more than 60 laws or executive orders authorizing sanctions . . . have been enacted in the last five years." Even President Clinton jumped on the antisanctions bandwagon, announcing in 1998 that the United States has gone "sanctions happy."

This is sheer nonsense. The statistics peddled by these lobbyists are grossly inflated and intentionally misleading. Half of the world is not living under American sanctions -- nowhere near it. There is no epidemic. Congress has been cautious and circumspect, passing just a handful of carefully targeted sanctions laws. And unilateral economic sanctions are by no means new: they have been vital weapons in America's foreign policy arsenal for more than 200 years. I have been and continue to be a friend of American business. But the distortions spread by this small cabal of lobbyists in the name of American business are inexcusable. The time has come for a reality check.

LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND STATISTICS

The statistic has become conventional wisdom: in just four years the United States has imposed sanctions 61 times, burdening 2.3 billion people (42 percent of the world). That would be pretty awful, save for one thing -- it is not true. These figures have been circulated by the anti-sanctions business group USA Engage, based on a study by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). They are a fabrication. At my request, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) evaluated the NAM claim that from 1993 through 1996, "61 U.S. laws and executive actions were enacted authorizing unilateral sanctions for foreign policy purposes." CRS reported that it "could not defensibly" justify the number. "We find the calculation used in . . . the NAM study to be flawed, even if the specific [sanctions] were fairly characterized, which is not always the case," CRS concluded.

How did NAM come up with 61 sanctions? The study alleges that 20 laws were passed by Congress and 41 were imposed by presidential action. This is a gross distortion. Nearly three-quarters of the congressional measures were not sanctions at all but conditions, limitations, or restrictions on U.S. foreign aid. One measure placed conditions on assistance to the Palestine Liberation Organization. Another barred aid for military or police training to Haitians involved in drug trafficking or human rights abuses. One "sanction" blocked assistance to countries knowingly harboring fugitives wanted by the international war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Still another prohibited Defense Department aid to countries supporting terrorists. Are these the measures that NAM and USA Engage want Congress to curtail? Let's hope not.

But what about those 41 "sanctions" imposed by the executive branch? Five are not unilateral, as NAM charges, but rather represent U.S. compliance with U.N. Security Council sanctions -- multilateral, by definition. In seven cases, the NAM study counts the same sanction repeatedly, identifying it each time as a separate sanction. For example, the measure declaring Sudan a terrorist state is counted five different times. NAM lists two cases when no sanction was ever imposed, including a November 1994 executive order that even NAM concedes in fine print "did not impose any specific new sanctions on any countries." Eight cases represent mere restrictions on U.S. foreign aid. Five are limited bans affecting only military exports to Zaire, Nigeria, Sudan, Haiti, and Angola. Thirteen affect only a specific foreign company or person -- not an entire country, not an entire industry, but one specific entity -- for example, banning imports from the Chinese Qinghai Hide and Garment Factory for its use of prison slave labor or seizing the assets of individual Colombian drug traffickers.

These actions are obviously not what most people think of as "sanctions." They think instead of broad trade bans affecting whole countries, entire industries, vast populations, or access to large markets -- not conditioning U.S. foreign aid, blocking imports from a single prison factory in China, seizing the assets of drug barons, or halting the sale of lethal weapons to terrorist states.

The claim that 42 percent of the world's population has been affected is also bogus. The study lists the entire population of the former Zaire (now the Congo) as being under U.S. sanction because the United States barred sales of defense items to the government. The same goes for China, Nigeria, Mauritania, and Pakistan, where CRS notes that such highly targeted actions "put the entire populations of these countries into NAM'S calculation, even though most people . . . are not likely to experience significant impact from or awareness of [the] imposition." U.S. access to those countries' commercial goods-and-services markets remains unaffected.

What is the reality? Between 1993 and 1996, Congress passed and the president signed a grand total of five new sanctions laws: the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994, the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, and the Free Burma Act of 1996. During the same period, the president imposed just four new sanctions: declaring Sudan a terrorist state; banning imports of munitions and ammunition from China; tightening travel-related restrictions, cash remittance levels, and the sending of gift parcels to Cuba (restrictions that have since been lifted); and imposing a ban on new contractual agreements or investment in Iran. Nine new sanctions. That is it. The allegation of a sanctions epidemic is demonstrably false -- a myth spread with the intention of misleading Congress, the American public, and the American business community.

UNMENTIONABLES

Even more telling is what the business lobbyists leave out of their inflated inventory of sanctions. As they rail against "unilateral economic sanctions for foreign policy purposes" (NAM's phrase), they conveniently omit discussing unilateral economic sanctions for trade purposes. Retaliatory trade sanctions are not mentioned by NAM and are not covered by the proposed Sanctions Reform Act -- a stunning admission of the efficacy of sanctions. After all, if unilateral sanctions did not work, why on earth would business want to protect the U.S. ability to impose them in trade disputes? The ability to threaten and impose unilateral economic sanctions is a vital tool of U.S. trade policy, just as it is in U.S. foreign policy.

What these lobbyists really dislike is not the idea of sanctions themselves but the reason some sanctions are imposed. They tacitly admit that sanctions work but insist that sanctions are good only if they defend business interests, not national interests. According to the lobbyists, the United States should be hamstrung when a government proliferates weapons of mass destruction, commits genocide, tortures its people, or supports terrorists. But if that same government floods the American market with cheap television sets, America should throw the book at it. But, of course, the business lobbyists cannot say that, so they attempt to confuse the issue with cooked-up data and claims of an epidemic. They establish groups with clever monikers like "USA Engage," whose very name implies that those who disagree with them are isolationists. But what they really stand for is not engagement but mercantilism -- an amoral foreign policy.

GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE FOUNDERS

Sanctions have always been an American foreign policy weapon. Economic sanctions were imposed by the American colonies against Britain in response to the Stamp and Townsend Acts, in both cases forcing their repeal. Jefferson and Madison both passionately advocated economic sanctions, believing not only that they were legitimate but that they should be America's primary diplomatic tools. In an 1805 letter to Jefferson, Madison argued, "The efficacy of an embargo . . . cannot be denied. Indeed, if a commercial weapon can be properly crafted for the Executive hand, it is more and more apparent to me that it can force nations . . . to respect our rights." Jefferson, for his part, contended that in foreign affairs "three alternatives alone are to be chosen from. 1. Embargo. 2. War. 3. Submission and tribute."

Jefferson is right. There are, indeed, three tools in foreign policy: diplomacy, sanctions, and war. Take away sanctions and how can the United States deal with terrorists, proliferators, and genocidal dictators? Our options would be empty talk or sending in the marines. Without sanctions, the United States would be virtually powerless to influence events absent war. Sanctions may not be perfect and they are not always the answer, but they are often the only weapon.

Unilateral sanctions, in fact, are the linchpin of our nonproliferation policy. According to a recently declassified analysis by the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, "the history of U.S.-China relations shows that China has made specific nonproliferation commitments only under the threat or imposition of sanctions." Short of war, sanctions are the main leverage the United States has over China.

They have also played a crucial role in trade disputes. The threat of unilateral sanctions on China over intellectual property rights and unfair trade barriers has forced China several times to yield. In November 1991, the U.S. trade representative threatened $ 1.5 billion in trade sanctions if an intellectual property rights agreement was not reached by January 1992. Not surprisingly, such an agreement was struck on January 16, 1992. No wonder business lobbyists are so keen to retain unilateral sanctions in the trade arsenal -- even as they campaign to remove them from our nation's foreign policy.

U.S. sanctions helped bring down the Soviet Union. They played a pivotal role in forcing communist Poland to release political prisoners and legalize Solidarity -- sparking the collapse of communism. Our targeted Nigerian sanctions are beginning to bear fruit as the military government wearies of its pariah status. In Guatemala, the decision to freeze $ 47 million in U.S. aid (one of the "sanctions" that business is lobbying to curtail) and the mere threat of lost trade convinced business, labor, and military leaders to roll back President Jorge Serrano Elias' May 1993 coup. Swiss banks' recent decision to pay $ 1.25 billion in reparations to Holocaust survivors was a direct result of threatened sanctions, as admitted by the Union Bank of Switzerland.

Critics respond that sanctions have failed to bring down regimes in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, and Cuba. Perhaps -- but they have effectively contained the Saddam Husseins, Mu'ammar al-Qadhafis, and Hafiz al-Asads of the world. Without sanctions, Saddam would now be threatening the world with VX missiles, Qadhafi would be blowing up U.S. passenger planes, and Asad would be planning terrorist operations against U.S. citizens. If this policy represents failure, it beats capitulation any day. As for Cuba, until 1991 the U.S. embargo was offset by $ 5 billion to $ 7 billion in Soviet subsidies. Only without them has the embargo begun to take a toll on Castro's regime. The moment the embargo kicked in, Castro's efforts to finance Marxist insurgencies stopped, allowing the nearly complete democratic transformation of the western hemisphere. Castro's regime is teetering; unless America gives up its leverage by unconditionally lifting the embargo, his successors will be anxious to exchange normalized relations with the United States for a democratic transition in Cuba.

STAYING THE COURSE

When sanctions do not work, it is often because the target government doubts our resolve to keep them imposed. And with good reason: the Clinton administration views sanctions as domestic public relations tools rather than as foreign policy weapons. For example, President Clinton signed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act live on CNN. But once the camera lights dimmed and the time came to implement it, he lost his nerve. This sent the message to Iran and other rogue states that the administration talks tough but caves in under pressure. It is the same with Cuba. After the Castro regime murdered four innocent people, including three Americans, by shooting down two civilian planes flying over international waters, Clinton made a bold speech for the cameras and signed the Helms-Burton law. Since then, he has done everything in his power to avoid enforcing it. Clinton has also gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid imposing sanctions on China for its missile proliferation, despite incontrovertible evidence from American intelligence that sanctionable activities have taken place.

Congress has given the president great flexibility in most U.S. sanctions laws. National-interest waivers let the White House temporarily or permanently suspend prescribed sanctions. Even so, when the administration feels Congress has set the bar too high for these waivers, it can get around it by, as President Clinton recently said, "fudging an evaluation of the facts." If anything, Congress has already given the president too much flexibility.

HANDCUFFING AMERICA

Ironically, those who criticize sanctions as a one-size-fits-all foreign policy propose a worse solution -- the Sanctions Reform Act. This cookie-cutter legislation is no solution at all. Instead of providing greater flexibility on sanctions policy -- the clarion call of the reform crowd -- this law does the exact opposite by tying the hands of both Congress and the president.

The bill prohibits the president from implementing any sanctions for a mandatory 45-day "cooling-off" period. That may sound reasonable, but in practice placing a six-week shackle on all U.S. sanctions in every situation and circumstance is dangerous folly. Ponder one example: after Libyan terrorists blew up Pan Am flight 103, the United Nations spent months debating appropriate sanctions. Meanwhile, Libya divested itself of all its reachable assets, thereby avoiding the sanctions' impact. The Sanctions Reform Act would essentially afford other terrorist states the same courtesy. While the United States "cools off" for six weeks, terrorists, proliferators, and dictators will take evasive measures -- quietly divesting assets, concealing evidence, and finding safe haven for fugitives.

The Sanctions Reform Act would also impose a mandatory two-year "sunset" on all new U.S. sanctions. Another bad idea. A two-year sunset writes "sanctions fatigue" into law, sending the target state a clear message: hunker down and wait out the storm since U.S. resolve will collapse on a fixed date. The bill also mandates the "sanctity of contracts." Again, this sounds reasonable, but it is not. What happens if a U.S. company contracts to sell militarily sensitive technology to a country that suddenly tests a nuclear bomb (India, Pakistan), invades a neighbor (Iraq), engages in genocide (Serbia), or commits an act of terrorism (Iran, Libya)? The Sanctions Reform Act would prevent the United States from breaching the contract by stopping those militarily sensitive sales.

None of this means that the United States should never protect existing business contracts with sanctioned states. In most cases, it does just that. The Clinton administration's recent executive order imposing new sanctions on Iran bars only "new investments and contracts." The Helms-Burton law affects only those investments made in stolen U.S. properties in Cuba after the date of its enactment. But Congress and the White House should decide these matters case by case and not be tied down by a mandatory provision that could have unintended consequences.

Congress already has a system for considering U.S. economic sanctions. It is called congressional debate. Each sanctions law is considered carefully, every provision is debated openly, and varying levels of flexibility are written into the law. Business gets a chance to weigh in, as do other constituencies. In the end, the president can veto any law. And Congress can always go back and amend sanctions if necessary -- as it just did with India and Pakistan. The system the Founders established to decide such matters works just fine. It does not need "reform" inspired by a "sanctions epidemic" fabricated in some Washington lobbying firm's offices.

SELLING THUMBSCREWS TO TYRANTS

Why have some American companies invested so much in fighting sanctions? In Europe, business and government opposition to sanctions is understandable. Slumping welfare-state economies and double-digit unemployment drive Europeans to employ increasingly trade-obsessed foreign policies. But American business has no such excuse. Thanks to the vigilance of congressional Republicans, they have not been saddled with high taxes and regulations. The U.S. economy is booming, and unemployment is at an all-time low.

The lobbyists' cry that sanctions cost the United States vital access to large markets is a sham. The cost of U.S. sanctions is minuscule. According to Jan Paul Acton of the Congressional Budget Office, "to date, the cost of existing sanctions to the overall economy has been quite modest. CBO's review of research indicates that the net cost may be less than $ 1 billion annually. That compares with $ 6.6 trillion of total national income in 1997." The United States gave away roughly $ 13 billion in foreign aid during 1997. Besides, cutting foreign aid to punish misbehavior actually saves taxpayers' money. Even if we use the business lobbyists' standard tactic of applying costs to entire populations, the price tag for U.S. economic sanctions comes to a whopping $ 3.77 per American -- about the cost of a Big Mac and fries.

That is a small price to pay for a moral foreign policy -- and a price most Americans are willing to bear. A 1998 Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken on the eve of the president's visit to China showed that less than one-third of Americans agreed that "we should maintain good trade relations with China, despite disagreements we might have with its human rights policies." Fully two-thirds of Americans agreed that "we should demand that China improve its human rights policies if China wants to continue to enjoy its current trade status with the United States."

This may shock the business lobbyists. It should not. Americans do not need to sell their souls or their national security to create jobs and economic prosperity. The lobbyists behind this antisanctions crusade are saying, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." America cannot stop rogue states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, they say, so why cede markets for sensitive technology to our European competitors? The United States cannot stop dictators from torturing people, so why not close our eyes and trade with them as if nothing is happening? That is not the American way. Americans do not need to create jobs by selling thumb-screws to the world's tyrants.

U.S. policies should isolate terrorist regimes like Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Cuba. U.S. aid should not go to countries that commit genocide, harbor war criminals, support terrorism, or export illegal drugs that poison American children. Lethal weapons should not be sold to violent regimes in Nigeria and Sudan; assets of drug traffickers should be seized; imports from Chinese companies that use prison slave labor should be banned; and government procurement contracts should not be given to foreign companies that sell dangerous technologies to terrorist states. There should be sanctions on companies and governments that proliferate nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and countries that murder women and children and pile them into mass graves. America should not hesitate for one second to place a cost on these reprehensible acts and to restrain those few American companies who would actually conduct business with the perpetrators of such heinous crimes.

With their antisanctions crusade, these lobbyists are fighting for business as usual with thugs, tyrants, and terrorists. They do not represent the views of the American people or most American businesses. They should be ashamed.

1 February 1999
National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)

NAM Response to Sen. Jesse Helms

In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Senator Jesse Helms questions the validity of a report by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) on unilateral economic sanctions for foreign policy purposes ("What Sanctions Epidemic? U.S. Business' Curious Crusade," January/February 1999).

American business and Senator Helms share a belief that the U.S. government is indispensable in terms of providing the leadership necessary to promote human rights, counter terrorism and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We understand his frustration at the U.S. government's increasing inability to rally normally friendly countries behind these objectives. But the use of unilateral economic sanctions as the key tactical instrument of foreign policy -- far from rallying others to our cause -- will leave us with little or nothing in terms of concrete foreign policy benefits, while causing significant collateral damage to U.S. commercial interests. A change in our sanctions policies is clearly needed.

Multilateral sanctions can work. Often they have worked. But they take leadership to forge -- and energy. Unilateral sanctions seldom work. But they are easier to impose. By definition, we can do them by ourselves.

Resort to unilateral sanctions may be justified in some cases; it may be rationalized in many, many more. But it can rarely, if ever, be explained in terms of leadership. In fact, resort to unilateral sanctions can only be explained in terms of a failure of leadership and a subsequent decision -- in light of that failure -- that America must 'go it alone.'

Only nine sanctions measures were adopted from 1993 to 1996, instead of the 61 cited in NAM's recent report.  How does Senator Helms reach this conclusion? He essentially re-defines what qualifies as a "unilateral economic sanction," using a very narrow definition -- a total economic embargo employed against rogue states such as Libya and Sudan.

Reasonable people can differ on the most appropriate definition. The NAM study explicitly includes a detailed definition of economic sanctions, which includes three categories: those that cut off trade and investment, such as the embargo on Cuba; those that make it hard to export American-made products, such as shutting down the U.S. Export-Import Bank in India and Pakistan; and those that discourage economic development, such as cutting off U.S. assistance, which, although there is no "right" to foreign aid, is nevertheless a form of punishment and falls within the common-sense and generally-accepted definition of a unilateral economic sanction.

Having criticized us for an overly broad definition of sanctions, Senator Helms turns around and adopts the NAM definition later on in his own article, citing Guatemala (and later on Nigeria) as a sanctions "success story," where "the decision to freeze $47 million in U.S. aid and the mere threat of lost trade convinced business, labor and military leaders to roll back…[the] 1993 coup."

The NAM study, which covered only a four-year window from 1993 through 1996, was consistent with other authoritative studies on unilateral economic sanctions. The President's Export Council report of January 11, 1997, lists 73 countries. A Congressional Research Service report of January 22, 1998 cites 125 measures authorizing U.S. unilateral economic sanctions.

What the NAM catalog uncovered was really just the tip of the iceberg. First, the catalog covered sanctions imposed over just a four year period from 1993 through 1996. If we had tallied all the sanctions currently in force, we would have come up with a much higher number. Second, the list of sanctioned countries did not include all those impacted by U.S. secondary boycott laws (i.e. Helms-Burton and Iran-Libya Sanctions Act), which would have added almost every country in Europe and Latin America. Third, the catalog notes a number of so-called "generic" sanctions that target any country engaged in a sanctioned activity. Finally, the catalog only covered federal law; it did not even begin to include the dozens of sanctions at the state and local level.

The NAM report misleads the reader into concluding that the U.S. cut off all trade with the 35 countries cited.  The first page of the report (para. 3) states that all sanctions do not necessarily involve a full embargo or cut-off of exports. The severity, comprehensiveness, selectivity, triggering mechanism and waiver provision, if applicable, are clearly indicated for each sanction covered in our report. NAM's report was fully transparent -- it drew upon and included a detailed, 18-page appendix that listed each new law or executive action that it relied upon, providing the date of the law or action, a summary and then an additional description of the law or action, the target countries, and the reasons provided for the law and action. The report is on the Web (http://usaengage.org/studies/nam.html) so interested readers can see for themselves.

42 percent of the world's population does not live under the yoke of U.S. sanctions, as claimed in the NAM report.  If one looks at all the countries that now have some form of significant U.S. sanctions imposed against them, they do include over 42 percent of the world's population. China has a number of sanctions against it (from the remaining Tiananmen Square sanctions to the Export-Import Bank refusal to fund projects for the Three Gorges Dam); India and Pakistan (the sanctions were authorized in 1994, but actually triggered in 1998) face several sanctions because of their nuclear explosions last year; new U.S. investment is banned in Burma; and North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Cuba face comprehensive U.S. sanctions. These countries alone have a total population of over 2.5 billion, which is over 42 percent of the world's population. And this list doesn't even count many other countries that face more focused U.S. sanctions, as detailed in the NAM appendix, such as Nigeria or those nations that might be affected by the secondary boycott impact of the Helms-Burton Act or the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA).

The NAM report includes "multiple counting of the same sanctions."   It was made clear in the description section when a new sanction only added to existing measures against a particular country. Multiple sanctions were imposed against countries such as Cuba and Sudan, for example. Moreover, this does not change the number of sanctioned countries (35).

The NAM report included multilateral sanctions imposed in compliance with UN Security Council resolutions, which are, by definition, not unilateral.  True enough. In three of the five cases involving multilateral sanctions (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Libya and Yugoslavia), however, the U.S. adopted broader unilateral sanctions than required under the UN resolution. He did find two errors, however, and deserves credit: the U.S. sanctions against Angola and Rwanda did not exceed the requirements of the relevant UN resolution.

The NAM report hid the fact that it did not include the use of trade sanctions for trade purposes, which, "in the view of business, are good only if they defend business interests, not national interests."   The NAM study explicitly addressed this issue. It said: "Although interesting and important, the use of economic sanctions for such economic purposes brings in a host of other situations (e.g., intellectual property protection), raises new and difficult issues and involves different laws. As a result, the lists of economic sanctions laws and decisions following include only those that were undertaken for non-economic foreign-policy purposes." This distinction is consistent with other major academic studies on the issue.

How are trade policy sanctions different? For one, they are a reaction to the economic -- not the foreign or national security -- policies of other nations. Also, there is no agreed-upon legal or political framework concerning the use of economic sanctions for foreign policy purposes, unlike trade policy sanctions, which are governed or at least guided by various legal frameworks, including World Trade Organization (WTO) and North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) dispute settlement mechanisms.

Sanctions work, unlike the claim made in the NAM report. The NAM study acknowledges that U.S. unilateral economic sanctions do occasionally work, but rarely -- less than 20 percent of the time, according to a 1990 Institute for International Economics study. Those that were successful were usually accompanied by military action.

Among the "effective" sanctions cited by Senator Helms was the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994, which was designed to deter potential nuclear powers from testing. Within four years of the passage of this act, India detonated five nuclear devices. Rival Pakistan, a U.S. ally in a strategically-important part of the world, decided to conduct their own tests two weeks later, despite the fact that both nations faced unilateral U.S. sanctions. Clearly the measure did not have the desired deterrent effect.

Among the "carefully targeted" sanctions measures adopted in the 103rd and 104th Congresses were the extraterritorial aspects of the Helms-Burton Act and the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which have caused a rancorous political dispute with such U.S. allies as Great Britain, Canada, Germany and France, even as we attempt to build effective multilateral coalitions against rogue states such as Iraq. As for Cuba, we aimed a loaded weapon at the tropical tyrant in Havana, and hit London, Ottawa and Paris instead.

U.S. business is "fighting for business as usual with thugs, tyrants, and terrorists."  As clearly indicated in the NAM report, U.S. business does not oppose all unilateral economic sanctions. In our report, we laid out a procedure for implementing sanctions, suggesting that certain conditions be satisfied before unilateral sanctions are imposed, including a determination that the measure reflects broader national interests, such as humanitarian, security and other foreign policy objectives. This "aim before you shoot" approach to ensure that the broader national interest is carefully considered is reflected in the sanctions reform bill proposed in the last Congress by Senator Lugar and former Congressman Hamilton.

What we are really talking about is not "selling thumbscrews to tyrants," but rather the ability of U.S. companies to bid successfully against our competitors for overseas contracts involving the building of roads, dams, bridges, airports, water, energy and telecommunications systems, all of which improve the lives of ordinary people throughout the developing world. Experience has shown that cutting these people off from U.S. influence of any kind -- political, social, educational or economic -- will not cause them to rise up against their well-armed and entrenched oppressors.

U.S. sanctions are no longer applied only to rogue states, but some of the world's biggest democracies, including India, Italy and yes, even Canada. Fear of being entangled in U.S. extra-territorial sanctions has prompted many customers in Europe and elsewhere to avoid U.S. products. For example, a Canadian Caterpillar customer recently decided to buy diesel engines from Europe. Why? The customer told Cat that "since the engines were being incorporated into products that might be sold in the Mideast, the best way to avoid problems is to buy German." U.S. firms have heard similar stories for years.

It might be nice to live in a world where the markets are national, the U.S. has a monopoly on technologies, and where trade and investment are not a key to future U.S. growth and prosperity. But we no longer live in that world.

What does that mean for U.S. sanctions policies? We must continue to work multilaterally to prevent any irresponsible country from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, supporting terrorism or violating the most basic human rights. No one is saying it will be easy. But we must resist the temptation of "feel-good" unilateralism that won't solve our problems. The skills of our diplomats will be tested like never before in providing the leadership necessary to forge effective multilateral sanctions

The NAM study carefully considered when and where multilateral sanctions might be better than U.S. unilateral sanctions, and included some important recommendations. National security is not protected when the goods, technologies or investment in question are readily available without restriction from our competitors outside the U.S. The U.S. should work to strengthen multilateral regimes, which can be effective when a consensus is reached regarding individual countries and specific goods or technologies.

Senator Helms ignored the fact that the U.S. has carefully helped construct and maintain an important network of treaties and international export control regimes that limit trade in items that can contribute to weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. This network includes the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and export control regimes such as the Wassenaar Arrangement, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, and the Australia Group.

Moreover, Senator Helms' own examples of successful U.S. sanctions include a statement that they "have effectively contained the Saddam Husseins, Mu'ammar al-Qadhafis, and Hafiz al-Asads of the world." He failed to note that the sanctions against Saddam Hussein are multilateral, that the sanctions against Syria are marginal, and that the only sanctions that really hurt Libya are the multilateral UN sanctions.

In the future, we hope that the U.S. Congress will consider where multilateral sanctions might be better than the United States trying to go it alone. Too great a reliance on "foreign policy lite" -- the unilateral use of trade as the key tactical instrument of foreign policy -- will lead to disappointing results.

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7 January 1999
Frank D. Kittredge, Vice-Chairman, USA*Engage
International Herald Tribune

Regarding "An Epidemic of
Sanctions? It's Pure Nonsense"

Mr. Helms, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticizes "a handful of Washington business lobbyists" for misleading the world about the extent of U.S. reliance on unilateral sanctions and their effectiveness. Unfortunately, he has chosen to overlook the groundswell of expert opinion that is questioning the wisdom of U.S. sanctions policy.

In the last two years, more than 30 studies of unilateral sanctions have been issued by well-respected research organizations of all political persuasions, trade groups and governmental organizations such as the International Trade Commission and the President's Export Council. The president's council noted 75 countries subject to some form of U.S. sanction in 1997.

All of these studies share a common theme: U.S. unilateral trade sanctions have been overused by Congress and the executive branch, are ineffective and often end up hurting U.S. interests more than the target country.

Human rights and religious organizations, including the National Council of Churches, have spoken out against the widespread use of sanctions. They recognize not only that sanctions are ineffective but also that they usually hurt the most vulnerable members of society.

The United States needs to come to terms with the fact that when it acts alone to cut off trade and investment, other nations are happy to take its place. There are better ways to accomplish common objectives than by imposing economic restrictions whose most significant effect is to hurt American business and workers.

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