Summary The proliferation of U.S. unilateral sanctions puts vital American national security and foreign policy interests at risk. Unilateral sanctions seldom persuade the target country to abandon its objectionable conduct, and frequently provoke the very conduct they seek to deter target governments build domestic political support by openly defying the United States. This poor record is worsening as the economy globalizes, and as U.S. allies increasingly refuse to follow U.S. unilateral action. The net effect is to squander leverage with both targets and allies that the United States otherwise could use to advance national interests. Unilateral sanctions also convert efforts to deal with issues like terrorism, proliferation and narcotrafficking into bitter feuds with U.S. allies impeding efforts to reach solutions and reducing cooperation on a vast array of other security, political and economic issues.
While much attention has been focused on the economic costs that unilateral sanctions impose on Americans, the foreign policy costs are no less damaging. This paper describes how unilateral sanctions fail to impose significant burdens on their intended targets, and at the same time fail to persuade others to change objectionable policies. It shows how unilateral sanctions not only fall short of their goals, but also are counterproductive, undermine American leadership and alliances, and fail to garner broader multilateral support.
I. Unilateral Sanctions Do Not Significantly Penalize Their Targets
In order to succeed, sanctions need to be effective at two levels. First, they must burden the sanctioned entity. Second, that burden must persuade the sanctioned entity to alter its conduct. Unilateral sanctions typically fail at the first level. Their limited impact is not surprising in a global economy, where alternative suppliers are readily available. Commodities such as Nigerian oil enjoy a global market. Consequently, as the U.S. General Accounting Office concluded, a unilateral U.S. import embargo would have virtually no impact. 1
Even in industries where the United States once enjoyed global dominance sophisticated commercial satellites, space-launch vehicles, or supercomputers the emergence of serious foreign competitors robs unilateral sanctions of their impact. These competitors driven by commercial advantage can exploit concerns about American reliability as a supplier of food or technology to challenge American market share in emerging markets.
Unilateral sanctions also have limited impact because countries that have been the target of recent sanctions proposals (e.g., Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq) often pursue policies of self-sufficiency or do not trade extensively with the United States. When trade is very limited, barriers to trade cannot impose a significant burden on the ruling government. To the extent that unilateral sanctions do have an adverse impact, they often hit the most needy among the target country's population.
Where unilateral sanctions impose some penalty, the effect frequently is minimal in comparison to the size of the target economy. This enables the target country to shrug off the sanctions or adjust. According to the International Institute of Economics, most unilateral sanctions have had an impact of less than 1% of GDP. 2 When a target regime is willing to defy international diplomatic criticism to pursue a course of terrorism, nuclear weapons development or political repression, a one percent reduction in economic growth simply does not weigh heavily in the balance.
The grain embargo against the Soviet Union in response to the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan is highly instructive. Though the Western allies were united in their categorical opposition to the invasion, only the United States sought to impose an embargo. The embargo failed to curtail Russian grain imports, which rose from 31 million metric tons to 40 million metric tons from 1979 to 1982. While U.S. exports declined, Argentine, Canadian and European exports to the USSR climbed from 9.4 million to 23 million metric tons over the same period. In 1981, President Reagan lifted the grain embargo. As he later noted, "it was not having the intended effect of seriously penalizing the USSR for its brutal invasion and occupation of Afghanistan." 3
The Reagan Administration's own effort to employ unilateral sanctions to punish the Soviet Union this time for its role in the December 1981 declaration of martial law in Poland fared no better. In June 1982, when the President extended the sanctions to foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies, the European reaction was uniformly hostile. France and the United Kingdom ordered their companies to defy the U.S. embargo; the U.S. imposed sanctions against British, German and Italian companies. The breach with the Europeans threatened to disrupt the first U.S.-hosted G-7 Summit and, more importantly, to undermine the North Atlantic alliance at a critical moment when the U.S. was planning to deploy intermediate range nuclear forces in Europe to respond to the threat posed by the Soviet deployment of SS-20 missiles.
Unlike the grain embargo, the pipeline sanctions imposed some costs on the Soviets $480 million, according to the Institute for International Economics. But that number paled in comparison to the size of the Soviet economy, and also was dwarfed by the loss to U.S. companies and subsidiaries: estimates range to $2 billion or more. Moreover, the threat posed to NATO was so great that the U.S. negotiated a face-saving end to the sanctions after only five months; this brief interruption did not significantly delay completion of the pipeline. 4
Former Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher drew the obvious conclusion:
When an embargo is unilateral, no country, not even the United States, by itself can make it stick. It has to be multilateral for it to work. . . . [T]he U.S. should have learned from its past mistakes, such as the grain embargo against the USSR under President Carter and the gas pipeline embargo against the USSR during the Reagan years. . . . [I]n both cases U.S. business lost out to other countries. 5
II. Signaling U.S. Outrage Does Not Justify Unilateral Sanctions
Some argue that even if sanctions impose no economic penalty, they succeed in making a strong policy statement or in imposing a moral stigma on the targeted country. But in many cases this is wishful thinking. Unilateral sanctions often do not achieve even the goal of sending the intended message. First, in many instances the government dominates news and media outlets in sanctioned countries. The moral message is muted at best and subject to government manipulation. Second, stigma is a matter of perception. The fact is that other countries allies and rogue regimes alike view U.S. imposition of unilateral sanctions as bullying, not as a demonstration of moral virtue or superiority. Far from being persuaded to comply with American wishes, many governments view defiance of U.S. sanctions as a badge of honor. Instead of moral stigma, unilateral sanctions in practice send a different, but powerful, message -- that the United States is an unreliable trading partner.
III. Unilateral Sanctions Do Not Persuade Governments To Change Policies
Unilateral sanctions that impose little penalty such as the grain embargo, pipeline, and missile sanctions cases are unlikely to persuade a hostile government to comply with American wishes. If anything, the ineffectiveness of unilateral sanctions tends to redouble the sanctioned government's determination to oppose American interests. Panama, a small country with an economy based on the U.S. dollar and a tradition of U.S. dependence, successfully resisted extreme U.S. economic sanctions. U.S. military intervention was necessary to remove the Noriega dictatorship. In Haiti, too, economic sanctions failed to remove the ruling dictators, who fled the island only after the commitment of U.S. military forces. The Soviets continued to occupy Afghanistan and to support martial law in Poland, despite U.S. sanctions. Castro still reigns in Cuba, despite a thirty-year embargo against this small island only 100 miles from our shores.
Even where unilateral sanctions do impose a significant burden, however, they can still fail to persuade a government to comply with American wishes. For example, in October 1990 President Bush was unable to certify under the Pressler Amendment that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device, thereby triggering the termination of virtually all forms of governmental assistance to Pakistan. The aid cut-off did not persuade the Pakistanis to abandon their nuclear program. On the contrary, it robbed the United States of critical leverage to exercise in its regional diplomatic efforts to steer both Pakistan and India (which was not subject and far less susceptible to U.S. sanctions) away from a regional missile and nuclear arms race. In addition, it gravely damaged our bilateral relationship with a government that had staunchly supported U.S. policies throughout the Cold War (including support for the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion) and that remains strategically important to the United States on issues ranging from counternarcotics, counterterrorism, nonproliferation, Islamic fundamentalism, and geopolitical stability at the crossroads where three of the world's most populous nations meet Iran.
An independent task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations recently concluded that the Pakistan sanctions are a hindrance to U.S. policy:
Rigid, narrowly-focused legislative mandates are in general a poor way of addressing the complex problems involved in making foreign policy. In the case of nuclear proliferation in South Asia, such constraints have achieved modest success at best while holding a diverse range of U.S. interests hostage not merely to one issue area but to specific requirements in that area that have been overtaken by events. Unconditional sanctions that cannot be waived or adjusted by the President deny policymakers the ability to design and execute a foreign policy that could help stabilize Indo-Pakistani nuclear competition and promote other U.S. interests. 6
IV. Unilateral Sanctions Damage U.S. Interests
In many situations unilateral sanctions are worse than ineffective. They are counterproductive. Whether directed at rogue states or other nations, resort to unilateral sanctions frequently backfires hardening opposition to U.S. interests, reducing cooperation from target governments, and reducing American influence and leverage.
History abounds with examples in which the imposition of unilateral sanctions has worsened the situation from the perspective of U.S. political goals. Professor Donald Losman documented many in his study, Pain without Gain: The Sanctions Saga, including the Cuban sanctions, which for years enhanced Soviet influence off American shores, and embargoes that produced unanticipated refugee crises in this country from Cuba and Haiti. Instead of weakening rogue regimes, unilateral sanctions often strengthen them. They provide a rallying cry to mobilize domestic political support in defiance of the world's last superpower. Castro continues to exploit this opening, as a bipartisan delegation of former members of Congress found this during a recent visit to Cuba:
Castro's response to Helms-Burton is to couple it with the preexisting embargo as the princip[al] if not the sole cause of his country's economic crisis. Demonstrations against the act are arranged nationwide. Paradoxically, in the view of the dissident community, the Act provides the regime with a handy scapegoat for Cuba's financial doldrums, some calling it the "Helms-Burton-Castro Act."
For years, Iranian mullahs have used unilateral U.S. sanctions as a scapegoat for economic problems, distracting attention from their own mismanagement and human rights abuses.
Unilateral sanctions also produce perverse economic effects. The impact of sanctions frequently is greatest on those portions of society that the United States least wants to harm, the poor, the young, and the elderly, and the professional and business classes that have the greatest stake in the international economy. The advancement of democracy and human rights in developing countries is closely tied to the creation of a large middle class and the increased empowerment of that class. Because sanctions strike at the international segment of a country's economy, they directly affect the development of the middle class and slow the advance of democracy.
These perverse effects extend beyond the targeted country. Losman noted that sanctions frequently impose significant costs on the boycotting states, while the boycotted states are able to minimize their adverse effect by shifting their business to countries not respecting the enforcement of U.S. sanctions:
Trade is clearly a two-way street, and costs cannot be "imposed" only on the target. There are both short-term, immediate losses to American companies (like Conoco) who lose current customers (or potential customers) as well as longer term losses when non-American sources replace us. Additionally, frequent resort to sanctions imparts an "unreliable" label on American suppliers, thus eroding our long-term competitiveness. Sanctions, in short, are a lose-lose tool.
In a 1994 article in the World Policy Journal, David Hendrickson described three particular disadvantages associated with an economic embargo:
It badly hurts the most vulnerable sections of society: the sick, the young, and the aged. . . .
A second liability is that the sectors of the economy that suffer most from external sanctions are those that have the most intercourse with the rest of the world and tend to be more amenable to its influence. Such was the case in South Africa; it remains the case today in Cuba. This baneful effect is exacerbated by the near total blackout in embargoed societies of information from printed sources.
Finally, economic sanctions may hurt neighboring countries in whose well-being we have a stake. 7
For less extreme cases in countries where the bilateral relationship has positive aspects as well as serious problems unilateral sanctions can be equally counterproductive. For example, U.S. strategic interests in Turkey are enormous. Turkey is a critical NATO ally at a time when the alliance is about to expand and difficult issues such as the disposition of conventional forces in Europe are not yet entirely resolved. At the same time, Turkey remains locked in sharp disagreement with Greece over Cyprus. Turkey also serves as a vital staging area for allied operations in Northern Iraq, even as it faces its own internal threat from Kurdish separatists.
Centered in this web of volatility, governed now by an Islamic prime minister who has aroused the ire of Turkey's powerful secularist forces, Turkey has warmed its relations with Iran, in defiance of U.S. policy. Sanctioning Turkey, however, would risk vital American interests. It could drive Turkey to move further toward Islamic fundamentalism, to undermine U.S.-Russian conventional arms talks, to refuse to cooperate in keeping the Cyprus crisis below a boil, or to deny the allies permission to base their aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone in Northern Iraq at Incerlik. The risk is underlined by Turkey's sensitive position. In its Strategic Assessment 1997, the Institute for National Strategic Studies of the National Defense University noted that "[o]f all the NATO allies, Turkey is currently the most vulnerable for both domestic and external reasons."
Our interests in Mexico are similarly broad. In the last decade, Mexico has moved from a posture of resentment and resistance to cooperation with the United States and negotiation of a historic NAFTA initiative designed to promote economic integration of the United States, Mexico and Canada. In practical terms, we need Mexico's cooperation on a host of issues. These include management of a 1500-mile border, with the attendant issues of illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and the labor and environmental concerns that must be addressed in connection with NAFTA. Interrupting overall relations to pressure Mexico in one area, even one as important as combating drug trafficking, risks injury to this broad array of U.S. interests. Proponents of sanctions must ask whether triggering a nationalist firestorm will lead to greater cooperation, or less.
Relations with other nations are equally complex. As noted in the Strategic Assessment 1997 :
Dealing with China as a rising power is the most compelling of all of the many complex challenges facing the United States and its regional allies. Their stance and their actions and those of the regional powers will be crucial elements of China's foreign and national security policy calculus. 8
China is a world and regional power, a major trading partner whose economy could emerge as the largest in the world early in the next century. Chinese policies and actions also have profound importance for a great number of U.S. foreign policy and national security interests including the Korean nuclear crisis and the future peace and stability on that peninsula, the potential for military conflict or an accelerating arms race in South Asia, a comprehensive test ban and other nonproliferation efforts, the future of Hong Kong and Taiwan, hopes to avoid further deterioration of our atmosphere and global warming, and the promotion of democracy and human rights. U.S. national interests are injured, not advanced, by holding this vast agenda hostage to progress on a single issue.
V. Resort to Unilateral Sanctions Undermines American Leadership and Alliances
Reliance by the United States on unilateral sanctions undercuts other U.S. policy objectives by squandering the credibility and goodwill needed to lead friends and allies. At the same time, the use of sanctions reduces American contact with the target state, and inevitably reduces American influence in that country. The ineffectiveness of U.S. unilateral sanctions in and of itself tarnishes the credibility of American power and leadership.
The world is increasingly interdependent, and the need for strategic alliances and collective action has never been greater. Success in advancing American interests depends in no small measure upon our ability to persuade other governments to support a wide array of policies and actions from expanding NATO to confronting the conflict in Bosnia, from opening markets to protecting the environment, from encouraging democracy and human rights to combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The interests of other nations will never coincide precisely with our own, so our ability to persuade is a complex function of our military, economic, and political strength and vitality. We enjoy a pre-eminent political position as the world's indispensable nation based in large measure on the power of American democratic ideals and the power of free markets and free enterprise, which have now reached an unprecedented position in the world. But we squander that American leadership and credibility when we pursue policies that are roundly rejected on fundamental grounds of national sovereignty by even our closest allies. Efforts to impose unilateral sanctions are just such policies.
This does not mean that we must only accumulate and never expend political capital with our allies. There are certain U.S. goals and ideals that are tied so closely to our core values that the United States must insist on certain actions even if no other nation follows us. We showed unshakable determination in our four-decade effort to defeat Communism in the Cold War. We have always insisted on protecting the existence of the State of Israel. We have consistently refused to deal with terrorists.
It does mean, however, that where U.S. policies undermine relations with our allies, we should carefully examine the costs and benefits. In the case of unilateral sanctions, the costs have been significant. As noted above, the U.S. imposition of extraterritorial restrictions on our European allies during the gas pipeline dispute of 1982 opened a gaping breach in the North Atlantic alliance at the very moment when we had committed to the deployment of U.S. nuclear missiles in Europe to confront the Soviet SS-20 threat.
In the case of the Helms-Burton sanctions, the immediate cost has been an acrimonious dispute with Canada and Europe. This dispute has attracted far more international attention than conditions in Cuba, which Castro has cleverly exploited. A recent U.S.-EU Agreement, if successful, may avoid permanent damage to the new World Trade Organization, the fruit of a decade of U.S. diplomacy and a key element of the open global trading system that is a linchpin of U.S. prosperity and economic well-being.
VI. Unilateral Sanctions Do Not Generate Multilateral Support
It frequently is argued that unilateral sanctions demonstrate U.S. moral leadership and lead eventually to broader support for multilateral sanctions. This has not been borne out by experience. Instead, precipitous U.S. unilateral sanctions have been repudiated by our allies. As Jeanne Kirkpatrick dryly noted a decade ago: "We Americans like to think of ourselves as 'world leaders,' but from time to time we discover that almost no one chooses to follow us." 9
That comment certainly gains support from U.S. efforts to lead international sanctions efforts. While the U.S. froze aid and opposed loans to the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, Europeans extended aid and credit assistance. As the U.S. maintains the Tiananmen Square sanctions seven years after those tragic events, our allies are energetically marketing nuclear power stations and other major projects to China. U.S. pressure to sanction Burma has been flatly rejected by the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Where no other nation follows unilateral U.S. action especially extraterritorial action, which is universally rejected as an unacceptable infringement on national sovereignty American moral leadership suffers. It sends a signal of weakness and futility, not principle and strength, both to the targets of U.S. sanctions and to the allies we need to make them effective. These unfortunate signals are compounded when, as in the cases of the grain embargo and the gas pipeline of the early 1980s, the costs of unilateral sanctions become so high that the United States is forced to abandon them under pressure.
VI. Conclusion
The fundamental question is whether the United States should be content with public posturing, or should engage actively to persuade other governments to act in accordance with U.S. interests, and to promote American values. If the latter, then unilateral sanctions are a poor policy tool, and alternatives should be carefully examined. During a 1996 trip to the Persian Gulf, former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney underlined how unilateral efforts to isolate other countries damaged U.S. interests: "The reality is those kind of sanctions, unless they are part of an international effort . . . are in fact self-defeating." Arguing that international influence derived from economic activity and clout, he added:
We seem now to have exactly the opposite idea. We basically are going to shut you out and close the door and turn off the relationship and that will force you to do what we want you to do. . . . We are out there all by ourselves unilaterally. . . in effect trying to use our alleged economic clout.10
The ineffectual track record of U.S. unilateral sanctions contrasts sharply with that of multilateral sanction regimes. Throughout the Cold War, the extraordinary consensus behind COCOM helped protect the technological superiority of the West over the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In the 1990s, multilateral sanctions against Iraq helped prevent Saddam Hussein from realizing his aggressive ambitions in the Persian Gulf.
Hard-nosed diplomacy backed, where necessary, by the threat or exercise of military force, can also be effective. In this way, American negotiators succeeded in driving Haiti's dictators into exile and restoring the democratically-elected government. In close consultation with South Korea, Japan and China, we persuaded North Korea to freeze and commit to dismantle its dangerous nuclear program under international monitoring. Working with NATO, we succeeded in stopping bloodshed and bringing the hope of peace and stability to Bosnia. All of these achievements involved trade-offs, negotiations with unsavory interlocutors, and complex behind-the-scenes negotiation involving carrots and sticks. None could have been accomplished through unilateral sanctions.
The historical record supports the proposition that U.S. interests generally are better served by engagement even with countries with whom we have serious differences than by isolation. When engagement promises to be less effective than isolation, it is critical that the United States impose isolation in cooperation with friends and allies, if it is to have a chance of succeeding. Otherwise, our efforts to isolate others tend instead to isolate ourselves.
References
- U.S. General Accounting Office, Issues Regarding Imposition of an Oil Embargo Against Nigeria. GAO/GGD-95-24, p.2 (November 1994).
- Gary Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, p.84-86 Table 4.3 (Institute for International Economics, 2d ed. 1990).
- Erin Day, Economic Sanctions Imposed by the U.S. Against Specific Countries (Congressional Research Service, August 10, 1992)
- Gary Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott. Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, p.213, 217 (Institute for International Economics, 2d ed. 1990).
- Platt's Oilgram News, v. 74, no. 87, p. 1 (May 3, 1996).
- Richard N. Haass, A New U.S. Policy Toward India and Pakistan: Report of an Independent Task Force (Council on Foreign Relations, 1997) (emphasis added.)
- David Hendrickson, "The Democratist Crusade: Intervention, Economic Sanctions, and Engagement," World Policy Journal (Winter 1994).
- Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Assessment 1997.
- Jeanne Kirkpatrick, "Keeping Track of UN Votes," The San Diego Union Tribune (June 10, 1986)
- Reuters, (March 19, 1996)
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