Abstract

Chokehold on the World

The issues raised by economic sanctions on Iraq are much broader. If the cold war's end gave rise to a unipolar "new world order," it also gave rise to a set of new experiments in global governance and the enforcement of international law, notably humanitarian intervention and economic sanctions. Economic sanctions are certainly not novel. Since ancient times, embargoes and siege warfare have been imposed, in the contexts of both trade competition and warfare. There are those who hold that siege warfare and economic sanctions are simply different things altogether. The modem version of economic sanctions as a form of international governance came about at the end of World War I, when the League of Nations envisioned the boycott as an alternative to warfare.