Sanctions as Siege Warfare (Page 3)

Although the UN had imposed sanctions only twice between 1945 and 1990, it has done so eleven times since then. But even this is very little in comparison with the frequency of US sanctions. Between 1945 and 1990 sanctions were imposed worldwide in 104 instances; in two-thirds of these, the United States was either a key player or the sanctions were unilateral actions by the United States with no participation from other countries. Since 1990 the United States' use of sanctions has increased by an order of magnitude. As of 1998, it imposed economic sanctions against more than twenty countries.

Even as it has been using sanctions on its own behalf, the United States has spearheaded many of the Security Council's recent sanctions efforts. While it would be incorrect to treat the Security Council as simply a naked tool of US hegemony (as much as Jesse Helms would like that to happen), the United States does have disproportionate influence both because of the veto power it holds as one of the five permanent members and because of its economic influence globally. And its leverage has only increased in recent years as Russia's willingness to exercise its veto power has been tempered by its dependence on the West for massive capital investment.

In 1990, sanctions appeared to be a nearly ideal device for international governance. They seemed to entail inconvenience and some political disruption but not casualties. Unlike the situation in Somalia, sanctions in Iraq did not involve troops. Because sanctions seemed to incur less human damage than bombing campaigns, peace and human rights movements found them attractive as well. Indeed, many of those opposing the Gulf War in 1990 urged the use of sanctions instead.

But what Iraq shows us is that it is now possible for sanctions to cause far more than inconvenience or international embarrassment. In the absence of a Soviet bloc as an alternative source of trade, it is now possible to construct a comprehensive sanctions regime that can absolutely break the back of any nation with a weak or import-dependent economy. Iraq has also demonstrated, quite graphically, that sanctions can cause fully as much human suffering as even a massive bombing campaign. Iraqi casualties from the Gulf War were in the range of 10,000 to 50,000. Casualties attributable to sanctions are anywhere from ten to thirty times that--and that's only counting the deaths of young children.

This ought to raise serious ethical concerns, since sanctions (like their low-tech predecessor, siege warfare) historically have caused the most extreme and direct suffering to those who are the weakest, the most vulnerable and the least political. At the same time, those who are affected last and least are the military and political leadership, who are generally insulated from anything except inconvenience and the discomfort of seeing "the fearful spectacle of the civilian dead," to use Michael Walzer's phrase. However devastating their effects on the economy and the civilian population may be, sanctions are rarely successful in achieving changes in governmental policy or conduct. Sanctions, like siege warfare, have generally been perceived by civilian populations as the hostile and damaging act of a foreign power. Sanctions, like siege warfare, have generally resulted in a renewed sense of national cohesion, not domestic pressure for political change. The most generous scholarship on this issue holds that in the twentieth century, sanctions achieved their stated political goals only about one-third of the time. But even that figure is disputed by those who point out that in most of these cases there were other factors as well; a more critical estimate places the success rate at less than 5 percent. In the other "success" cases--such as South Africa, which is often cited to show that "sanctions can work"--there were major factors other than sanctions. Many have suggested that the end of apartheid was due to internal political movements as much as to international sanctions. South Africa was also atypical in that those most affected by the sanctions also supported them.

If not sanctions, then what? Is bombing preferable to sanctions as a device to "punish rogues" and enforce international law? Without the sanctions option, it is sometimes argued, the militarists will just say there is no longer an alternative to bombing. But the Iraq situation demonstrates that sanctions are not merely a "problematic" or "less than ideal" form of political pressure. Rather, they are an indirect form of warfare. Not only are they politically counterproductive, but sanctions directed toward the economy generally (as opposed to, say, seizing personal assets of leaders) are inherently antihumanitarian.

Denis Halliday, the former Assistant Secretary General of the UN, resigned in protest last fall, saying that he no longer wished "to be identified with a United Nations that is...maintaining a sanctions programme...which kills and maims people through chronic malnutrition...and continues this programme knowingly." His conclusion seems very like US Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun's position on the death penalty in his 1994 dissent in Callins v. Collins: For the death penalty to be constitutional, it must be applied equally in like cases; but at the same time, the sentencing judge must have the option of granting mercy based upon the circumstances. These two requirements, Blackmun reasoned, are irreconcilable, and no amount of "tinkering" will somehow make the contradiction dissolve. Likewise, no amount of tinkering will make sanctions anything other than a violent and inhumane form of international governance. It is hard to articulate any greater good that can justify the deliberate, systematic imposition of measures that are known to increase chronic malnutrition, infant mortality and the many varieties of human damage that impoverishment inflicts.

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