Sanctions or Engagement?

Matt Welch | June 24, 2005

Fareed Zakaria makes a persuasive case that engagement, not isolation, is the best method for encouraging regime change of dictatorships from the outside. Excerpt:

To change a regime, short of waging war, you have to shift the balance of power between the state and society. Society needs to be empowered. It is civil society -- private business, media, civic associations, nongovernmental organizations -- that can create an atmosphere which forces change in a country. But by piling on sanctions and ensuring that a country is isolated, Washington only ensures that the state becomes ever more powerful and society remains weak and dysfunctional. In addition, the government benefits from nationalist sentiment as it stands up to the global superpower. Think of Iraq before the war, which is a rare case where multilateral sanctions were enforced. As we are discovering now, the sanctions destroyed Iraq's middle class, its private sector and its independent institutions, but they allowed Saddam to keep control. When the regime was changed by war, it turned out that nation-building was vastly more difficult because the underpinnings of civil society had been devastated.

In a careful study, the Institute for International Economics has estimated that U.S. sanctions on 26 countries, accounting for more than half the world's population, cost America between $15 billion and $19 billion in lost exports annually and have worked less than 13 percent of the time. But what if it's even worse? What if our policies have exactly the opposite effect than is intended? Look around the world today, and you will see regime change in places where Washington has no such policy and regime resilience in places where it does.

Whole thing here; link via Export Control Blog.

Comments

|6.24.05 @ 12:10PM|#

On the other hand, sanctions seem to have worked with Lybia.

|6.24.05 @ 12:17PM|#

And there are drug addicts who turned their lives around after going to prison.

A few success stories shouldn't be enough to redeem a policy that fails miserably overall.

|6.24.05 @ 12:20PM|#

Ladies and Gentelmen, MFN status is not just for China anymore. I have long believed that sanctions don't work, are counterproductive are stupid. They don't really hurt the dictator, they hurt the people of his country that would like freedom, and the people of our counrty that would like to make a tad more money legally.

On another note, I don't know that you can call sanctions on Iraq successfull with the oil for food scandals, the French selling them weapons and all that stuff.

|6.24.05 @ 12:21PM|#

The difference with Libya is that there was international support for the sanctions. There isn't much for Iran and Cuba, thereby greatly diminishing their effectiveness. Also, I got the feeling that Qaddafi relented mostly because he was getting tired of the international pariah jig, and could've kept it going had he been fanatical enough to want to.

CodeMonkeySteve|6.24.05 @ 12:24PM|#

"If goods don't cross borders, soldiers will."
-- Frederic Bastiat

|6.24.05 @ 12:28PM|#

Sanctions aren't as effective as engagement. It's good that we tried them -- did the experiment and gathered the data, so to speak. But I don't think we have a lot more to learn by using them any more.

|6.24.05 @ 12:31PM|#

But mobile, maybe the next tightening of sanctions will be the straw that breaks Castro's back! We won't know until we try! And if it doesn't? Well, try some more!

I predict that when Castro inevitably dies (life has a 100% mortality rate, last time I checked), whoever happens to be in the White House at the time will declare victory. If he's a Republican, he'll also give some of the credit to George W. Bush. If he's a Democrat, the Congressional Republicans will pass a resolution assigning the credit to George W. Bush.

Me, I'll blame cigars. Hey, they nearly brought down Clinton. They can bring down Castro! ;)

|6.24.05 @ 12:40PM|#

Something about "free trade with all, and entangling alliances with none"

Sombody said something like that. Sounds like a good idea to me.

|6.24.05 @ 1:09PM|#

I thought the line was "permanent alliances"? I'm sure that Washington wasn't against temporary alliances, even if they were somewhat entangling.

Sanctions in general, but especially the US sanctions against Cuba, are a joke. Free trade at an international level will surely filter down to the citizens of those countries taking part in the free trade, and that's something that would really be fatal to a regime like Castro's.

That said, I would support not selling tanks and guns to countries where the governments are going to use them to attack the citizenry.

|6.24.05 @ 1:19PM|#

Eion-

I'm with you. Weapons are the one area where I'm willing to tolerate a certain level of trade restrictions. Otherwise, free trade for everybody!

|6.24.05 @ 1:28PM|#

Of course the difference with weapons is that they tend not to filter down the food chain - the government keeps all of them.

This is unlike things like food, clothes, medicine, technology and the like - while the government may be able to grab whatever it likes as it comes in, ordinary people will still see some of the goods.

|6.24.05 @ 1:31PM|#

"I thought the line was 'permanent alliances'? I'm sure that Washington wasn't against temporary alliances, even if they were somewhat entangling."

You're correct. Washington's farewell address warns against "permanent alliances": http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/washing.htm

The term "entangling alliances" is from Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/jeff.inaug.html

|6.24.05 @ 4:04PM|#

Ladies and Gentelmen, MFN status is not just for China anymore

It never has been just for China, to nitpick. Several nations have that status.

Gene Berkman|6.24.05 @ 5:24PM|#

I too support export controls on weapons & military equipement. That said, the sanctions on Cuba have given Castro an excuse for the poor performance of his economy - he can blame the Yanquis.

Sanctions against Iraq after the first Gulf War made everyone in Iraq dependent on the government for rations, and eliminated the possiblity of a civil society developing in opposition to the state.

If you don't like the idea of trading with a totalitarian state, you can organize an expose and boycott of corporations that do trade with Cuba, or China, Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Free trade does mean you have to trade.

|6.27.05 @ 1:14AM|#

What is MFN?

|6.27.05 @ 1:33PM|#

MFN = Most Favored Nation status.

Which strikes me as strange. I would have thought Normal Trading status or some such thing would be more accurate since if I'm not mistaken any nation gets MFN status unless the US wants to punish it.