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At the end of December, the United Nations Security Council and the United States government took separate measures to facilitate humanitarian aid to go to Afghanistan. The movements were part of an effort to modify the severe international sanctions which were imposed after the takeover of the Taliban in August.
There is a growing concern for a imminent humanitarian disaster In Afghanistan, where the economy is in ruins and tens of millions are hungry, with the world food program estimate 98% of Afghans do not consume enough food.
The example of Afghanistan offers a striking image of the potential impact of economic sanctions, a foreign policy tool that has been used since the era of the ancient Greeks. But what are they and how do they work?
“Sanctions are an attempt to disrupt economic exchange as a means of extracting concessions from another world policy player,” said Daniel Drezner, a professor of international policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at TUFTS University in the United States.
Sanctions can take the form of commercial embargoes, asset gels or travel prohibitions. Economic sanctions can impose restrictions on the entire economy of a country, on specific sectors of its economy or on individuals or organizations for things such as their support for terrorism, drug trafficking, human rights violations or the use of certain types of weapons.
The scope of sanctions
In the United States, for example, economic sanctions may include the refusal of access to the American financial system or assets of frost held by an American entity.
“One of the things that has changed about sanctions in recent decades is that when they have imposed themselves, it was against another country. Now, many of them are imposed on individuals and other entities,” said Drezner. “At least in the case of the United States, it is because the United States has improved a bit to determine how to closely sanction countries or sanction the actors closely.”
This can mean the freezing of the assets of people involved in drugs or organized crimes, or those accused of being involved in terrorism or undergoing democratic processes or institutions.
Sanctions have existed for thousands of years – dating back When will Athens imposed a commercial embargo in Megara neighboring in 432 BC, sanctions are imposed by national governments or international organizations such as the United Nations or the European Union.
Drezner said that the United States’s foreign policy was relying more and more on economic sanctions as a tool. In a recent review Among the sanctions it administers, the US Treasury Department described the sanctions an “essential and effective political tool”, but said they were the most effective in the event of multilateral coordination.
“Many other countries are increasingly enthusiastic about imposing sanctions,” said Drezner. “China imposes them all the time, Russia does, the European Union to a limited extent and Saudi Arabia has entered the law.”
Are the sanctions effective?
Experts are mixed on the effectiveness of sanctions, and even governments cannot always say.
“The United States is implementing dozens of sanctions programs, but have been faced with challenges evaluating their efficiency,” Office of responsibility of the United States government said. “Challenges at Measure the effectiveness of sanctions Include difficulties in isolation of the effects of the sanctions of other factors, the displacement of the goals and objectives of the policy and the lack of reliable data. »»
Drezner said that according to the statistical databases, the sanctions are successfully one in three.
Iran’s 2015 agreement to limit its nuclear activities is considered a success for economic sanctions, which have been imposed on Iran by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union. The United Nations sanctions against South Africa of the apartheid time were also considered successful, as is efforts after September 11 to suppress terrorist funding and money laundering.
But Drezner said there were many more failures, citing an embargo of several decades on Cuba, sanctions against Yugoslavia in the 1990s and current American sanctions against Venezuela as not being led by the desired change.
Drezner sees a “pink future” for sanctions – even if he thinks of having limited efficiency.
“One of the paradoxes of sanctions is that they are most often used when they are the least likely to work,” he said. “There are more countries now willing to sanction. The United States is clearly enthusiastic about the idea of sanctioning largely because it hesitates to use other political alternatives or political substitutes. ”
Questions to consider:
1. In international relations, what are the sanctions?
2. Can you cite an example of sanctions that would have worked? And an example of sanctions that would have failed?
3. Is there an alternative to economic sanctions?
