Sanctions

Sanctions, penalties imposed by one or several states on another state to persuade or compel that state to amend its behavior, or for strategic reasons. Sanctions can involve either military action or the interruption of normal trading practices—a boycott on imports from, or an embargo on exports to the offending state; suspension of financial aid; and freezing a country's overseas assets. Sanctions might be imposed after a breach of international law such as military aggression, the abuse of human rights, or in retaliation for unfair trading practices.

Sanctions often affect civilian populations of the offending state more than its government. In this respect economic sanctions can be thought of as the modern equivalent to besieging a town to starve the population into submission. Sanctions also affect the citizens of the imposing states, who may not be able to obtain the goods they want (boycott) or cannot sell their products (embargo). American farmers protested the U.S. embargo of grain sales to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1980 because the embargo left the farmers with unsold grain; the sanctions were soon lifted.

Sanctions can be organized by individual states or by international organizations. Economic sanctions implemented by one or a few states can often be circumvented easily, and legally, by neutral states. When economic sanctions are not fully effective, the offending state feels little pressure to change its ways, while the sanctioning states feel the effects of interrupted trade. Multilateral economic sanctions, especially those imposed by an international organization, such as the United Nations (UN), are generally more effective. In addition, when sanctions of either type are imposed by an international body, they appear to be more a matter of international law than a dispute between states.

The United Nations Charter gave the UN Security Council the power to impose sanctions. Since 1945 the UN has authorized both military and economic sanctions. The UN used military sanctions against North Korea in 1950 when it invaded South Korea (see Korean War). Economic sanctions restricting the export of arms and strategic materials to North Korea were used in conjunction with the military action. In the mid-1960s the UN used a total embargo on trade to pressure the white government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to grant political rights to the country's indigenous people. Both military and economic sanctions were instituted against Iraq in 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait. The economic sanctions were still in effect in 1995 (see Persian Gulf War).

Other international bodies have also organized sanctions; for example, the European Community (now the European Union) petitioned the UN for economic sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (see Serbia and Montenegro) in 1992; the UN imposed the sanctions in an attempt to end the war in that region. The UN also imposed an arms embargo on Croatia and on Bosnia and Herzegovina for the same reason.

Sanctions tend to be relatively short lived, but they can become an established feature of international politics. In 1962 the United States imposed both a complete trade embargo on Cuba and a boycott of Cuban exports following the announcement by Cuban leader Fidel Castro that Cuba had become a Communist state. The USSR stepped in as a major trading partner for Cuba until the dissolution of the USSR in the early 1990s. The U.S. embargo was still in effect in 1995.

The value of sanctions continues to be debated, not least because the requirement for wide participation will always be difficult to meet. Sanctions that are not strictly imposed prove ineffective, as was the case when the League of Nations imposed economic sanctions on Italy in 1935. The league excluded important economic resources from the sanctions, including oil and iron; consequently, the boycott had a minor impact on Italy, but their ineffectiveness ultimately contributed to the demise of the league itself.