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Essay On Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism
Economic sanctions have resurfaced at the center of public policy debate. After a brief pause following the politically disastrous grain embargo and pipeline sanctions in the early 1980s, sanctions are once again the weapon of choice to enforce a heap of US foreign policy goals, from countering terrorism to battling drug trafficking. High-publicity initiatives, such as the Helms-Burton Act and the Iran/Libya Sanctions Act, which threaten to punish third-country corporations that conduct business in Cuba, Iran, and Libya, also raise the possibility that frustrated OECD governments (such as Canada and France) will retaliate against US companies. In an increasingly integrated global economy, it is important to have a clear understanding of the costs and benefits of unilateral economic sanctions for the United States.
Economic sanctions are not only a foreign policy tool but a form of trade policy. Like other kinds of trade policy, sanctions attract domestic political support from both protectionists and the human rights lobby. Sometimes the human rights lobby can piggyback on protectionists to encourage policy-makers to demand sanctions, while protectionists can also hijack the human rights issue for their own ends. Two variables, WTO membership and an independent legislature, affect both the likelihood and the form of sanctions in this domestic political environment. WTO membership, like MFN treatment in general, mobilizes export interests against a trade sanctions policy. Congress's more hawkish preferences on both trade policy and human rights mean that when the United States imposes sanctions against a WTO member, it is likely to do so under congressional leadership and perhaps against the will of the president. These variables color Sino-American trade relations today (Balaam, Veseth, 125-129).
Most of the analysis of the effectiveness of economic sanctions suggests they have limited the mutual aid for changing the behavior or governments of target countries. Previous research at the Institute for International Economics concluded that US sanctions had positive outcomes in fewer than one in five cases in the 1970s and 1980s.....
