MYSTERIOUS SANCTIONS

In view of the accords achieved in negotiations between six world powers and Iran on Tehran's nuclear programme and against the background of news about the USA and Cuba exchanging their diplomatic missions, questions about the efficiency of sanctions are again on the agenda. 

Dictionaries and textbooks define sanctions as measures of coercive nature applied by one participant (or group) of international trade to another in order to force the latter into changing its policy. So, the target is policy and the tool is economy. Such things have happened more than once, since the times of Ancient Greece. In the 5th century B.C., Athens tried to punish the city of Megara for its alliance with Sparta but the sanctions not only failed to work but also led to a war. The most popular example of failed sanctions in New History is Napoleon's Berlin Decree issued in 1805 to block the British Isles because the emperor was aware that he would find it difficult to overcome London's resistance by force, especially on the sea. Such sanctions hit not only the English people but also the Europeans united by Napoleon as they no longer had access to English industrial and colonial goods. In addition, London successfully learned to find roundabout ways using smuggling and third countries and thereby giving an example to many others that would get under sanctions afterwards, up to this day. England never yielded on that occasion while Napoleon's fate is known very well.   

Interestingly enough, in contemporary history, sanctions stopped being an element of war and rather became its alternative; they are believed to be a measure much milder than weapons. Today, sanctions are used when a powerful response to actions by some state is needed but diplomatic measures have no effect and losses that may be caused by a full-scale war appear too great. The right to apply sanctions is vested in the UN Security Council. It is also practiced by individual states - big world players having interests outside their own borders. As a rule, they force their smaller allies into a game of sanctions. Those are the USA and, formerly, the USSR. Today, the most demonstrative example is the sanctions imposed by the USA and big European countries against the Russian Federation. All the EU member states are forced to follow the decisions of Washington, Berlin and London. Sanctions may be imposed for quite a number of reasons: support to terrorism, illegal arms and drug trafficking, sale of military technologies, secret production of mass destruction weapons and systematic violation of human rights. In such cases, declared as their ultimate goal frequently is, at the least, changing the policy of one state or another and, at the most, changing its leader and government. The need for sanctions is attributed to the fact that, having an impact on economic growth and the social situation of the population, they must lead to change in the country's domestic political situation. In essence, this is blockade to besiege, enclose, drive into a corner and wait until the adversary surrenders.      

In fact, however, sanctions rarely achieve the desired result. In their well-known work "Economic Sanctions Reconsidered", Gary Hufbauer, Jeffrey Schott, Kimberly Elliott and Barbara Oegg analysed 204 cases of sanctions and drew the conclusion that the effectiveness of sanctions was only 34 per cent.

By all accounts, the most illustrative (and almost unique) example of successful sanctions is the Republic of South Africa (RSA), on which sanctions were imposed by the UN in 1962. After a long international isolation, its government did abolish the apartheid regime thus avoiding civil war and foreign invasion. Meanwhile, punitive measures against Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1965-66 are viewed as one of the very first cases of failure. On that occasion, the UN Security Council found the government of that country to be an "illegal racist minority regime". However, Switzerland and the Federal Republic of Germany which were not UN members at that time continued trade with Rhodesia. Its blockade was broken in various ways by Japan, Iran, Portugal, the RSA and later even by the USA. As a result, the government of Rhodesia held out till 1979 and fell only as a result of civil war. The efficiency of sanctions against Iraq (after its war against Kuwait) remains utterly disputable. Iraqi oil was completely shut off from the world market and all assets of Iraqi individuals and legal entities were simultaneously frozen. It is certainly beyond doubt that they hit the country's economy badly but how much did they help those who imposed them to achieve their goals? Hussein managed to stay in power all the same and his regime fell only many years later after a direct military invasion by the USA. In fact, it is again not sanctions but the use of military force that made Iraq pull out of Kuwait. In addition, under the guise of talks about the humanitarian aspect of the sanctions, that the punitive measures hit first and foremost "common people", a large-scale corruption scheme was unfolding. The Oil-for-Food programme approved by the UN in 1995 enabled Iraq to sell part of its oil in exchange for foodstuffs and medicines. It did not improve the life of common people very much but it helped the enrichment of a certain circle of people - politicians from the USA, Europe, Russia and India, including dictator Saddam Hussein himself… 

The world's most famous sanctions are perhaps those imposed by the USA on the Island of Freedom - Cuba as far back as 1960. The USA was pressing for democratization of Cuba, respect for human rights, an end to sponsorship of terrorism and military cooperation with other countries. That decision put the clock far back for Cuba's development over the period but its economy as well as the regime managed to hold out. In the current month, the USA and Cuba are officially restoring their diplomatic relations and a gradual lifting of sanctions is expected. It is said that this progress became possible thanks to the new policy of US President Barack Obama who announced in December last year that the previous one yielded no results. Does this mean recognition of the fact that the 50 years' regime of punitive measures against Cuba was unnecessary? 

The present questions about the efficiency of sanctions were also urged by Iran which met with restrictive measures from the international community and especially the USA and Europe in 1979, immediately after the Islamic Revolution. The sanctions have been permanently expanding since then reaching an especially high scale after the start of the IRI's nuclear programme. The brunt of the attack was certainly focused on the country's energy sector. In 1974, Iran produced more than 6m barrels of oil daily. In 2014, the output of crude oil and gas condensate declined to 3.6m barrels per day. As a result Iran, having huge reserves of crude oil, was forced to buy refined oil products and import natural gas while sitting on the world's second largest reserves of gas. In addition Iran was expelled from the international financial system, its access to high technologies was blocked and its foreign assets were frozen. Certainly, when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says that the Western sanctions proved to be inefficient and had no impact on the country, he indulges in wishful thinking. The sanctions led to an essential growth of inflation and reduced the country's reserves of foreign currency which shrank especially quickly during the hard period since 2011. When the European Union imposed an embargo on purchases of Iranian oil in 2012, Tehran found itself in a really hard situation. The effect of the sanctions was negative but not disastrous. GDP growth did not turn negative. The outflow of direct foreign investments was compensated somehow. Iran staked on the establishment of its own high-tech companies. In addition, sanctions against the Islamic Republic never were really international; Iran's oil never completely disappeared from the market (Iran remains an OPEC member) and in this sense Tehran's partners were Turkey, Russia, China and India. The present negotiations ended with a deal to the effect that, if the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirms that Iran sticks to the commitments it assumed, the UN Security Council, the USA and the European Union will start lifting sanctions step by step as from the beginning of 2016. 

The above examples show that, for sanctions to be a success, the country being punished must strongly depend on export and import (this especially applies to essential goods). In addition, sanctions must be really international and leave no opportunity to find an alternative; the punished country must have no helpers, such as the USSR was for Cuba for a long time. However, under globalization, export restrictions on high technologies or on trade will anyway lead to search for other sources. In the case of Iran, the sanctions were tightened gradually and the Iranian economy was also gradually adapting to them. So, assessments of the success of sanctions may differ, all the more so that sanctions do not work on their own: they go well either as part of an integrated strategy, or with a number of attendant factors, such as a world economic crisis, falling oil prices, guerrilla movement and others. Thus for instance, Russia is now suffering not so much from the Western sanctions as from low oil prices. As regards Iran, there are two opinions why it did accept the terms set by the West. Was the Islamic Republic unable to bear the burden of the sanctions any longer or did Tehran feel that it was the right moment to cast off the restrictions and at the same time save its face? People in the IRI, like in the rest of the world, are only too well aware that now the USA badly needs a new ally in the Middle East against the IS and it is important for it to expand export of energy supplies to Europe from the Islamic Republic to the detriment of Russia. The same can be said about Cuba. Has the Island of Freedom surrendered in the end or is "lame duck" Obama desperately trying to go down in history by settling two important foreign policy problems - Iran and Cuba, and at the same time to strengthen the Democrats' positions ahead of the presidential polls to be held in November 2016? 

By the way, speaking about sanctions, one should keep in mind their important components: legal, ideological and psychological. The legal aspect relates to how much sanctions violate commitments assumed at other international organizations, such as, for instance, OPEC and how much they break laws of free market and human rights, which can be seen very clearly in the case of Cuba. According to official data, as of early December 2010, direct damage caused by the economic blockade of the island totalled 104bn dollars (975bn dollars allowing for dollar devaluation to gold during the period since 1961). In the opinion of many human rights organizations, the sanctions have a negative effect on the exercise by Cubans of their economic, social and cultural rights. The ideological component of sanctions often makes them counterproductive. This happens when the government of the punished country takes advantage of the situation to mobilize the population against the country imposing the sanctions. A case in point today is Russia where, after the West imposed its sanctions, the rating of support for President Vladimir Putin has increased and so have negative sentiments towards the USA and the EU. The psychological aspect of sanctions acts in two ways. It is believed that the growing feeling of being an outcast will sooner or later make the rogue state want to return to the international scene. But on the other hand, the psychological component can be seen in that the authorities imposing sanctions benefit from looking resolute but at the same time not taking resolute steps, as if saying: look at us, we are doing our utmost. In this sense, it turns out that sanctions have wax noses. 

Sanctions are not a tool to achieve justice or the triumph of a more humane international policy. They are just an instrument in political play which is sometimes very foul. Sanctions are also another indicator of weak international mechanisms for resolving problems and a sign of using double standards. The most graphic manifestation of this weak spot in international relations is the case of Russia and Crimea. Punitive economic measures are in fact the only respond of the West to the Kremlin in this case but for some reason they are not always used to punish states violating their neighbours' territorial integrity. One more conclusion drawn by Hufbauer and his co-authors looks noteworthy against this backdrop: politically and economically weak countries are more vulnerable to sanctions and that "economic sanctions are more effective when they are aimed at former friends and close trading partners"…