TRISTEN TAYLOR: Sanctions are ineffective and produce only misery

On March 14 1958 the US state department cancelled the shipment of 1,950 Garand rifles to the Cuban government. At the time, president Fulgencio Batista was fighting Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries. The department said of the halted arms transfer that “we wish to be assured, for example, that the arms are destined for uses consistent with the objectives of our mutual security legislation”.

Batista’s regime fell on the very last day of 1958. The US began sanctioning communist Cuba in 1960, and has yet to stop. Given 62 years of strangling the Cuban economy and the continued existence of communist power, one could be forgiven for believing that the US government simply hates the Cuban people and revels in their hardship.

The impression that US and British foreign policy elites have something against Iraqi kids could also be deemed reasonable. Sanctions against Iraq from 1990 to 2000 are estimated, according to the UN Commission for Human Rights, to have caused the deaths of between 500,000 and 1.5-million people, mostly children. Denis Halliday, the UN’s humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq, resigned in September 1998, saying: “We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral.”

Authoritarian regimes such as Saddam Hussein’s have over and over again proven immune to sanctions and embargoes. In 1950 the US started its sanctions regime against North Korea: the EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia and others have all joined in. The result? No change whatsoever in the behaviour of the North Korean government. Just like in Myanmar and Venezuela.

In a 1997 study Robert Pape pointed out that from 1914 to 1996 only five cases of sanctions resulted in clear success: in 1933 the UK pressured the USSR to release six prisoners. In 1975 the US and Canada prevented South Korea from building a nuclear reprocessing plant. In 1979 the Arab League made Canada agree not to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In 1987 the US forced El Salvador not to release three prisoners. And in 1989 Indian sanctions resulted in Nepal agreeing not to buy weapons from China.

In cases of regime change it is not the sanctions that topple governments but other forces. The 1977 to 1993 sanctions on SA did not bring about the end of apartheid. SA resistance forced the apartheid state to negotiate a surrender. Struggle did it. Not being able to play cricket in Perth did not.

Military actions such as invading or supporting a coup d’etat in a sanctioned nation axiomatically bring about the removal of an unfriendly leader, but often in an ultimately futile and farcical manner. The Taliban were first sanctioned in October 1999, without effect. The US’s 2001 invasion toppled the regime and the subsequent war cost an estimated 234,000 lives.

Yet the Taliban ultimately defeated Western nations and returned to power in 2021. And yes, the Taliban is now sanctioned again. Out of spite, the US government jacked Afghanistan’s central bank reserves to the tune of $7bn. Widespread hunger now stalks the country.

So what is going on here? Western nations are dishing out sanctions left, right and centre. Iran, Nicaragua, Myanmar, Chinese companies and even a gangster boss in Haiti, have all been sanctioned over the past few months. All will fail, so why do it? Collective insanity?

The first reason is emotional. China’s genocide against ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang is immoral in the extreme and should provoke horror, anger and profound sorrow. Embargoing goods made from forced labour, travel bans and the freezing of assets all give the solace of doing something, anything. But it is a pyrrhic salve of consciousness, since these kinds of “smart” sanctions do not actually ever stop human rights abuses. We feel better in our powerlessness as we buy Chinese products.

Morality also plays a role, one should not truck and barter with countries engaged in repression and the violent inhibition of the universal right to liberty. But another moral principle is involved: do no harm. Previous sanctions against Iran, Zimbabwe, Suriname, Cambodia, Panama, Nepal and Lesotho all significantly reduced each country’s GDP, with the predictable consequence of causing tremendous suffering to the general public.

One ought not to increase hunger, poverty and childhood mortality. If the moral conflict between sanctions and no sanctions is not resolved on behalf of innocents, something is profoundly wrong. You are certainly not on the side of the angels.

In a 1996 CBS interview former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright was asked: “We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Her response was: “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.” 

Albright’s response points to the real reason behind sanctions. The great powers of this world use them to order the world to their liking. Articles in the US magazine Foreign Affairs illustrate this with the starkness of overhead fluorescent lighting: many of the magazine’s highly influential authors see the world as a giant chessboard. The Great Game demands a clash of nations and civilisations where the aim is to maintain power and dominance.

US President Joe Biden’s recent embargo on China’s access to advanced computer chips and the equipment to make them is openly and explicitly aimed at suppressing the country’s technological advancement. The US and its allies must preserve their current technological advantage at all costs.

The Israeli army calls this “mowing the grass”. Israel knows it cannot defeat the Palestinians, for the same reason apartheid could not defeat the liberation forces, but it can suppress Palestinian resistance through periodic waves of repression and killings.

Biden’s effort will fail. Conceit blinds to the simple fact that the Chinese are more than capable of developing their own advanced chip manufacturing industry. All these sanctions will do is further split the world into competing blocs and ratchet up geopolitical conflict. Wonderful. Peace is overrated anyway.

Is there an alternative to sanctions? That is beyond the scope of this article, but any alternative method to protect human rights can only be built on the foundation of a cold truth: sanctions only increase human misery and make the world a more dangerous place.

• Dr Taylor, a freelance journalist and photographer, is a research fellow in environmental ethics at Stellenbosch University.