A Brief History of Economic Sanctions

As people who follow foreign relations for any country in the world know, economic sanctions are a repeating aspect of foreign policy and diplomacy between countries who dislike each other enough to want to cause damage but not enough to start a war. Economic sanctions have been most recently in the news due to a combination of two factors: the warming of relations between the United States of America and Cuba and Russia’s actions during the crisis in Ukraine. In both situations sanctions are in place but that’s where the difference ends. While the sanctions might be lifted or lessened in Cuba, there is a strong likelihood of stronger and more aggressive sanctions against Russia. Even Iran is doing better when it comes to potentially facing less sanctions than Putin is.

While sanctions might seem like a good idea and like governments are actually taking actions in line with their public policies, they actually vary in effectiveness and can be used to give the illusion of a government taking a hardline when in reality they don’t do all that much anyways. The actual effects of sanctions are usually somewhat disappointing and rarely ever force the change that’s desired. Even when that change does happen, the sanctions play a relatively small role and can more or less be discounted (such as US sanctions against Latin America countries during the Cold War).

That being said, there are moments when sanctions do work and are responsible for major policy shifts. Apartheid in South Africa was ended because basically the entire world decided to enact sanctions on the racist South African government, depriving it of any and all trade partners and ruining the economy. That being said, even when it looks like the sanctions are working there is usually some other force at play. The sanctions on Russia are certainly hurting the economy, but they’re being bolstered by the effects of a growth slowdown in China and a drop in shale-gas price due to increased production in the US. Of course, it still looks good for the government to say that it’s all because of them.

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