Economic Sanctions: a Valuable Weapon? | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Economic Sanctions: a Valuable Weapon?

The Conflict

Economic sanctions are a tool in international relations used in order to attempt to force one country to comply with another's wishes. The United States is by far the largest implementer of economic sanctions in the world. While some see sanctions as a low-cost method for accomplishing foreign policy goals, the toll in human suffering is often extreme, due to shortages in food, medicine, and other basic supplies. It is also argued that sanctions damage international relations and exact a high price on the sender in terms of lost jobs and trade opportunities.

Political

• Economic sanctions are sometimes imposed to achieve goals, such as democratization, or to condemn practices, such as human rights abuses and terrorism.

Economic

• Sanctions are ostensibly an economic issue, although ramifications are often humanitarian as well. The idea is to punish countries for reprehensible behavior by restricting trade with them, thus forcing them to change their policy, but economic sanctions may often have a greater effect on a country's general population than on its leaders.

Afghanistan under the Taliban, Angola, Burma (Myanmar), Burundi, Cuba, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, India, Liberia, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, and Yugoslavia are just a few of the countries that have been subjected to economic sanctions over the past few decades.

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