The Routledge Dictionary of Politics, Third Edition
When sanctions are referred to in politics, it is almost always as a shorthand for the supposed application of non-violent sanctions in international relations. A sanction, of course, is simply a punishment applied by a stronger to a weaker actor to persuade him to stop doing something, as opposed to a pure punishment which may have an entirely retributive intent. The apparent attraction of sanctions in this sense in the international arena is that they are seen, very simply, as an alternative to going to war against a state which is behaving against the interests or moral preferences of other actor states. It is characteristic of sanctions in practice that they involve international co-operation, while straightforward war-making can be unilateral. Although countries have always made threats to other countries, the actual application of a sanction is a complicated matter and relatively recent as a concept in international politics.
Probably the first important appearance of the idea of sanctions was the policy of the League of Nations, between the two world wars, to oppose expansionist policies by aggressor states not by international or military action but by international economic action. Sanctions typically take the form of a trade embargo such that the offending nation is allowed neither to export or import some or all goods, and it may be completely isolated financially and economically. For most of the last decade of the 20th century, for example, Iraq was subject to United Nations-legitimated trade sanctions which concentrated on preventing it earning any international currency through oil exports.
These were enforced because Iraq refused fully to co-operate with the UN attempt to prevent them from developing weapons of mass destruction.
Two important points have to be made about sanctions. The first is that there is little evidence of them ever having worked. Countries can endure great hardship if they are politically united, and the external application of sanctions is a very effective way of building internal cohesion and hatred of the sanction imposing external world. Secondly, sanctions are seldom as ‘peaceful’ or non-violent as they appear. Typically, great hardship is created in the poorest sectors of a sanctioned society, while the intransigent political élites remain relatively immune.
In the end the direct application of force by those nations who feel entitled to prevent another state from doing something is probably not only the more efficient means, but the more humane policy. It is, of course, much harder to get an alliance together to take military action than to carry out a trade boycott. If this means that it is less easy to gain approval for direct force than for sanctions, then that may indicate that there are relatively few examples of genuinely justified international coercive actions.
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