When I first arrived in the United States Congress in 1971, I introduced legislation into the House of Representatives that would impose economic sanctions against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. I believed that a U.S. determination to sever economic links with South Africa, and to strengthen the effect of that resolve by pressing for international sanctions that would economically isolate the regime, provided the surest and most morally compelling avenue to end the consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights imposed under apartheid doctrine.
Fifteen years later, amid a national hue and cry for economic disinvestment from South Africa, the Dellums bill to impose sanctions against South Africa finally passed the House of Representatives and sanctions became United States law over the veto of then President Ronald Reagan. I believe to a certainty that the passage of the sanctions law and the heightening of international efforts to isolate South Africa's apartheid government contributed significantly to the watershed political changes that have occurred on that portion of the African continent.
As I stood in Pretoria to witness the inauguration of President Nelson Mandela, I reflected on the positive contribution that the international sanctions effort had made in accelerating the inevitable coming to power of a government in South Africa based on the principle of nonracial democracy. What also seemed clear was that the timely and deliberate use of economic sanctions had mitigated against the possibility that this inevitable celebration might have come as a result of a further protracted and deadly violent armed struggle, fought to a bitter conclusion with all of the lingering consequences that would militate against reconciliation and national development.
In a very different context, I also supported the use of an internationally based economic sanctions strategy to dislodge the Iraqi forces from their conquest and illegal occupation of Kuwait. In the congressional debate about whether to authorize President Bush's undertaking of offensive military actions against Iraq, I pleaded that sanctions be given the opportunity to achieve their objective. To do that, I argued, would mean giving sanctions at least the twelve to eighteen months recommended as a minimum by experts to create enough economic pressure on the Iraqi regime to persuade its military to leave Kuwait without allied forces having to commence offensive military operations.
Thankfully the fearful predictions of massive allied casualties in the war that followed did not come to fruition. Nonetheless, tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed, a dramatic loss of life that may have been avoided had we abided the appropriate period of time to see whether the sanctions would obtain their stated objective.
The eventual and nearly unanimous world condemnation of South Africa, and sanctions against that country, were notable exceptions to the Cold War-era split that had divided the world community into East, West, and the nonaligned. This split often prevented the use of concerted worldwide action to meet humanitarian, peacekeeping, and human rights challenges and thereby forestall armed conflict. The sanctions against Iraq were trumpeted as part of the "new world order" (a phrase that means many different things depending on one's vantage point) made possible by the end of the Cold War.
There seems to De a consensus that the last decade of this century will be seen as a historic turning point for humanity. We have witnessed the end of the costly, dangerous, and sometimes deadly standoff between East and West. Former declared enemies of the West—the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Treaty Organization—have dissolved. Democratic governments have emerged where they had not previously existed throughout Europe, as they have also in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Despite having faced each other for decades across mine- and barbed wire-laden military lines, U.S. and Russian troops now train and deploy together in peacekeeping operations. Much of Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union have now joined with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in new "partnerships for peace" that promise to promote stability within the region.
Yet the post-Cold War years have also brought new challenges to the forefront of international politics. Civil wars, gross human rights abuses, regional conflicts, "ethnic cleansing," starvation and famine, and environmental catastrophes all pose challenges to international norms and place important demands on national and international systems. These demands require unprecedented and innovative responses from political and economic organizations that are themselves in transition. Much of this turmoil reflects the legacy of the Cold War and of the scores of conflicts of the past forty years.
The end of the Cold War era has instilled new life and potential viability into the United Nations, our most important international institution. No longer paralyzed by almost automatic superpower vetoes in the Security Council, the United Nations is finally able to frame a more constructive and increasingly complete set of responses to violations of international norms of behavior. On August 6,1990, for example, Resolution 661 banned UN member exports to Iraq of any conventional military equipment or technology, as well as imports of oil from Iraq. Not only was this a clear signal of international condemnation of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, it was an attempt to reverse the transgression by means other than war.
The September 1991 overthrowing of Haiti's first democratically elected president, Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, catalyzed a trade embargo by the Organization of American States against the Haitian military dictatorship and coup leaders within a month. In response to the complex and dynamic horror occurring in the former Yugoslavia, over fifty United Nations resolutions have been passed, several applying some form of economic sanctions to constrain the violence of the war and the incidence of outrageous human rights abuses. Partial sanctions regimes have also been imposed recently against Somalia, Libya, Liberia, and areas of Cambodia.
All these multilateral sanctions regimes suggest a recent trend to find effective international responses, short of military action, to violations of accepted norms of behavior—invasions, coups, terrorism, racism, and human rights abuses. They are one aspect of the diplomatic, political, and economic efforts that constitute part of what I have called "preventive engagement."
In 1959 African National Congress President Albert Luthuli argued that the international community was duty-bound to impose an economic embargo on South Africa to "hasten the end of the hateful system of apartheid." Three years later the United Nations General Assembly passed its resolution calling for a ban on exports to and imports from South Africa. In 1986, the United States adopted economic sanctions, responding to a massive, domestic antiapartheid movement. While it took thirty-five years from Luthuli's statement for Nelson Mandela to be sworn in as president of a nonracial South Africa, it took less than five years from the adoption of U.S. and complete international sanctions to achieve the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, placing South Africa on an irreversible path to fulfillment of Luthuli's declaration. I believe it is clear, even to those who were initially skeptical, including the American and international divestment campaign, that economic sanctions significantly hastened South Africa's historic political transition. As I noted above, South Africa's relatively peaceful final transition to democracy serves as proof that nonviolent methods, given sufficient time to work, can achieve the objective of ending the crisis in a manner calculated to promote long-term stability and reconciliation among parties.
Some would argue against the effectiveness of sanctions, saying that these actions will solidify a nation against the international interference, and that populations may be politically mobilized by these embargoes. Skeptics point to the embargo on Serbia and Montenegro where, despite years of hyperinflation, enormous unemployment, and the almost complete devaluation of the Serbian currency, the population pulled together to support President Slobodan Milosevic and the Bosnian Serb war. I would submit that the eventual decision by the Serbian government to cut off their confreres in Bosnia (when the rump Bosnian Serb parliament rejected for the third time the "Contact Group" peace plan of July 6,1994) proves the effectiveness of sanctions as a strategy. As I have argued on the floor of the House of Representatives, sanctions do take time to achieve their objective.
There are many examples of sanctions regimes undertaken this century and, although we are beginning to better understand this mode of international operation, there is still a need to analyze past experiences to establish more sophisticated practices. That task is advanced nicely by the essays in this book. From a policy point of view, several issues are central to this inquiry.
First, who should participate? Most sanctions regimes have been implemented unilaterally by one country against another. Such actions, while sometimes calculated to achieve noble purposes, can be burdened by national self-interest and distorted by the relative power of the nations involved.
Since the end of the Cold War, however, more actions have become multilateral, a development that is to be heartily embraced. Multinational embargoes and boycotts are usually more effective than unilateral efforts because the economic impact on a nation being embargoed by most or all major trading partners is of course much greater than if only one or two partners participate. Multinational sanctions regimes also provide fewer options for target nations to find alternate sources for fuel, arms, and other embargoed commodities. Equally important, multilateral sanctions, especially those instituted through a United Nations mandate, can claim a moral authority unencumbered by national or regional self-interest, thereby increasing the likelihood of international solidarity, compliance, and secondary enforcement for sanctions violators.
Second, what type of embargo or sanctions regime should be undertaken? Sanctions regimes can range from very limited cutoffs of a single commodity, such as oil or weapons, to restrictions much more expansive in nature. This must be decided on a case-by-case basis, depending on the nature of the target government and the character of the crisis. As with warfare itself, sanctions should be imposed only to the degree that it is necessary to achieve the objective of securing compliance with international norms of behavior.
Related to this, arid very important, is the need to carefully understand the humanitarian implications of any sanctions effort. Boycotts, blockades, and embargoes can have devastating consequences on innocent civilian populations, with varying results. By 1994, for example, Iraqi living standards under the prolonged sanctions regime had declined by at least one-third since the 1991 Gulf War. To focus sanctions on governments and elites and to shield innocent civilians from unnecessary suffering, the United Nations has attempted in Iraq, Haiti, and elsewhere to exempt food and medicines. However, we need to know more about how to coerce the key targets of sanctions while protecting, as best we can, the innocent.
Third, once an economic action is implemented, how do we effectuate enforcement? A declared trade or arms embargo is of little effect if it cannot be enforced by the sanctioning countries or organizations. Thus, the arms and trade embargoes on the former Yugoslavia have had mixed results as leakage has occurred along the Danube River and other border areas. The same has been true with the transport of goods across the DominicanRepublic/Haiti border and the transshipment of goods through Jordan to Iraq. What may be required to ensure minimal leakage is to provide economic assistance to innocent third party states whose own economies are put at risk by an embargo. Such assistance may be necessary to forestall hardship on the citizens in third party states.
Fourth, what is the scope and strategy for implementing sanctions? It appears that sanctions are most effective when implemented quickly and comprehensively, although the authors in this volume differ on this matter. For example, the sanctions on Haiti were gradually expanded over three years—from an early cutoff of U.S. foreign assistance to an OAS-and UN-imposed embargo on arms and fuel and then finally to a comprehensive prohibition on all trade, commercial air traffic, and financial transactions. If these sanctions had been comprehensive right after the military coup, or at least from the moment of the coup leaders' repudiation of their obligations under the Governors Island Agreement of July 3,1993, the sanctions regime would have likely been much more effective and expeditious in restoring democracy and ending the vicious reprisals by the regime.
To be most effective against targeted regimes and populations, and least harmful to innocent civilians and other countries, each sanctions regime must be carefully tailored to the individual case. Information drawn from the expanding reservoir of experience that has produced this very inexact science can be helpful in shaping specific sanctions regimes. What is clear, however, is that effective and affordable alternatives to military force are needed now if the international community is to resolve the many ethnic, religious, racial, territorial, and other conflicts of our time with positive solutions. New and diverse approaches to economic development, environmental restoration and protection, conflict mediation and resolution, and economic sanctions—from limited commodity boycotts, to full trade and arms embargoes—will provide viable mechanisms between diplomatic and military actions that can help to achieve these goals. Such an effort will require engagement by all nations, not isolationism, and a commitment to live by the increasingly mature body of law that will develop as we move into the next century.
In this volume, Economic Sanctions: Panacea or Peacebuilding in a Post-Cold War World? George Lopez and David Cortright have brought together a group of academics and policy analysts whose work provides a most welcome addition and stimulus to contemporary thinking on these important problems. The authors herein do not always agree on the effectiveness or utility of sanctions regimes, nor do they all agree on the modalities of implementation. Nevertheless, they provide thoughtful and informed analysis on many past and several current sanctions episodes. And they agree that there must be more nonmilitary and less violent, indeed nonviolent, and more effective solutions to the fundamental challenges facing our new world. Serious scholarship regarding such solutions, of which sanctions are a part, is essential to our future. This book advances that agenda and challenges other scholars and policymakers to do likewise.
Ronald V. Dellums
U.S. House of Representatives