Economic Sanctions and the Problem of Evil

Literature › Works

Adeno Addis (2003). Economic Sanctions and the Problem of Evil. Human Rights Quarterly 25(3). The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Type	journal article
Scope	Comparative and methods
Method	theoretical or conceptual
Period studied	1977–2002
Regions	International / UN Security Council, Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, Myanmar (Burma), Haiti, United States (state and municipal divestment), South Africa (illustrative only)
Themes	sanctions divestment, comparative theory, politics ideology elections
Citation key	addis2003

Argument

Critics and defenders of economic sanctions both assume that their only justification is changing the target regime's behaviour (the 'Instrumentalist Justification'). Addis argues that sanctions also have an 'Identitarian' or constitutive function: the sanctioning community defines itself by dissociating from the 'troublesome or evil other'. He illustrates this with Massachusetts' Burma law, Baltimore's South African divestment and UN sanctions on apartheid South Africa and the Taliban. He then argues that multilateral sanctions fail on both counts. They rarely change regimes, they inflict heavy harm on civilians, and they are shaped by an unrepresentative, veto-bound Security Council. He proposes reforming the Council, using targeted sanctions and arms embargoes, and in grave cases military intervention instead of broad economic sanctions.

Evidence and method

Legal and philosophical argument drawing on the UN Charter and Security Council resolutions. It also uses US court cases (the Massachusetts Burma law and the Baltimore divestment ordinances), secondary literature on sanctions (Hufbauer et al., Gordon, Collins & Bowdoin, Galtung), UN and NGO reports and press accounts on Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba and Haiti, and political theory (Anderson, Rawls, Connolly). No original archival or statistical data.

Findings

• States the core thesis: sanctions have an identity-defining function beyond behaviour change. (p. 7)

  economic sanctions, just like other forms of sanctions, are also a process through which the sanctioning community (party) defines its identity through the act of dissociating itself from the target regime

• Baltimore's anti-apartheid divestment is cited as a case where moral dissociation was the primary purpose rather than punishment. (p. 18)

  primary purpose [that] of removing a perceived moral taint from the City's investments and not to punish any entity.

• The Massachusetts Burma law is traced to the 1980s US state and municipal boycotts of apartheid South Africa. (p. 17)

  The Massachusetts effort was modeled after the state and municipal economic boycotts of the 1980s against the Apartheid regime of South Africa.

• UN sanctions on South Africa are read as having instrumental aims (ending apartheid) alongside the aim of affirming the international community's identity. (p. 23)

  It is true that the Council was perhaps hoping and thinking that the white minority regime would be forced to abandon its racist policies and even cede power to the black majority.

• The dissociation motive is applied to UN sanctions on apartheid South Africa. (p. 23)

  The international community dissociating itself from evil was thus an important objective of those sanctions.

• The UN sanctions regime on South Africa was one of only two imposed before the 1990s, running 1977-1994, and began with an arms embargo. (p. 3)

  Southern Rhodesia (1966-1979) and South Africa (1977-1994) were the two.

• Notes that most white South Africans supported apartheid while sanctions hit the whole state. (p. 38)

  It was clear that a substantial majority of the white minority supported the apartheid system.

• Cites a UN Sub-Commission finding that the sanctions effectiveness relationship with civilian harm is inverse. (p. 35)

  realization that the efficacy of a sanctions regime is in inverse proportion to its impact on civilians.

• Argues arms embargoes (including the 1977 and 1986 South African ones) are preferable to economic sanctions, even if not always effective. (p. 49)

  It is true that arms embargoes may not always work to alter the behavior of the target regime, but they have a better record than economic sanctions.

• Cites a pessimistic judgement on unilateral sanctions generally. (p. 12)

  Nearly all unilateral sanctions fail nearly all of the time.