If not the best or the worst of times, mankind is certainly traversing through the most dangerous of times. The emergent bipolarity between liberal-democratic and authoritarian states has cemented a state of permacrisis—a protracted period of instability threatening imminent global implosions of conflict and/or economic collapse. The back-and-forth contest between the supporters and detractors of the liberal international order has engendered severe shifts in the contemporary balance of power, facilitating thereby a plethora of permanent low-intensity crises, and sometimes, international wars. The concomitant geopolitical and geoeconomic drivers of crises have entrenched global complexities to a point wherefrom these cannot culminate towards any commonly acceptable comportment of progress and peace. Ever since this symptom was identified as ‘the return of geopolitics’—undermining liberal triumphalism of the ’90s—states’ weaponisation of geoeconomic instruments for buttressing the ends of their national interest has become stark. Such weaponisation has transformed the various arches of interdependence among nations into new battlegrounds, sharing thereby, a cyclical causality with global permacrisis (Mishra and Sen, 2024).
This phenomenon is starkly observed within the precinct of sanctions. Sanctions are non-military instruments of conflict—ranging from tariffs, export controls, and embargoes, to blockades, asset freezes, etc. These are actions by one or more legal entities to limit or end their economic relations with a target entity for persuading the latter to change one or more of its policies (Morgan et al., 2014). Such instruments can be used to achieve foreign policy objectives during international crises. The pathway of sanctions traverses from economic cost to political acquiescence. Sanctions are the weapons of choice for preserving the liberal international order, increasingly employed in the post-Cold War era for strategic advantages. As such measures are based on a state’s ability to leverage global networks of informational and financial exchange, sanctions are at once the cause and the effect of permacrisis: the sender may issue sanctions to coerce a target towards changing its policies; whereas, the target may simply project solidarity in tackling the negative externalities thereof, and initiate evasive manoeuvres with an associated uptick in hostilities. Also, despite the popularity of sanctions, there exist practical uncertainties and trenchant debates on the utility and efficacy of such measures.
Practical Problems, Theoretical Odds
The Megarian Decree of Pericles, Napoleon’s Continental System, and the 1812 US embargo on Britain are pre-modern examples of sanctions. Notably, in each of these cases, the failure of such measures precipitated into war. The contemporary iteration of sanctions was provided by the League of Nations—later formalised under Article 41 of the UN Charter. The utility of sanctions marked an exponential increase in the post-Cold War era: in the 1990s, there were, on an average, nearly 50 cases of sanctions every year, mostly issued by the United States. Despite their popularity, sanctions’ dismal success rate may have contributed to declining episodes since 2005. Historically, there have been few successful cases of sanctions—such as the US threat of sanctions against Britain in the Suez Crisis (1956), the US blockade of Chile (1973), and the international Anti-Apartheid sanctions (1977-91). However, cases of sanctions failure have revealed the practical problems of implementing such measures: to wit, the ABCD Encirclement of Japan (1940-41); the ongoing US sanctions on Cuba, and more recently, North Korea, China, Iran, and Venezuela. By recent data, the Western sanctions on Russia to terminate its invasion of Ukraine may also be mentioned herein (Timofeev, 2024).
Generalisations aside, contextual particularities and contested versions vis-à-vis the utility and efficacy of sanctions must be recognised to appreciate the theoretical odds involved in measuring the performance of such measures. Debates on the evaluation of sanctions originate from difficulties in conceptualising the ambit of such measures, as well as operationalizing and measuring success or failure. There are myriad instrumental and non-instrumental reasons for which sanctions can be imposed. Moreover, identifying the commencement of coercive sanctions episodes may be challenging, since the preliminary threat of sanctions can bring about observable changes in the target state’s behaviour. Coupled with these are the odds against measuring the diverse political, economic, and humanitarian costs for both sender and target states, and even third parties in a sanctions contest. There are also extensive debates on the criteria for measuring sanctions’ success, which are deemed to depend upon the extent of economic cost imposed on the target, the size and scope of the measures, and non-proximally on the political regime, social cohesion, and economic substructure of participating states. Further, as sanctions are relational, the power differential between the two sides are crucial to success. Since recent sanctions focus on individuals and organisations, rather than an entire country, it becomes even more difficult to measure success. The ability of sanctions to coerce a target towards policy revision in line with the sender’s expectations, however, remains the single most important criterion of efficacy.
The Twilight of Sanctions?
For a section of the literature, comprehensive and multinational sanctions have better odds of success; whereas, others suggest that targeted or ‘smart sanctions’ with relatively modest goals—when imposed on weaker states—fare better. Sanctions are almost always bound to fail when there is a rough power parity between the target and the sender; while being more likely to succeed when the cost and/or sanction issue is of low importance for the target (Blackwill and Harris, 2016). There is hardly any consensus as regards the criteria of sanctions success. Nevertheless, if the target state is economically allied to the sender, and both are democratic, the chances of sanctions success increase; in the obverse, autocratic states and/or economic competitors tend to either suppress discontent or ‘rally around the flag’ when hit by sanctions. The relationship between sanctions and interdependence is also not unidirectional: sanctions may at times be more difficult to initiate in an interdependent and networked world with the presence of non-state and transnational economic actors who may not conform to states’ political agenda. Moreover, target states may integrate their markets with entities that are neutral to the sanctions. Recently, these ‘sanctions busters’ have played a key role in dampening the impact of coercive measures on Russia, China, North Korea, and Venezuela.
Ergo, any analysis of sanctions’ utility and efficacy beg contextual reading. Elsewhere, Sen and Mahmood (2024) have developed a ‘triangular credo of utility and efficacy’—through a study of episodes involving both unilateral and multinational sanctions on North Korea, Venezuela, and Egypt—thereby accounting for the systemic factors of international politics, the characteristics of target states, and the commitments of sanctions senders vis-à-vis the outcome of such measures. It was inferred that no universal criteria can strictly determine sanctions’ efficacy in the current state of permacrisis, given systemic complexity and the interplay among diverse domestic variables—including the motives and tendencies of states participating in sanctions contests. This argument can be extended in the light of the recent stalemate surrounding the US non-proliferation sanctions on Iran, multinational sanctions on Chinese tech firms, not least, the inability of comprehensive sanctions on Russia to tangibly impact its war-fighting capability in Ukraine. Moreover, as regards the Israel-Hamas irregular war, a double standard has been revealed insofar the disinclination of the West to prosecute stringent measures against Israel since its genocide of unarmed Palestinians—albeit in theory, war-terminating sanctions have been considered more effective against allies than adversaries.
In fine, is the liberal international order staring the twilight of sanctions? Given the contemporary popularity of minilateralism, not least the interdependence among sanctions senders, targets, and busters, the future efficacy of such measures may indeed seem bleak. Russia has resolved that states seeking to join the BRICS shall have to renounce ‘illegal unilateral sanctions regimes’, thereby directly challenging the legitimacy and efficacy of the West’s chief weapon of choice. Emerging economies such as India and China also exude remarkable ambivalence towards sanctions, having often been at the receiving end of such measures. However, as recent trends portend, the retainers of the liberal international order are more likely to perpetuate their unnuanced resort to coercive sanctions, despite the repeated failure of such measures in preserving the system through revisionist bouts. That an instrument calibrated towards peace can further aggravate interstate hostilities is the insuperable aporia of sanctions.
References:
Blackwill, Robert. D. and Jennifer M. Harris (2016). War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.
Mishra, Omprakash and Souradeep Sen (2024). “Introduction: Context and Drivers of Permacrisis,” in Omprakash Mishra and Souradeep Sen (eds.), Global Political Economy, Geopolitics and International Security: The World in Permacrisis, 1-17. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.
Morgan, T. Clifton, Navin Bapat, and Yoshiharu Kobayashi (2014). “The Threat and Imposition of Sanctions: Updating the TIES dataset,” Conflict Management and Peace Science, 31(5), 541-558.
Sen, Souradeep and Zaad Mahmood (2024). “‘Idealist’s Dream or Realist’s Cudgel’: Examining Sanctions as Intruments of Statecraft,” in Omprakash Mishra and Souradeep Sen (eds.), Global Political Economy, Geopolitics and International Security: The World in Permacrisis, 147-169. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.
Timofeev, Ivan (2024). “Do Sanctions Really Work? The Case of Contemporary Western Sanctions against Russia,” in Ksenia Kirkham (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Sanctions, 151-162. London: Routledge.
Keywords: Geoeconomics; Permacrisis; Liberal International Order; Revisionism; Sanctions
Blurb 1: The emergent bipolarity between liberal-democratic and authoritarian states has cemented a state of permacrisis.
Blurb 2: Sanctions are the weapons of choice for preserving the liberal international order, increasingly employed in the post-Cold War era for strategic advantages.
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