economic sanctions

economic sanctions, restrictions, including those on trade, travel, and access to financial assets, imposed by a national government upon another government, an organization, or an individual for the purpose of compelling or preventing certain actions or policies on the part of the targeted entity or individual. Economic sanctions against governments usually involve the partial or total suspension of preexisting trade relations. They may include but are not limited to asset freezes and seizures, export and import restrictions, travel bans, and arms embargoes. Economic sanctions are a common government response to challenges posed by armed conflicts, terrorism, human rights violations, drug smuggling, and other criminal or objectionable activities. Economic sanctions are often invoked as a first response to such challenges, because they can be levied in situations where military operations would be impossible or undesirable. They are also relatively inexpensive to implement and can be put in place quickly.

Historical and modern economic sanctions

Embargoes, understood as official bans on trade with a particular government or organization, have been used since ancient times. Certain states would blockade ports and interrupt trade in order to drastically reduce the targeted state’s food supply and thus starve it into submission without having to resort to warfare. One of the earliest recorded uses of economic sanctions was undertaken in 432 bce by the city-state of Athens against the nearby city-state of Megara, just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 bce). After discovering that Megarians had trespassed on land that Athenians considered sacred, Athens sent a messenger to Megara to convey its displeasure, whereupon the Megarians killed the messenger, further enraging Athens. Athens then blocked Megara from trading at any port within the Athenian empire. The blockade was potentially damaging not only to the economy of Megara but also to the economies of its allies, including Athens’ chief rival, Sparta. According to some economic historians, the blockade increased the strain between Athens and Sparta and helped spur the Peloponnesian War.

Modern economic sanctions can be ordered and carried out by a single country or in conjunction with international alliances and intergovernmental organizations, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United Nations (UN), and the European Union (EU). International cooperation strengthens the efficacy of sanctions, because it effectively isolates the target. When only a single entity implements economic sanctions, it is easier for the target to circumvent them—as in the case of Napoleon I’s Continental blockade of Great Britain, declared in 1806, which criminalized trade with Britain throughout Continental Europe (see also Napoleonic Wars: The Continental System and the blockade, 1807–11). The powerful Royal Navy was able to shift many of Britain’s trade routes away from blockaded ports to ports of southern Europe and North America. Napoleon’s forces also could not prevent the smuggling of goods along European coasts. The economic fallout from the cessation of trade across Europe eventually had a negative impact on Napoleon’s home country of France.

Economic sanctions are often financial restrictions that make it difficult for the target to conduct business or to receive or transfer income. Such sanctions by the United States against North Korea have been in place since 1950. Sanctions against North Korea increased after it withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968) in 2003. By that time the country was known to be testing nuclear weapons. Individuals, banks, and companies outside North Korea have been discovered helping the country evade certain trade restrictions. Directing sanctions at such entities has helped interrupt North Korea’s international transactions. The U.S. Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (2017) prohibits U.S. financial institutions from providing financial services to North Korea and restricts U.S. aid to foreign governments that provide such services themselves.

After Russia launched a military invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (see Russia-Ukraine War), Russia became subject to many international economic sanctions, earning it the ignominious distinction of being the most sanctioned country in the world. As the war entered its second year, Russia was the target of approximately 13,000 sanctions. Both the United States and the EU froze Russian assets and gold reserves with the aim of limiting the country’s ability to conduct business in both dollars and euros abroad. As Russia’s economy was increasingly isolated, the country became dependent upon trade with its few remaining allies, the most important of which was China. Many economists have predicted that the cumulative effects of the sanctions against Russia will fundamentally reshape the country’s economy.

Criticisms of economic sanctions

Economic sanctions are frequently criticized for missing their targets—which usually are governments or government leaders—and instead causing hardship for ordinary people. The all-encompassing economic sanctions levied on Iraq by the UN Security Council in 1990 after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait are often cited as an example of sanctions that went far afield of their targets. Iraq was known to import roughly 70 percent of its food. Although the sanctions were intended to force Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, from power, they succeeded only in making life miserable for the vast majority of Iraqi citizens. In 1996 Saddam agreed to participate in an oil-for-food program, which permitted the Iraqi government to sell some oil internationally and to use the resulting income to procure food and medical supplies. In the interim, however, widespread rationing had to be introduced. The economic sanctions indirectly caused famines, disease outbreaks, and increases in infant mortality. In addition, school attendance, especially for girls, dropped. Meanwhile, Saddam’s spending on palaces and mosques continued virtually unchecked.

Another critique of economic sanctions is that the implementation of such restrictions can sometimes worsen conflicts or needlessly damage relations between sanctioning and sanctioned governments. In August 2018, for example, the administration of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump imposed economic sanctions aimed at two high-level officials of the Turkish government in response to Turkey’s failure to free an American pastor who had been imprisoned in Turkey on charges of participating in a failed coup attempt against Turkish Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2016. (U.S. sanctions against individuals are authorized by the U.S. Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act of 2016, named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant who was tortured and killed in 2009 for his role in exposing a massive tax fraud scheme involving high-level officials of the Russian government.) In response, the Turkish government imposed its own sanctions on U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. Although the sanctions on both sides were lifted soon after the pastor’s release in October 2018, their introduction by the Trump administration arguably worsened the already turbulent relations between the United States and Turkey and promised to complicate future U.S. efforts to secure Turkey’s cooperation as a NATO ally.