The Ethics of Sanctions

by David E. Anderson, in Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, here.  An excerpt:

On July 1, President Obama signed legislation imposing new unilateral sanctions on Iran that he promised would “strik[e] at the heart of the Iranian government’s ability to fund and develop its nuclear program.” . . .

The sanctions bill passed Congress overwhelmingly, 99-0 in the Senate and 408-8 in the House, with not a lot of debate on Capitol Hill and little discussion outside the halls of Congress. It was welcomed by the roughly 50 members of the conservative group Christian Leaders for a Nuclear-free Iran, while a number of policy analysts voiced their misgivings. The unilateral US sanctions, accompanied by a similar set of unilateral measures from the European Union and Asian nations, followed a fourth round of United Nations-imposed punishments—its harshest sanctions yet against Iran—that were approved by the Security Council on June 9. Yet in early September the New York Times was reporting that, despite

 

sanctions, Iran “has dug in its heels, refusing to provide inspectors with the information and access they need to determine whether the real purpose of Tehran’s program is to produce weapons.” So far, at least, sanctions have not forced Iran to change its direction.

The tough new measures on Iran coincide with the publication of “Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions” (Harvard University Press), a comprehensive and devastating look at the sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990 and kept in place until the 2003 invasion by the United States and its allies in what was called “the coalition of the willing.’’ The author is Joy Gordon, professor of philosophy at Fairfield University and a prominent voice for many years in debates over the ethics and morality of using economic sanctions in international public policy.

“Invisible War” is a harsh moral and practical judgment on the role the US played in imposing sanctions on Iraq, and it sounds a timely ethical warning about the future use—and misuse—of sanctions.

[Read the rest here.]

Comments

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

I think the use of sanctions in the case of apartheid South Africa was effective, nonetheless, since that time it seems liberals and conservatives alike have too readily resorted to them as a foreign policy instrument. I recall only a handful of voices opposed to the use of sanctions in the case of Iraq, and it was largely those with a deep knowledge of Middle East history and politics and an ability to distinguish the Hussein regime and the Ba'th Party from civil society in the country (e.g., those affiliated with the Middle East Research and Information Project), with a corresponding capacity to imagine the harm (which was soon documented or confirmed insofar as that was possible) which would be inflicted on those "on the ground," far from the nodes and hierarchy of power in the country. Indeed, it was the former who invariably suffered owing to their relative lack of power while the powerful were able in significant respects to avoid their grosser consequences.

In the case of Iran I suspect we'll find the sanctions will not, in the end, bring about their ostensible aim (to say nothing of the criteria that will be used for such an assessment), in which case the U.S., members of the E.U., and Israel will have sufficient pretense to resurrect the barely concealed desire to bomb Iran.* Were it that the relevant parties demonstrated an equivalent concern for the only existing cache of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, namely those possessed by Israel,** and a true commitment to a nuclear-weapons free zone in the Middle East.

*See Noam Chomsky's article, "The Iranian Threat," available online here: http://www.zcommunications.org/the-iranian-threat-by-noam-chomsky-1

**See Avner Cohen's The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb (2010).