Collateral Damage Autocracy? - Tobias Lechner Development Economics and Policy

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Elliott, & Oegg 2007, p. 7.

      “Apply this economic, peaceful, silent deadly remedy and there will be no need for force. The boycott is what is substituted for war.”

      

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      Part I of this book reviews the literature and develops hypotheses. This chapter reviews the literature on economic sanctions and autocracies. It starts with a brief overview over the historical development of sanctions, looks at the impact of economic sanctions on the state and its political system, summarizes the determinants of sanctions success, and finally looks at the so-called autocratic reversal and variables mentioned in the autocratization debate.

      Economic statecraft existed a long time before our modern Westphalian state system came into existence, and was already advised by Sunzi, Thucydides, and Machiavelli to policymakers.100 An early example of classical economic sanctions was applied in 432 BCE in Ancient Greece, the Megarian decree.101 Some authors see the ancient and medieval siege of cities – such as the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 72 CE and the Mongolian siege of Baghdad in 1257102 – as the forerunner of modern sanctions: The close-off of a walled city starves the whole population into submission.103 The attackers seek a policy change through pressuring the whole society and thereby harming non-combatants.104 Furthermore, medieval states and state-like entities used multilateral coercion – during the crusades, the papacy banned the sale of war material to the Saracens, and the Hanseatic League regularly employed collective trade boycotts against its enemies.105

      The modern Westphalian territorial state led to a centralization of power in favor of the “sovereign” ruler and enabled thereby a new dynamic between the political and the economic sphere. The American colonies boycotted British goods in the 1760s; during the Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815), France and Britain engaged in economic warfare; and in the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Northern states cut off the Southern Confederates from foreign imports. Since ←45 | 46→then, there was no decade without economic sanctions.106 However, most of these cases included the use or threat of military force, which influences the political effect. Economic sanctions were mostly used as a tool of warfare, not merely as a tool of foreign policy.

      The industry-based economy of the new territorial states and the massive population growth since the 19th century in Europe led to growing international interdependence and a growing interest in economic statecraft. Scientific discovery and technological progress changed the character of both war and economic life.107 The peace movement around 1900 placed great hope in non-violent conflict resolution such as economic measures. Economic warfare in its modern form has been developed during World War I, with an effectiveness not known before; the Allied blockade was even described as a major factor for Germany’s defeat.108

      In the aftermath of the horrors of World War I, U.S. President Wilson advocated the use of economic sanctions as a substitute for war.109 A new type of economic sanctions, multilateral sanctions, was then at the heart of the peace-enforcement process of the new-established League of Nations:110 A member of the league who resorted to war was to be subjected to immediate trade and financial sanctions.111 In total, the League of Nations is associated with eight sanction episodes. The sanctions targeting smaller states like Yugoslavia, Turkey and Bulgaria were successful; others failed when they targeted more powerful states. The League of Nations failed to sanction Japan for its invasion of China ←46 | 47→in 1931, which would have been a clear case of sanctions according to the legal framework of the League of Nations. The sanctions against fascist Italy after its invasion of Ethiopia failed so miserably – also because they were not supported by states like Germany and the U.S. – that they were removed, and the League of Nations was soon demised.112

      The successor of the League of Nations, the United Nations, should have guaranteed peace and prosperity following the horrors of World War II. However, the Cold War soon disabled the new institutions. During the Cold War, the Security Council of the United Nations (UNSC) applied economic sanctions only one time (in 1965 against Southern Rhodesia). The sanctions against South Africa (starting in 1962) were imposed by the General Assembly and were, therefore, not binding.113 However, the UNSC applied non-economic measures such as arms embargoes114 and diplomatic sanctions115 several times. The end of the Cold War antagonism brought new attention to the UNSC which got the opportunity to shape inter-state relations on a global level actively. One of its favorite tools was the enforcement of economic sanctions, which led to nicknaming the 1990s as “the sanctions decade.”116 The comprehensive sanctions against Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Haiti were considered as failures and followed by military action. Another reason for the dramatic increase in the number of sanctions was the “ever increasing global economic, political, technological, communicative and social linkage.”117 The increasing economic interdependence also created new opportunities in trade strategies and therefore incentives for sanctions.118 The increasing globalization of crime and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was another reason for the desire of an effective UNSC which was capable of acting fast and thoroughly. Whereas the UNSC imposed ←47 | 48→sanctions against only one country between 1945 and 1990, it imposed sanctions against 14 countries between 1990 and 2000.119

      A major trend shaped the use of sanctions in the last two decades: The combination of comprehensive economic sanctions with so-called targeted sanctions. Mainly thee arguments caused this re-design of economic sanctions: the first one was the question of success. The general optimism of the 1990s in International Relations theory and practice was quickly overshadowed by the genocides in the Western Balkans and Rwanda. Economic sanctions successfully contributed to the end of Apartheid in South Africa, but they apparently failed in many other cases, most notably in the case of Haiti and Iraq. Though Iraq lost half of its GNP in lost trade,120 Saddam refused to back down, and military force was necessary to restore the independence of Kuwait.

      Secondly, the Iraqi case had devastating humanitarian consequences: During the comprehensive sanctions of the UNSC against Iraq, 500,000 children died, and the and

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