Iranian rial currency notes are seen at a market in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf, Iraq September 22, 2019. REUTERS/Alaa al-Marjani
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) recently penned an op-ed
criticizing the use of sanctions, especially by the Trump administration, as a
reflexive policy response to every national security crisis, citing the
short-lived sanctions against Turkey as an example of the overuse of the tool. She
is absolutely right that threatening massive sanctions to confront Turkey was a
misuse of the tool, a bad effort to mitigate the damage caused by US President
Donald J. Trump’s ill-advised green light to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
to invade Syria, as I’ve written
too. She is also spot on that sanctions are not a one-size fits all solution to
the United States’ problems. But her critique of sanctions as a failed tool in
the foreign policy playbook misses the mark.
Sanctions are a critical tool of foreign policy available to
US policymakers in the administration and in Congress, as they provide more
leverage than is available in traditional diplomatic negotiations without the
many downsides of military action. Omar cites research showing that sanctions
are ineffective, but much of the literature evaluating sanctions success asks
too much of the tool before deeming its use successful: sanctions cannot by
themselves cause their target to surrender and certainly not overnight.
They can, however, shift the context in which the target
makes decisions. Over time, sanctions can work, when combined with broader
diplomatic and political efforts (e.g., sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating
table and contributed to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s determination to
ease his country’s isolation). Omar herself lauds the Global Magnitsky
sanctions on human rights abuses and corrupt actors, and the boycott campaign
against apartheid South Africa as sanctions successes. The former is a good
tool and a noble idea that as of yet lacks demonstrated success in changing
behavior, while the latter was a UN-led sanctions regime that only succeeded
after almost twenty years of multilateral sanctions buoyed by a changing
internal political dynamic and intense diplomatic pressure. Her dual
condemnation of and praise for sanctions makes it difficult to tease out her
exact argument with sanctions.
To work, as I have argued, sanctions must be used judiciously and only as part
of a comprehensive and executable strategy to achieve US foreign policy and
national security goals. Omar criticizes this administration for failing to articulate
and stick to a comprehensive and executable policy outcome when resorting to
sanctions. Instead, sanctions under Trump have become the end rather than the
means, a tool used in place of a coherent and executable policy and a symbol of
resolve rather than an effective means to an identifiable objective. When
steely resolve is the primary driver, there is little room for granting any
concession to the target, even if those concessions are good policy, like
exporting food and medicine. Sloppiness in execution, another consistent policy
failing of this administration, exacerbates those problems.
Omar rightly takes issue with the Trump administration’s near-sole
focus on maximum pressure, or impact, of Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela sanctions without
consideration for the negative impacts broad sanctions can have on a
population. The Trump administration has in some cases done more harm to local populations
than good in depriving bad regimes of resources, whether by imposing unnecessary,
if legally supportable, terrorism sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran or re-imposing
strict limits on family remittances to
Cuba. Venezuela is a more complicated analysis. The aggressive sanctions
deployed against the Nicolas Maduro regime certainly weakened it in the
short-term, but the sanctions were so sweeping that they worsened
an already critical humanitarian situation—one brought on by the regime’s
mismanagement—once the initial push to oust Maduro failed and Trump turned his
attention elsewhere.
The Trump administration’s failings on humanitarian aspects
of sanctions, however, should not impugn the use of broad-based sanctions, nor
are sanctions incompatible with human rights priorities. Congress itself passed
the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 in part to
require the facilitation of humanitarian trade in jurisdictional sanctions
programs, and the George W. Bush and Obama administrations had implemented the
law faithfully. The Trump administration’s policies—in this case of
discouraging even legitimately authorized humanitarian trade over the mere
potential for misappropriation inside Iran—is the problem, not the sanctions
themselves.
Rather than throw out the tool, sanctions should be applied
with more discipline and only as part of a strong diplomatic effort. In
addition, there are important reforms that Congress
is considering to the underlying statute for most sanctions programs, the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act, in the wake of perceived overuse
and misuse of sanctions threats. The Government Accountability Office recently reported
on the lack of internal US government assessments on the success of sanctions,
a combination of lack of human capital and difficulty in assessing policy
outcomes, and Congress has chafed in recent years at not being more involved in
the sanctions process. It is clear that the US government should devote more
resources to assessing sanctions and wargaming before their future use.
Congress also should have a more active oversight role, rather than the rubber
stamp process that governs renewing US sanctions programs on a yearly basis.
Better understanding of success, planning for future use, and oversight of the
sanctions tool will promote more effective policy and more effective sanctions
in the future.
Irrespective of their current misuse and flaws in the system,
sanctions still have an important role to play. In the hands of an
administration that used them more carefully to avoid undue harm to local
populations, they still would be a key component of combatting Iranian malign
behavior, depriving Maduro of funds he uses as patronage to maintain his base
of power, and targeting the human rights abuses and anti-democratic leanings of
the Cuban government.
Sanctions today, though, are a tool used too often and in almost near-isolation by an administration that would prefer to govern via fiat rather than do the hard work necessary to make change on the international stage and by a Congress that seemingly can agree on little other than sanctions. Assertions that sanctions are a failure, however, ignore their utility and overstate their downsides. Better implementation and better policy are the answers, not discontinued use.
Brian O’Toole is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global Business and Economics Program. He is a former senior adviser to the director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at the US Department of the Treasury. Follow him on Twitter @brianoftoole.
Further reading:
Tue, Oct 15, 2019
It is hard to take seriously threats by the US government to ruin the Turkish economy when Trump himself gave this green light in the first place. Under such circumstances, sanctions have almost no chance of succeeding in putting this genie back in the bottle.
New Atlanticist
by
Brian O’Toole
Sun, Sep 22, 2019
Sanctions allow a US president to exercise power unilaterally and often expeditiously. They are often one of the few middle grounds between war and words.
Feature
by
Brian O’Toole and Samantha Sultoon
Fri, Sep 20, 2019
The only appreciable impact of the September 20 designation will be to further impair the delivery of food and medicine to the Iranian people, who are already struggling to get needed supplies and to antagonize US partners around the globe.
New Atlanticist
by
Brian O’Toole
Ilhan Omar is spot on that sanctions are not a one-size fits all solution to the United States’ problems. But her critique of sanctions as a failed tool in the foreign policy playbook misses the mark.
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