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Ethics & International Affairs
Annual Journal of the
Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs
More Ethical than Not: Sanctions as Surgical Tools
Response To “A Peaceful, Silent, Deadly Remedy”
By George A. Lopez
*
Joy Gordon has made a major contribution to both the ethical analysis and the policy evaluation of economic sanctions. In the former, she has pushed considerably beyond the application of just war theory to employ other frameworks for assessing sanctions. 1 With the latter, she has stimulated the discussion in the policy arena by questioning the humane and nonviolent character of sanctions qua diplomatic tool. My evaluation and reaction to Gordon’s assessment is necessarily limited, but it attempts to respond to her telling critique. As such, I hope it lays the ground for future, lively debates.
Although she writes from the outset with an eye toward the conclusion that sanctions are unethical as a means per se and as a means to particular ends, I would maintain that Gordon has defined more precisely than ever before the concerns that must be taken into account for sanctions to remain more ethical than not. In particular, as the use of sanctions has become more commonplace, she has isolated multilateral, comprehensive trade sanctions as needing particular scrutiny. The moral legitimacy of these sanctions has been assumed by many to rest on higher ground, because of their United Nations authorization, than the more vindictive bilateral ones like the U.S. embargo on Cuba; whatever negative humanitarian effects occurred were often considered within acceptable dimensions of the traditional principle of double-effect. Under this principle, sanctioners are absolved from moral condemnation because sanctions directly aim to achieve compliance with a valid global norm, with whatever harm they cause (even if known in advance) being incidental and not directly intended.
In her just war analysis, Gordon concludes that sanctions are simply an unjust means to whatever end they are meant to serve, just or otherwise. As in a siege, where starving the civilians is a means to force capitulation of the state and its leaders, sanctions are simply an immoral means to an end that could be accomplished in some more ethical manner. Bolstering her case on the “end” dimension of just war is Gordon’s assessment that sanctions simply “never” attain their stated goal of bringing the behavior of the targeted state into compliance with international norms.
Much of Gordon’s Kantian and utilitarian analysis constitutes a serious policy evaluation of sanctions. Her conclusion from the application of these frameworks mirrors her just war assessment that sanctions per se are immoral; however, I consider her use of these frameworks as suggesting criteria for establishing more ethical sanctions, rather than serving as their eternal damnation. That is, I believe that Gordon has exposed some of the worst examples of sanctions’ failure, but has ignored important elements upon which to build real refinements in sanctions policy that will work. One is tempted here to make the analogy that Gordon has condemned all medical surgery and its tools (in other words, coercive diplomacy via sanctions) because bleeding the patient (the incorrect imposition and implementation of a sanctions tool in recent cases) has resulted in the patient’s death. At issue is how to get the surgery correct.
My understanding of economic sanctions cases in the 1990s differs from Gordon’s conclusions in three areas: the relationship between means and ends in sanctions cases, the extent of compliance of the targets (that is, the success of the imposition of sanctions), and the singular moral responsibility of sanctioners for the harms that result from sanctions. These are not easily separated in application, and thus they may not appear as distinct in discussion as one might wish.
As a technique of coercive diplomacy, sanctions are meant to change the calculus by which the leadership in a target state will continue to pursue what most other nations acknowledge to be a violation of an international norm. During sanctions, the pursuit of a policy seen as objectionable by the rest of global society becomes more and more costly to the leaders of the target state, who then need to make judgments about the allocation of resources as these become increasingly scarce. In some cases, as sanctioners desire, the leadership simply faces a situation in which passing along to their supporters these high costs from sanctions becomes prohibitive. So the leaders and supporters are coerced to change their behavior to conform to global norms.
Beyond this “sanctions theory,” the empirical record of sanctions’ success has more positive examples than simply the South African case, which Gordon considers an anomaly. Certainly in the Rhodesian case, sanctions combined with diplomatic incentives and initiatives to produce the settlement resulting in majority rule. As I will amplify below, the Iraq case is characterized by a great deal more compliance than is recognized regarding weapons of mass destruction. And there is no question that economic sanctions was one of the factors that pressured the Belgrade government to participate in the Dayton peace accords process. As we write, Libya has finally agreed to release for trial the two suspects in the Lockerbie bombing. Gordon’s claims that sanctions are a patent failure, and that the evidence (and the logic of sanctions) suggests that sanctions are far more likely to guarantee noncompliance, are simply incorrect.
If there is a practical or ethical dilemma with sanctions it is not compliance failure, but compliance underachievement. From recent analyses of cases, however, we know that this results because leaders who impose sanctions have neither fully used nor fully understood the mechanism and how to properly assess its impact. In some cases the Security Council has not set conditions for the immediate lifting of sanctions upon compliance; or, they have “moved the goalposts” after sanctions have been imposed. Most problematic, sanctioners have failed to mix sanctions with incentives in order to get meaningful compliance.
There is little question that the UN Sanctions Committee system has learned some unfortunate lessons through trial and error and that, especially regarding the Iraq case, the Security Council was fairly unimaginative in executing an effective sanctions policy. In particular, the council failed to see in the multiple requirements placed on Iraq after the Gulf War an opportunity to mix pressure, pain, and promises in ways that might have sparked more compliance and that would have rewarded the real progress made in Iraq’s compliance with various provisions important to the council. Sanctions have gone awry because the council did not mix carrots (such as the partial lifting of sanctions as rewards) with sticks (keeping sanctions on the free flow of oil) in attempting to close down Iraq’s weapons development. 2
Gordon correctly notes that there has also been difficulty with implementing in full the humanitarian exemptions and programs that are intended to operate during sanctions episodes. She, again rightly, raises concerns about their adequacy to the needs of a beleaguered population. Whether it be in the case of the Haiti or the Angola (UNITA) sanctions, we can now point to terrible ineptitude and lack of political will in enforcing sanctions as keys to their ineffectiveness, and by extension to their harsh impact on the innocent. We can also point to the slowness with which humanitarian exemptions have been adjusted in response to the documented need of vulnerable populations. But these are correctable problems, and they have been analyzed in some detail by both the Security Council and humanitarian agencies. 3
That past behavior does not inspire confidence that attention will be paid to all the humanitarian needs of a sanctioned population may be clear, but being naive about issues of moral agency in the impact of sanctions compounds the problem. Specifically, Gordon takes the facts that harm comes to innocents and that sanctions are imposed by sanctioners and mistakenly makes the pain of the former the direct and singular responsibility of the latter. She refuses to deal with the intermediary and decision-making role that leadership in a target state plays in determining the impact of sanctions. While she blames the imposers of sanctions for treating a general population instrumentally, she appears not to acknowledge at all the moral responsibility of despicable leaders who victimize their own people instrumentally through the manipulation of sanctions.
While the impact of sanctions may be either immoral or moral, any judgment regarding their impact on innocent people must be assessed by examining the responses of the sanctioned country’s leader, and in light of the international humanitarian relief effort mobilized on behalf of the innocent. Again here, the case of Iraq focuses the discussion on the burden of responsibility borne by Iraqi leaders. 4
Unethical sanctions occur not by definition, as Gordon asserts, but because the international agency imposers do not deliver on approaches, such as the use of exemptions, that take humanitarian concerns into account. Unethical sanctions also occur when the UN makes sanctions thepolicy toward a target country, instead of a flexible component of a coercive strategy of multiple components, including incentives. So it is the implementation of sanctions that is the culprit, not the tool itself.
Two other disagreements with Gordon are noteworthy. The first concerns the problem of sanctions’ having increased moral power if they were imposed with the consent of those likely to bear their brunt. Gordon, considering as the norm the South Africa case, wherein the African National Congress and resident trade union and church groups endorsed sanctions outright, is unwilling to consider cases of implied consent, which may come from exiles or the wider international community in the name of a repressed people. I would claim that recent evidence, such as the crowds in the streets of Russia and Eastern Europe toppling statues of past dictators and the throngs in the Congo rejoicing after the fall of Mobuto, underscores a fundamental generalization: We can morally argue for sanctions on some countries because history supports the contention that repressed people will consent to such. Considering the evidence of the past in repressive states, such as Haiti, Iraq, or Rwanda, we can combine the criterion of “right intention” with “right reason” in a philosophical sense to maintain that if these (Haitian, Iraqi, or Rwandan) citizens lived in an environment where they could speak freely, they would argue for bystanders, or outsiders, to take all actions, such as sanctions, on their behalf to bring down the regime. To suggest, as Gordon appears to do, that under repression citizens need to express consent for external coercive sanctions in order for the latter to be moral is to condemn those citizens to being the regime’s next targets.
A second area of disagreement concerns the Iraq case, where the claims have been so strong about the deaths of Iraqi children due to sanctions. Unspoken by critics of sanctions is the real possibility that an important positive ethic exists in the imposition of sanctions: we “bystanders” have a moral obligation to ensure that Kurdish children, Saudi children, Israeli children (American children?) not be gassed or poisoned by Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction that is at least equivalentto the obligation that we take all necessary steps to ensure life for Iraqi children. This is not meant to make Iraqi children instrumental, but rather to acknowledge a moral dilemma of the ethic of responsibility. And without question, sanctions have been instrumental, although not singular, in attaining the major (and moral) goal of reducing Iraq’s capacity to build and maintain an unchecked storehouse of prohibited weapons.
The impact of Gordon’s analysis must be a renewed and steadfast commitment to develop sanctions that do not have as their goal the crippling of the general economy, or as their unintended consequences the further devastation of the lives of the poor and vulnerable of the society. Sanctions that are imposed must have a substantial humanitarian dimension, have a pronounced likelihood of producing compliance from the targeted elite, and be part of a more general and adaptive multilateral coercive strategy of incentives and sanctions diplomacy that has as its goal a swift and negotiated resolution of conflict. Rather than letting the reality that recent sanctions cases have fallen short of this mark lead to the conclusion that all sanctions are unethical, I interpret the evidence as setting the sanctions standard at a high—yet achievable—ethical level.
Gordon dismisses much too quickly the possibility of “smart sanctions” that can have minimal humanitarian impact and target elites responsible for the policies that generated the sanctions. Admittedly, the idea of “smart sanctions” may be more elegant in conceptualization than application at the present time. But the momentum in the diplomatic and academic communities to make them a reality is in full force. Various analyses and forums have now explored in detail the possibility of more robust and refined sanctions mechanisms, such as asset freezes and other financial measures, which can be more dynamically integrated with arms embargoes and bans on travel and international meetings, and targeted specifically at elites. To be fully effective, these smarter measures will need further strategic design and improved implementation through monitoring and via the enforcement capabilities of the Security Council. 5 But their advent—and their importance to the international community—is clear.
On balance, then, I cannot share Gordon’s condemnation of sanctions as categorically unethical. There is no question that this decade has witnessed a set of costly and sometimes inhumane sanctions cases, with Iraq being an extraordinary quagmire. But some other sanctions episodes (Rhodesia, South Africa, and Libya) have appeared to be successful without terrible humanitarian consequences, while other cases had limited negative humanitarian tragedy relative to accomplishing compliance (the former Yugoslavia). As a result of these experiences and from critiques like Gordon’s, sanctions that are more just, ethical, and effective now lie within our grasp. When they are again called for in response to violations of international norms, we should move deliberatively to assure that sanctions be imposed only under these heightened criteria.
Endnotes
*: Many of the ideas in this article reflect my shared work with David Cortright, although he was not involved in the writing of this particular piece. I am also indebted to colleagues Todd David Whitmore and Daniel Philpott for their insights on the ethics of sanctions. Back.
Note 1: This is no mean feat, as virtually all ethical assessment of sanctions to date has been undertaken within this “genre.” Most notable in this regard are Adam Winkler, “Just Sanctions, ” Human Rights Quarterly 21 (1999), pp. 133–55; Peter Rudolf, “Power Without Principles? Ethical Problems of International Economic Sanctions, ” Law and State 57 (1998), pp. 9–21; Albert C. Pierce, “Just War Principles and Economic Sanctions, ” Ethics & International Affairs10 (1996), pp. 99–113; and Drew Christiansen, S.J., and Gerard F. Powers, “Economic Sanctions and Just-War Doctrine, ” in David Cortright and George A. Lopez, eds., Economic Sanctions: Panacea or Peacebuilding in a Post-Cold War World (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 97–120. Back.
Note 2: See, especially, George A. Lopez and David Cortright, “Pain and Promise, ” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 54 (May–June 1998), pp. 39–43. Back.
Note 3: For one such study see Thomas Weiss et al., eds., Political Gain and Civilian Pain: The Humanitarian Impact of Economic Sanctions (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997). Back.
Note 4: For such an argument see George A. Lopez, “The Sanctions Dilemma: Hype Doesn’t Help,” Commonweal, September 11, 1998, pp. 10–12. Back.
Note 5: For some of the conceptual underpinnings of “smart sanctions ” see George A. Lopez and David Cortright, “Financial Sanctions: The Key to a ‘Smart ’ Sanctions Strategy, ” Die Friedens-Warte 72 (December 1997), pp. 327–36; and “Toward Smarter, More Effective United Nations Sanctions,” An Executive Summary of a Symposium on Security Council Targeted Sanctions, December 7, 1998, New York City, 9 pp. Http://www.fourthfreedom.org/unSymposium/summary.html. Back.