Foreign Affairs: Sanctions Were Working

The assumption has always been that sanctions just don’t work. Additionally, in an argument more persuasive with those of us with soft spots for the humanitarian side of the equation, the feeling is that sanctions often end up causing massive amounts of suffering amongst those outside a country’s ruling circle.

George A. Lopez and David Cortright argue in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs in their article “Containing Iraq: Sanctions Worked” that only in the aftermath of the Iraq war have we discovered, but largely ignored the fact that the sanctions were in fact working. They had contained Iraq, kept it from recovering its military capabilities, as well as its unconventional weapons programs, especially the development of a nuclear program.

“…The sanctions worked remarkably well in Iraq—far better than any past sanctions effort—and only a fraction of total oil revenue ever reached the Iraqi government. The funds that Baghdad obtained illicitely were grossly insufficient to finance a large-scale military development program. The government had no other major source of income, in part thanks to the economic impact of sanctions. Revenues from smuggling and kickbacks went mostly toward maintaining Saddam’s massive army and internal security apparatus (as well as to building palaces and paying bribes to political loyalists)…”

Essentially, the article argues in support of Hans Blix’s statement, in his recent book that, “the UN and the world had suceeded in disarming Iraq without knowing it.” I won’t go into more detail about their argument here but regardless of your position on this issue, the article gives a good overview of the history of Iraqi sanctions and is worth a read. It briefly addresses the recent UN kickbacks issues in its sections on how to improve sanctions, but does not say too much on the issue of the effect of sanctions on civilian populations. I don’t know enough about sanctions (either their effectiveness or humanitarian impact) to take a strong position but the article was educational.