Sanctions are neither new nor guaranteed to be effective – just look at Cuba
Waging war by economic means is nothing new. Napoleon imposed an ineffective embargo on British exports in the early 19th century and during the first world war there were attempts by both sides to starve each other into submission.
But since 1945 sanctions have been used with increasing frequency as a means of trying to change either the policy stance or the regimes in targeted countries. One study by a group of German academics notes there have been more than 1,400 cases of nations being threatened with, or hit by, sanctions since the second world war.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report by the Ifo thinktank found that the sanctions were more likely to be successful the harder the targeted economy was hit. On average, living standards fall by 4% in the first two years of the restrictive measures being implemented, but that masks a wide range of different outcomes.
Adam Slater, economist at the Oxford Economics consultancy says the sanctions imposed on Russia between 2014 and 2018 cut GDP by around 1.2% but thinks a “larger impact looks likely this time” as a result of a toughening up of the west’s approach. “We think a 4-6% of GDP hit relative to a pre-crisis baseline is a plausible downside scenario.”
But hitting a country economically is a different matter from forcing it into a policy U-turn or bringing about a change of government. Jeremy Greenstock, once the UK’s ambassador to the UN, says “there is nothing else between words and military action if you want pressure to bear on a government.” But in the high-profile cases there is only limited evidence to show they have worked.
Take the case of Cuba, which has been under US sanctions since the late 1950s. Washington strongly opposed the takeover of power by Fidel
Read more on theguardian.com
