Memorandum by Professor Margaret Doxey,
Emeritus Professor, Trent University, Ontario
INTRODUCTORY
1. Economic sanctions, as stated in the
committee's "Call for Evidence", constitute an important
instrument of statecraft which governments alone or in concert
can employ to meet threats to national and international interests.
They reinforce political pressure and offer a non-lethal alternative
to the use of force. Although they have been used extensively
during the past 40 years their efficacy remains a subject of debate.
2. Beginning in the mid-1960s, white minority
rule in Southern Africa raised important issues for Britain and
the Commonwealth and wide-ranging political and economic sanctions
were imposed by governments and international bodies against Rhodesia
(now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. In the Rhodesian case sanctions
were mandatory, following a United Nations Security Council (UNSC)
resolution; in the South African case the UN General Assembly
recommended sanctions, but lack of agreement in the Security Council
restricted mandatory measures to an arms embargo. Sanctions obviously
contributed to the end of white minority rule in both countries
but different analysts ascribe different weights to sanctions
and to the other factors which influenced outcomes. In 1979 the
Iran hostage crisis erupted and following a Soviet veto in the
Security Council, the United States and generally unenthusiastic
Western governments imposed sanctions. In this case the freeze
of Iran's foreign assets was important in bringing the hostages'
release early in 1981. Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (1979)
and presumed implication in the declaration of martial law in
Poland (1981) brought short-lived US-sponsored sanctions distinguished
more by inter-Allied discord than by successful impact but the
sanctions imposed on Libya following the Lockerbie disaster in
1988 and reinforced by a UNSC resolution in 1992 were more coherent
and effective. They were suspended in 1999 when the Lockerbie
suspects were surrendered for trial at The Hague and lifted in
2003. By the 1990s however, the end of the Cold War had ushered
in a new phase of cooperation between the permanent members of
the Security Council. Comprehensive economic sanctions were imposed
on Haiti, Iraq and Serbia-Montenegro as well as selective measures,
particularly arms embargoes, on Afghanistan under the Taliban
and a number of African regimes and rebel groups. This unprecedented
spate of UN sanctions, mandated under Chapter VII of the Charter,
encompassed a wide variety of objectives, provided further insights
into efficacy and brought ethical issues to the fore. It also
prompted much scholarly writing and numerous studies of international
sanctions by governments, international organizations and research
bodies, whose findings will be available to the Committee.
3. International sanctions have been my
main scholarly interest for many years and I participated in a
number of these studies, including the Interlaken process, sponsored
by the Swiss government between 1997 and 1999, which focused on
technical and administrative problems associated with financial
measures. In August 2000 I was among those who gave oral evidence
to a Working Group on Sanctions set up by the Security Council.
Unfortunately, but perhaps predictably, the Chairman's Draft Outcome'
was not approved and no report was published. In recent years
sanctions cases have been less high-profile but, as the Committee
will be aware, some old and some new arms embargoes, assets freezes
and travel bans are in force, particularly in response to internal
conflicts and to acts of international terrorism which have become
of paramount concern. At the time of writing Iran has been warned
of UN sanctions if it persists with its uranium enrichment programme.
4. An overall re-assessment is timely and
I appreciate the invitation to submit written evidence. In line
with the questions raised by the Committee I propose to discuss
briefly four important and inter-related clusters of issues: goals,
costs, scope and implementation. Detailed analysis of cases and
types of economic sanctions is not attempted.
GOALS
5. Over the years the goals of those imposing
sanctions have expanded to cover a wide spectrum of target behaviour
including cross-border aggression, internal conflicts, gross abuse
of human rights, subversion of democratic regimes and support
for terrorism. Given nine affirmative votes and no veto by a permanent
member, the Security Council can declare any situation a threat
to international peace and security under Chapter VII of the Charter
and order sanctions against offending parties. As economic measures
interrupt normal business transactions, and are not necessarily
cost-free for those imposing them (see below), one assumes that
more than "signalling" is intended: deprivation is designed
to induce the target to forego or abandon internally or externally
oriented policies found unacceptable. Goals may be limited, for
instance the requirement that Libya should hand over the Lockerbie
suspects for trial or that Iran should forego uranium enrichment;
or more far-reaching, such as an end to apartheid in South Africa
or the restoration of legitimate government in Haiti. But they
need to be realistic and clearly spelled out. A diffuse set of
goals aimed at both external and internal policies, such as those
listed in UNSC resolution 687 (1991) on Iraq, is impossible to
modify and hard to achieve. And "reformist" goals, particularly
those which require support from within the target, are likely
to mean a "long haul". It is, of course, easier for
one government to impose economic sanctions and keep them in place
(US sanctions on Cuba since 1960 come to mind); multilateral sanctions,
particularly those mandated by the UN, are harder to orchestrate
and sustain. Security Council resolutions are the result of political
compromise and need not be unanimous while among UN members at
large some governments may be indifferent or even sympathetic
to the target. When goals are not fully shared, efficacy is impaired.
COSTS
6. Economic sanctions entail costs for those
resorting to them and this will influence their decision-making.
Permanent members of the Security Council can use their veto power
to block sanctions for economic as well as political reasons and
it will be recalled that although opposed to apartheid in South
Africa, successive British governments did not support UN mandatory
measures partly on grounds of cost to the domestic economy. Applying
UN sanctions can also inflict a disproportionate burden of cost
on the target's neighbours and major trading partners. In the
1990s special arrangements were made for Jordan to receive oil
from Iraq, while states bordering the former Yugoslavia suffered
major disruption of trade and communication from sanctions on
Serbia-Montenegro. This was partly alleviated by practical help
from the European Union (EU) and the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the form of Sanctions Assistance
Missions (SAMS). At the UN level, states experiencing "special
economic problems" as a result of mandatory sanctions can
consult the Security Council (Article 50 of the Charter) but there
is no entitlement to assistance. In both the Iraqi and Serbian
cases, there were many requests for help. The lack of response
from the Security Council was resented, and may have contributed
to a disinclination to apply sanctions whole-heartedly. Burden-sharing,
where appropriate, needs to be a feature of future sanctions cases
and the SAMS model is worth attention in this context.
7. Economic costs for targets—the
main object of the exercise—are intended to reduce significantly
its ability to adopt or pursue an offending policy. But there
are also political dimensions which may make defiance less "costly"
than compliance. It is also well-documented that target regimes
pursue defensive economic strategies: alternative suppliers and
markets; self-sufficiency; counter-measures; making use of smuggling
and the black market. Middlemen assist these endeavours at great
profit to themselves. Before imposing sanctions governments need
to be fully cognisant of these political and economic factors
and weigh them as carefully as they do their own costs.
SCOPE
8. Traditionally, food and medicines have
been exempt from embargo and other civilian goods may also be
classified as "essential". Exemptions require administrative
procedures at the national and possibly the international level.
In the mid-1990s comprehensive sanctions fell out of favour as
aid organizations and the media publicized their harmful effects
on impoverished and politically impotent sectors of the target's
population first in Haiti and then in Iraq (where the regime exploited
this publicity to its own advantage). There is a further problem
when embargoes on its exports deprive the target of the foreign
exchange earnings needed to pay for food imports. This was the
case in Iraq where oil accounted for 90 per cent of the value
of exports. International concern for the plight of the Iraqi
population led to the ambitious UN "oil for food" programme
which was eventually accepted by Saddam Hussein in 1996. Predictably,
it not only proved unsatisfactory—managing the external
trade of a country the size of Iraq was beyond the capacity of
an ad hoc UN unit—but also opened up avenues of graft
and corruption which were exposed in the Volcker Report and in
the UN's internal investigations. This experiment harmed the UN's
reputation and is unlikely to be repeated.
9. Equity and efficacy may suggest the choice
of sanctions which impact directly on the target regime (or group)
as well as on its ability to pursue offending policies. In this
context financial sanctions have become the focus of particular
attention. Assets can be frozen, transfer payments prohibited
and financial assistance blocked. A further refinement involves
"targeting" the people who actually control policy:
members of the government, the military, elites, rebel leaders:
financial measures, travel bans and diplomatic sanctions deprive
them of resources, mobility and international standing.
10. The detailed study of financial sanctions
undertaken in the Interlaken process, with considerable input
from the United States which has elaborate machinery for foreign
assets control, brought practical proposals for improved use.
Standardized terms, model UNSC resolutions and a draft Framework
Law which would enable governments to act quickly and decisively
were annexed to the Final Report which emphasized that the sanctions
"net" needs to be cast as widely as possible, that detailed
information about the target and its elites and their accurate
designation is essential, and that the full cooperation of private
financial institutions must be forthcoming. On the positive side,
the Report noted that electronic transfers of funds assist speedy
implementation and that the scope for banks in less sophisticated
parts of the world to conceal substantial assets is probably limited.
Useful lessons have been learned from anti-money laundering programmes.
That said, while identification of government assets may not be
a problem, identification of bank accounts and other assets of
individual miscreants, particularly members of rebel and terrorist
groups, can be problematic. False names and shell companies offer
cover and there are alternative methods of moving funds, for instance
by trading in diamonds and by the system of "hawala",
which undermine "conventional" financial sanctions.
Nor do terrorist acts, which can have appalling consequences,
necessarily require huge financial resources.
11. In the repertory of targeted measures
arms embargoes are, in theory, an obvious means of limiting conflict
and they have been used in numerous cases, particularly against
governments and rebel groups in Africa. Sadly, they have proved
largely ineffective. Arms smuggling is hugely profitable, there
are vast quantities of weapons available and borders can be porous.
Arms embargoes and "targeted" travel bans were the subject
of the Bonn-Berlin study sponsored by the German government in
1999-2000. Like the Interlaken study, the German report stressed
the need to close legislative and executive gaps in the national
implementation capabilities of many UN members.
IMPLEMENTATION
12. While maximum participation in a sanctions
programme closes potential loopholes, it also makes it more difficult
to ensure effective implementation and the best-designed set of
sanctions will fail when implementation, which is a national responsibility,
suffers from lack of political will and/or administrative capability.
Typically both exist especially where UN sanctions are concerned.
13. Direct "international" enforcement
is limited to naval interdiction in international waters and possible
aerial surveillance; these are additional costs for the sanctioning
group. There is no central agency for managing UN sanctions. Individual
Sanctions Committees, on which all members of the Security Council
are represented, have been charged not only with monitoring implementation
by member states but with a variety of other tasks including handling
communications under Article 50, and approving exports of goods
for essential civilian needs. The Iraq Committee was also required
to receive reports on the sale of petroleum and petroleum products
under the "oil for food" programme. In meeting what
can be a heavy work-load, especially for their Chairmen, these
committees are assisted by a small group of personnel in the UN
Secretariat.
14. Monitoring depends on reports from governments
which are not always enlightening (or submitted) and there are
few resources for effective follow-up although some on-the spot
investigations of sanctions-busting in several African countries—notably
Angola where diamonds were financing UNITA's operations- did succeed
in publicizing violations and collusion with neighbouring regimes.
The Interlaken and Bonn-Berlin reports, in common with many other
studies, recommend strengthening the UN's monitoring and enforcement
capabilities. In common with most proposals for UN reform this
is unlikely, especially in the wake of the "oil for food"
scandal. The United States is hostile to the UN; nor do other
powers favour the delegation of national responsibilities. The
idea of a permanent sanctions unit in the Secretariat has not
found favour which means that improved procedures are the most
that can be hoped for and in recent years there has been some
useful progress on this front.
15. There is no doubt that economic sanctions
will continue to commend themselves as non-violent instruments
of pressure, although political measures may also be relevant,
or preferable. Ideally, the threat of sanctions would be sufficient
to bring results but, if it is not, action must follow. Given
the costs involved it is reasonable to expect economic measures
to contribute significantly to the desired outcome, but they also
run the risk of provoking defiance and introduce rigidities which
can make the resolution of differences more difficult. Lessons
of past experience in respect of goal-setting, burden-sharing
and target responses, complemented by expert studies which identify
particular vulnerabilities, should suggest an appropriate set
of measures, tailored to suit the particular case. A plan for
graduated pressure may also be useful. Obviously humanitarian
concerns must be taken into account but economic sanctions cannot
be made painless and over-reliance on sanctions "targeted"
against individuals could be a mistake: they send a message reinforcing
rhetorical condemnation, but do not exert strong coercive pressure.
16. Two final comments in this very brief
presentation may be relevant. The first is that incentives may
usefully complement a sanctions programme. They can be offered
by individual governments or by a like-minded and influential
group (such as the EU), possibly alongside UN action. The second
is to stress the need for legitimacy as a basis for sanctions:
they carry more weight when they are perceived not as furthering
the interests of the governments imposing them but as measures
defending important international norms of law and morality.
31 August 2006
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