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This chapter examines the inspections-plus-sanctions approach to Iraqi disarmament, which characterized the enforcement aspects of this third phase of UN involvement in Iraq. The sanctions regime against Iraq stands as a paradigm of both the virtues and vices of the sanctions approach. It was the Iraq sanctions regime that demonstrated the utility and the challenges of Security Council subsidiary bodies operating as delegated regulators, through a supervisory committee established to monitor implementation of the sanctions. Although Haiti and other cases provided lessons, it was also the Iraq sanctions regime that demonstrated most clearly how a cunning target government could turn sanctions to its own ends, and how terrible the resulting cost to civilians might be.

The development and reform of smart sanctions makes them a critical element of strategic peacebuilding, specifically in their ability to restrict war and to counter terrorism. Lopez and Cortright examine the shortcomings and lessons learned from counter-terrorism efforts, in particular those led by the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) and Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED). To address the root causes of terrorism, they argue, efforts must promote good governance, economic development, and human rights—all of which are central aims of strategic peacebuilding. The authors provide recommendations for increasing regional capacities and decreasing redundancy and overlap in UN Security Council counter-terrorism efforts.

This chapter focuses on measures that collective security institutions take to address threats. Chapter 5 begins with addressing the Security Council's sanctions competence, including the constitutional requirements of necessity and proportionality which the Council has to observe. Most traditional measures of response are economic sanctions and arms and air embargoes, including the maritime interdiction element. The chapter examines the Council's relevant practice in multiple situations such as Iraq, Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, or DRC, and assesses the effectiveness of these measures and their humanitarian implications. The analysis then moves to so-called targeted sanctions against terrorist suspects and assesses both the evolution of the targeted sanctions regime from Resolution 1267(1999) onwards to date, and the reaction of national and international courts to this regime. The second major element of Chapter 5 is the authorization of the use of force by the Security Council and it covers the cases of Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Somalia, and Cote d'Ivoire. Legal limits on the Council's powers and the interpretation of its decisions underlies this analysis. The third major part of this chapter relates to the enforcement practice of regional organizations such as OAS, EU, as well as the relevant practice of NATO, OECS, AU, and ECOWAS.

This chapter examines the applicability of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESC rights) to the UN Security Council, to determine whether it is bound to respect human rights law generally, and ESC rights in particular, when acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. This includes instances when it imposes economic sanctions against states and against individuals (such as those suspected of terrorism), and when it establishes a post-conflict administration in a state. It is argued that while the primary rules of international law, including fundamental economic and social rights, are applicable to the activities of the Security Council, the UN system is woefully inadequate in ensuring the accountability of the Security Council in this, or in any other, regard.

The U.S. has a record of using a predominantly coercive approach to deal with nations whose interests and values clash with its own. When positive incentives do find their way into the mix of policies, they tend to be a weak adjunct to a core coercive thrust; and often they are resorted to both tepidly and late in the game, after the failures of established policy have been extensively absorbed. This chapter examines whether the two most widely used means of negative pressure against adversaries in U.S. foreign policy—economic sanctions and military force—do a creditable job of achieving their purpose. It shows that if the aim of coercive pressure is to force a change in policies, neither military force nor economic sanctions are very likely to work. If, instead, the objective is to degrade the adversary's capability (almost always a military capability) to do harm, armed force may indeed be useful, but a similar claim cannot be made on behalf of sanctions. Justification for extensive and exclusive reliance on instruments of coercion gets weaker with scrutiny. Accordingly, the consideration of hypothetical alternatives appears increasingly justified.

Chapter Three: Economic Interventions and the Violence of International Accountability, by Bronwen Everill, explores the different uses of economic interventions and their interlocking relationship with the evolution of humanitarian intervention. It specifically focuses on examples from the African continent, stretching from the eighteenth century to the present, though the cases examined will share broader themes with developments outside of the continent. Additionally, it examines state-level economic interventions—sanctions and aid in both war and peacetime—together as one form of pressure for conforming to humanitarian norms. Individual and corporate economic interventions will be considered separately, as a form of intervention inherent to global capitalism. An examination of economic interventions reveals their interconnectivity, as well as their relationship to compulsion and physical force. By giving or withholding, states are able to intervene in the politics of dependent states, while individuals are able to determine the shape of global production. By looking at the long historical record of humanitarian intervention in Africa, Everill is able to make clear connections between different forms of intervention—economic, military, capacity building, humanitarian, individual, state, and NGO.

Many scholars of international relations have assessed the effectiveness of sanctions by focusing on the economic adjustments introduced by the target country to cope with external pressure, neglecting the importance of growing transnational flows of capital and finance in the context of globalization. This chapter examines the success rate of U.S. unilateral economic sanctions and explores the prevailing discourses on transnational linkages at both global and local levels in order to structure the proposed case study and identify theoretical assumptions relevant to its working hypotheses. Transnational practices by non-state actors such as multinational corporations and migrants are given special attention since foreign investment and remittances have played a major role in keeping afloat the Cuban economy in the post-cold war era.

The George W. Bush jr administration explicitly declared its aim to spread democracy militarily. Is such an intention legal under current international law, norms and institutions? If one proves it to be at odds with the criterion of legality – since it clearly contradicts one of the main pillars of the UN Charter, i.e. the principle of non-interference –, can it be justified with recourse to the concept of legitimacy? We offer some paradigmatic insights into the concepts of legality and legitimacy, mainly developed for the internal context. With the tools of political theory we try to investigate whether there is any room for a different interpretation about exporting democracy or any need to reform international law. Finally, we discuss the methods used for exporting democracy, so as to argue that the issue of its legality and legitimacy cannot be assessed without taking into consideration the means employed.

This chapter examines how sanctions influence regime survival. The chapter argues that sanctions reduce a dictatorship’s ability to obtain patronage rents from external sources that are used to buy domestic political support, which can lead to defections from the elites and may embolden opposition groups. The loss of patronage resources is particularly acute in personalist regimes, which have limited capacity to compensate for this loss by increasing revenue from alternative streams or offering credible power-sharing concessions. Further, leaders and elites in personalist regimes are the least likely to obtain domestic protection after a regime transition. Consequently, personal rulers normally choose to resist in power, at the risk of being forcibly removed by rivals or rebel groups. Empirical tests show that sanctions increase the likelihood of autocratic—but not democratic—transitions in personalist regimes. The argument is illustrated with a case study of sanctions directed against Idi Amin’s regime in Uganda.

The recent dispute between the United States and the European Union involves a Massachusetts procurement statute that, in essence, imposed a 10 per cent negative preference against companies active in Burma. This chapter briefly examines the human rights situation in Burma that prompted not only Massachusetts but also the US federal government and the EU to impose sanctions. It then presents statistics regarding foreign investment in Burma as of 1998, when the US–EU dispute over the Massachusetts Burma law reached its peak. It describes the process by which Massachusetts became bound to the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), and explains the history and nature of sanctions imposed against Burma by the US federal government, the EU, and the state of Massachusetts. The chapter discusses the rationale behind the diplomatic and procedural manoeuvres in the EU's WTO case and analyses the substantive claims of the EU under the GPA. It analyses the motivations and procedures regarding the NFTC's domestic court challenge to the Massachusetts Burma law, the constitutional claims upon which the NFTC based its suit, and the results in US courts. It looks at the future of state procurement-sanctions laws enacted for foreign-policy reasons in light of the US court rulings. It explores the implications of the Massachusetts Burma law dispute for US–EU dispute prevention and resolution and gives several recommendations regarding state foreign-policy-related procurement-sanctions laws.

This chapter presents the Clinton administration’s responses to contemporary Cuban issues. Like his predecessors, Clinton engaged in a range of secret talks with Cuba, although normalizing relations never made it onto the agenda because the president placed a higher priority on electoral votes in Florida than on relations with Havana. By improving the atmosphere of state-to-state relations and expanding societal engagement, the Clinton team consciously aimed to build a political constituency for improving relations—both in the United States and in Cuba. Furthermore, Castro’s decision to shoot down two small planes off the Cuban coast in February 1996, and Washington’s reaction, fundamentally changed the parameters of U.S.-Cuban relations by inscribing U.S. economic sanctions into law. Nevertheless, creative White House strategists found ways to move relations forward.

In this chapter the author presents some historical background and conclusions about recent political economic analysis, which the author believes are essential for interpreting current trade policy developments. It is also said that United States trade policy has entered a new era of protectionalism. This is seen from some of the trade restrictions adopted by the United States over the past two decades, especially the use of economic sanctions for foreign policy reasons. It reflects as such modern mercantilism; most of the important trade restrictions have reflected the ability of some interest groups to generate protection for a particular sector against the desires of the Executive branch.

Soon after the outbreak of the First World War British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey began to insist that the United States would have to guarantee any peace to which it might be a party. Although this was mainly intended to block any inopportune mediation attempt by Woodrow Wilson, Grey did believe that the European settlement would be more stable if Washington were committed to its maintenance. London's failure to respond to Wilson's feelers led to a sharp deterioration in Anglo‐American relations as Lloyd George became prime minister in December 1916. However, the new Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, and his deputy Lord Robert Cecil, who had already worked out a plan intended to be more palatable to the United States by emphasizing economic rather than military sanctions, continued Grey's broadly pro‐American policy. The need for a guarantee was reaffirmed. American entry into the war would make this a practical possibility.

This chapter considers the case for economic sanctions, both targeted and comprehensive. It challenges the prevailing view on the morality of economic sanctions, which holds that sanctions (including to some degree targeted sanctions) are highly objectionable. To do so, it considers and replies to four central objections to economic sanctions. These are the ‘Indiscriminate Objection’, which asserts that sanctions are impermissible because of their apparent indiscriminateness, the ‘Intending-the-Harm Objection’, which holds that sanctions are highly problematic because they involve means that intend harms, the ‘Instrumentalization Objection’, which holds that sanctions wrongly use the suffering of innocents as a mere means, and the ‘Ineffectiveness Objection’, which holds that sanctions are ineffective. Having rejected the central arguments against sanctions, the chapter then argues that sanctions can be favourable in at least one respect: they can more fairly distribute the currently inevitable harms to innocents of tackling aggression and mass atrocities.

This chapter offers a review of the main developments in U.S.–Cuba relations from 1959 to 2009, with a focus on the history of U.S. economic sanctions with respect to Cuba that were first enacted in the early 1960s and then intensified during the 1990s with the Torricelli law and the Helms-Burton law. A major contention is that the strengthening of the embargo was linked to self-interested groups in the Cuban-American community seeking to serve their parochial interests and able to influence U.S. policymakers. The origin of the U.S. embargo against Cuba and various efforts at normalization are also discussed. The U.S. policy of Cuba under various presidents is examined.

Could Spain participate in the Marshall Plan while at the same time it was politically otracized at the United Nations? While the State Department monitored warily the fortunes of the monarchists, the more practical question of Spain's integration into international trade and commerce was rekindled in June 1947 with the launch of the European Recovery Programme, more popularly known as the Marshall Plan. The problem of integrating Spain into the new Western commercial system, designed to prop up the economies of Western Europe and prevent capitulation to communism, epitomizes the increasing division of interests created between Britain and the United States on that issue, and subsequently the North Atlantic Treaty. This chapter discusses the question of economic sanctions against Spain, the O'Konski amendment that would have allowed Spain to participate in the Marshall Plan, Francisco Franco's response to Spain's exclusion from the Marshall Plan, and Spain's improving commercial relations with several countries such as France and Britain.

This chapter focuses on the Polish Crisis from August 1980 to December 1981 and the events that followed the declaration of martial law in December 1981, with emphasis on Polish-U.S. relations. It also examines American attempts to coordinate policy with its NATO allies, and how General Wojciech Jaruzelski's declaration of martial law affected relations between Poland and the United States. The chapter first provides a background on the Polish Crisis, which began in August 1980 with workers' strikes along the Baltic coast. It then assesses the reaction of the White House in general, and President Ronald Reagan in particular, to the declaration of martial law. It also considers the first steps taken by the U.S. government following the declaration of martial law in Poland, including economic sanctions, together with Reagan's public comments about the Soviet Union's complicity. The chapter concludes by discussing Poland's reaction to the U.S. economic sanctions.

This chapter surveys the existing literature and presents the book’s analytical framework. Understanding how sanctions work involves starting with a basic model of domestic political contestation into which sanctions intervene: a state theory. The chapter therefore teases out and critically assesses the state theories implicit in existing sanctions literature: liberal, public choice, institutionalist (regime type), and neo-Weberian approaches. It then elaborates an alternative analytical framework, based on Gramscian state theory: Social Conflict Analysis. This perspective understands states as being shaped by struggles for power and resources between contending socio-political coalitions. Thus, this chapter analyses how sanctions ‘work’ by exploring how they affect the composition, interests, strategies, resources, and power of socio-political groups and their alliances, how this conditions their struggle for state power, and how this ultimately transforms political regimes. This chapter also explains the book’s method and case selection.

This chapter presents a case study of sanctions against apartheid South Africa from the 1960s to 1990s. It begins by identifying the main forces contesting state power in South Africa in the periods of classic and reform apartheid. It then explores the impact of 1960s and 1970s oil and arms embargoes on this conflict, showing that, in the medium term, these measures were counterproductive, solidifying and broadened the ruling coalition. Only when the regime faced serious economic crisis and proto-revolutionary upheaval in the 1980s did these sanctions divide the ruling bloc. Later investment and trade sanctions also had a quite modest economic impact but, in this particular context, helped strengthen anti-apartheid groups and fragment dominant forces to a limited extent. The crucial factor in ending apartheid, and making sanctions ‘bite’, was the emergence of a black working class and the organizations and radicalization of the non-white masses.