U.S. Economic Sanctions for Foreign Policy Ends: Why the U.S. Persists In Using a Flawed Weapon in International Relations
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2000
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Haverford College. Department of Political Science
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
After witnessing the atrocities of World War I, Woodrow Wilson, one of the first modern proponents of sanctions proclaimed, "A nation that is boycotted is a nation that is in sight of surrender. Apply this economic, peaceful, silent, deadly, remedy, and there will be no need for force ... It does not cost a life outside the nation boycotted, but it brings pressure upon the nation, which in my judgment, no modern nation could resist." Since then, the United States has followed Wilson's ideas to become the primary implementer of economic sanctions. Furthermore, the U.S. has chosen to challenge the opinions of the international community and act unilaterally. However, unilateral sanctions, an essentially American invention, have recently been criticized for being unsuccessful and harmful to the United States. Despite the ineffectiveness of unilateral sanctions and their adverse effects, the United States continues to implement them to punish rogue states, because there is no other domestically and internationally acceptable protocol between diplomacy and warfare. This paper aims to explain why the United States uses unilateral sanctions in spite of their ineffectiveness and consequences. Before doing so, it is necessary to understand the basics of sanctions. Therefore, the first half of the paper provides: a brief history of sanctions, a guide to understanding and evaluating sanctions, reasons for the U.S.'s use of sanctions, and a discussion of the repercussions of sanctions. To support my claim that sanctions are ineffective and detrimental, this study draws on the cases of India and Pakistan, Uganda, Iran, and Myanmar. These cases were selected because they each represent a different objective to which sanctions are applied. For each case, I have provided a narrative history, the details of the sanctions, the impact on both the sanctioned country and the United States, and an overall assessment of the sanctions.