It has been a response for decades in many cases now: e.g. Rhodesia, North Korea, and now Russia.
But has there ever been a case where it really made a difference? I can’t recall any.
One suspects that it is a face-saving manouver by govenments which want to be seen as ‘doing something’ but are not willing to commit to any actual risk?
Apartheid
Economic sanctions against South Africa placed a significant pressure on the government that helped to end apartheid. In 1990, President Frederik Willem (F.W.) de Klerk recognised the economic unsustainability of the burden of international sanctions, released the African nationalist leader Nelson Mandela and unbanned the African National Congress (ANC) that Mandela led. De Klerk and Mandela guided the country to democratic elections in 1994, with Mandela as president. When Mandela was asked if economic sanctions helped to bring an end to the apartheid system, Mandela replied “Oh, there is no doubt.”
It’s working on Russia right now. The people are hurting because of all the sanctions, and the military is much less powerful than it otherwise would be.
Didn’t it also convince Libya to give up its nuclear program?
Anyway, if you search for “when did economic sanctions work” there are tons of articles, from scholarly stuff on JSTOR to Politico to paywalled Washington Post articles.
Hmm, did they really?
I’m willing to be convinced it may have had SOME effect now and then.
But I think is is usually more of a gesture than a real tool.
It can be both, of course. A country can decide that what some other country is doing is beyond the pale and is willing to forego doing business with that country because of it. Sanctions harm both countries, hopefully the target more than the sanctioner, but it’s a way for a country to say, this far and no further, even if it harms me.
As silenus said, the disinvestment campaign against the Apartheid South African regime had a very real effect. I lived it, and it definitely had a huge impact.
I have to admit I know very little about how Apartheid was dismantled, and perhaps this is one example of where economic pressure did have some effect. But it doesn’t seem to have been a very effective tool in general?
It did have an effect on Soviet Union and its satellites, I am sure. And on Franco’s Spain in the 50’s; though it did not bring the regime down, it had to change course (a bit, then other things – the Cold War – interfered).
And I vagely remember Rhodesia, would have to check (too lazy…).
But what does having an impact mean? Sanctions have had a significant impact on Cuba, they just have not brought the regime down. It could even be argued that the regime has used sanctions as an excuse to get away with a dismal economic (and human rights!) performance (as in Iran too). But without sanctions life in Cuba (and in Iran) would be much more pleasant. And when the regime finally falls, people are going to wonder what took them so long to act.
There is no “perhaps” about it. It did have a large effect.
The British North American colonies had economic sanctions levied against them in the form of various tax programs enacted by the British Parliament, policies which formed a large part of the justification re: the American Revolution, so there’s another example of sanctions having an impact (albeit not the intended impact).
Depending on the definitions and perspective, the 1973 “oil price shock” was an economic sanction with rather stark political effects.
Here’s a summary of the findings of the Global Sanctions Database, looking at 1100 cases of sanctions between 1950 and 2019.
The Libyans gave up after losing all of their fissile material in a scam. All they got in return was a box containing pinball machine parts. There’s a documentary about it.
You could argue that Roosevelt’s embargos against Japan in 1940 pushed them to be more aggressive towards expansion.
I think it’s important to recognize that in the major cases, you’re talking about starving entire populations and crippling economies. It’s hard to imagine that ever failing to have a significant political effect.
Whether they’re effective as targeted legal warfare against the regime you’re presumably trying to target is one thing, but talking about sanctions as meaningless gestures in lieu of taking any real action really minimizes how devastating they’ve been in a lot of these cases. Dropping bombs would sometimes be less destructive.
Sanctions on Rhodesia were widely ignored, and with South Africa willing to assist Ian Smith’s government it was unlikely they ever would have obtained their object. The situation for Rhodesia didn’t really become serious until Portugal gave up its African colonies, and the country was faced with hostile states on three sides, willing to assist the two major Liberation factions lead by Mugabe and Nkomo.
The Imperial Japanese attacked us in WW2 due to sanctions (mostly).