ABSTRACT
This chapter expresses that comprehensive economic sanctions may be legitimate if they satisfy several conditions: they are a response to a grave evil and they are pursued as one part of a concerted diplomatic effort to avoid war and find a just resolution to the problem. It also includes that the sanctions avoid irreversible, grave harm to the civilian population of the target country; less coercive means are pursued first; the harmful effects of sanctions are proportionate to the good ends likely to be achieved; and sanctions are imposed by a multilateral entity. The chapter examines the relevance of both consequentialist and deontological considerations in a moral analysis of sanctions. It considers the extent to which sanctions may be considered an alternative to war that requires a moral framework different from a just-war analysis. Finally, the chapter elaborates criteria for evaluating the morality of a particular sanctions regime.
