ABSTRACT
Introduction With the end of the Cold War, the changing climate of world affairs has given way to a new type of sanctions practice.1 This new practice has been characterized by a move from comprehensive to targeted sanctions (Cortright and Lopez 2000, 2002a, 2002b; Doxey 1996; Elliott et al. 2007; Tostensen and Bull 2002). Part of the explanation for this shift has been the negative political and humanitarian effects of comprehensive sanctions, which had previously made a weak distinction between the population of the target state and the decision-making elite. In fact, during the years prior to the late 1990s, comprehensive sanctions rested on the idea that by isolating a country, citizens of the target country would eventually rise up and overthrow their leaders (this is also part of the logic commonly referred to as the general theory of sanctions, introduced by Galtung in 1967). However, isolating a country completely has the potential to greatly harm its citizens. Thus, by causing more harm than good, the rationale of comprehensive sanctions has been deemed questionable and therefore invited a change of political course. In this context, a particular case to be mentioned is the UN sanctions regime imposed against Iraq during the 1990s (Niblock 2001). Not only did the devastation caused by the wide-ranging measures antagonize Iraqi citizens and make them suffer. They also undermined the faith in the sanctions regime among UN officials and other key stakeholders. Sanctions thus led to questions about the legitimacy of the UN. Subsequently, policy-makers at the UN and in Western capitals looked for ways to improve the sanctions tool with the objective of restoring its credibility (if it ever existed). This “ethical” turn resonated well with the widespread fatigue that characterized sanctions at that time (Hawkins and Lloyd 2003). Consequently, the idea of smart sanctions (which later became targeted sanctions) was introduced. The intention was to move away from the principle of complete isolation towards a more specific application of sanctions, focusing on particular officials or commodities. Several scholars have demonstrated that shifting to targeted sanctions can help prevent the suffering of populations in the countries targeted. For example, Cortright and Lopez (2000: 213) noted, “more selective, targeted sanctions resulted in fewer humanitarian
difficulties. In most of the cases, sanctions-related humanitarian consequences were limited.” This observation has also been made elsewhere (Shagabutdinova and Berejikan 2007: 70). However, despite the good intent of the sanctions instrument, it soon became clear that implementing targeted sanctions would prove more difficult than expected. In fact, initial problems compelled a number of sanctions experts and practitioners to provide the UN with recommendations for mitigating problems of targeted sanctions as part of several internationally stated sponsored processes (Tostensen and Bull 2002).2 Despite such efforts however, targeted sanctions have since continued to cause negative side effects, undermining their legitimacy. Although much political and scholarly attention has been paid to targeted sanctions, few efforts have been made to examine their unintended consequences (Haass 1997: 78; Elliot 2002).3 This chapter seeks to narrow this gap while simultaneously complementing the analysis of targeted sanctions in the chapters by Thomas J. Biersteker and Peter Andreas in this volume. To shed light on negative and unintended effects of targeted sanctions, this chapter examines several empirical examples of unintended consequences (as opposed to “successful” or “positive” sanctions regimes). It first reflects on the rationale of targeted sanctions and discusses implementation problems as factors enabling unintended consequences. Thereafter, a framework for identifying and addressing the unintended consequences of targeted sanctions is developed and applied to several cases. This framework illustrates the unintended consequences of sanctions for targets, senders, and briefly, third parties.
