ABSTRACT
Economic sanctions have aroused most controversy on the grounds that they represent a blunt instrument that tends to have more impact on ordinary civilians in the target state rather than the government. These fears became most pronounced in the 1990s with evidence of starvation among Iraqis in the wake of long-standing UN sanctions. There is a good case to be made that these deprivations were more the fault of the Iraqi government than the UN sanctions. Saddam Hussein’s regime undoubtedly prioritized military rebuilding over famine relief in allocating expenditure from their shrinking budget and milked the suffering of their people in order to gain support for a lifting of the measures. Wherever the fault ultimately lies, however, there is no doubt that many Iraqis died over the last decade as a result of economic hardship resulting from political action rather than any natural disaster. This illustrates another, related, argument against economic sanctions: their success rests on the assumption that the target state government will act in a rational way.
