ABSTRACT
Policy-makers, diplomats, and scholars have long sought a middle way – between words and war – to influence those who would disturb the peace. Prior to the First World War, it was widely believed that growing economic interdependence would make it financially and commercially suicidal for any of the major Western powers to resort to war. The threat of economic sanctions, therefore, was seen as a uniquely persuasive tool to back up non-coercive techniques of arbitration and judicial settlement to resolve international disputes. As William Howard Taft, former US President and an ardent supporter of the League of Nations, put it, an economic boycott could serve as “a powerful deterrent weapon and probably make resort to force unnecessary.”1
