ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the United States (US) has an extensive history of applying sanctions and other types of embargoes; and, for the most part, the postwar era logically fits in the tradition given the boost in world economic and military power the US received as a consequence of the war. America experimented again with economic coercion during the Civil War. Economic sanctions were used more often and more severely as the level of international hostlility expanded and the US felt increasingly insecure. As American participation in hostilities drew closer, economic power was exercised increasingly according to a balance of power conception of world politics. American uses of embargoes up to the war followed the development and geographical projection of economic and military capability. Economic sanctions were used in the "organizing phase," as George Modelski terms it, as the US desired to hasten de-colonization, deter its communist adversaries, and consolidate the Western alliance.
