Improving How Sanctions Work for Everyday Citizens

As a resident of the UAE, I usually flinch a bit when there is a proposal of fresh sanctions against this country. Usually, the threat originates from a Western power. I flinch because, like most, economic growth where I live is a positive development for my family, while the opposite isn’t necessarily on my most-desired-outcomes list. The UAE enjoys an environment of no corporate taxes on foreign-earned income and a generally neutral stance in international political disputes. For these and other reasons, it receives pressure from time to time due to accusations of sanctions busting, tax haven harboring, etc.

Today, I spent some time at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Library and dug through a few great books on economic sanctions.

It’s a beautiful library if you haven’t been.

I read quite a bit through The Art of Sanctions, The Success of Sanctions, and Busted Sanctions, while also leveraging ChatGPT to dig into, and make sense of, various case studies included in these well-researched works by esteemed professionals in the sanctions arena.

One common concept across these books centered around the call for more multilateral cooperation for sanctions success. Additionally, as one might expect, there were calls for more planning and longer-term, holistic strategies.

Additionally, I spent a bit of time over the past couple of weeks brainstorming approaches for improving the quality of contemporary sanction strategies. Part of what sparked this interest was a chance encounter with an esteemed researcher on the history of sanctions at Stanford’s Hoover Institute almost two weeks ago. So, with enough forces at play around sanctions, I thought I might outline some of the key issues, from my perspective, with some unfortunate consequences of modern sanctions. Additionally, some quality assurance ideas are included based on my conversations with GPT4, these wonderful books and my personal experiences living in sanctions-sensitive countries, such as South Korea and the UAE.

Key Issues with Modern Sanctions

1. Sometimes, the punitive intent of sanctions by aggressor countries supersedes compliance with international laws and norms. This is a problem chiefly because a slippery slope can emerge through the nature of cherry-picking when there isn’t compliance with international treaties, especially by superpowers. This can be a long-term recipe for instability.
2. Especially given the US-styled sanctions that are generally less targeted than European-styled versions (and also don’t require as much legislative approval), ordinary people find themselves unnecessarily and negatively affected by elements that they have little to no control over. Does a poor factory worker need to starve to death because the authoritarian leader of his country launched a rocket? Social pressure on leaders from abroad, like sanctions that cause mass starvations, but that do not actually prove effective are shameful atrocities.
3. Tit-for-tat, revenge sanctions oftentimes don’t actually lead to the desired outcome of either party. Just ask Thomas Jefferson how his sanctions against France and Britain in 1807 and 1809 worked out for any of the parties involved.

Onto the proposed solutions. Some of these kill a few of the problems above with one stone.

1. This is the big idea. The others are moreso musings. The base concept is an international treaty requiring countries that are not at war with one another to publish a few reports before sanctions are introduced. The highest standards in economic analysis and neutrality would be required, of course, as the reports would need to estimate probability distributions and explanations around various outcomes such as foreign and domestic unemployment, consumer spending, investment inefficiencies, poverty levels and public health consequences. While the targeted country could opt out, a third-party, neutral nation, under this plan, would produce a similar report at the expense of the targeting nation. This would ensure public and policymaker awareness around the consequences they will likely be inflicting on others and themselves.
2. Sanctions busters are going to bust sanctions. They do this usually via intermediary countries. Busted Sanctions by Bryan R. Early is a phenomenal book that describes in detail how this has been done historically. When the US and its allies introduced sanctions around Russian oil in 2022, it was interesting to observe how Russian exports fell incredibly while a distributed bunch of other countries’ oil exports rose substantially. Bite-sized visualizations of highly coincidental occurances like this (produced by official sources for distribution to media and consumption by everyday folks), should focus on how this sanction-busting intermediary layer drives up pricing in the aggressor country (while not actually stopping the flow of goods, no less). As for ideas, perhaps we don’t have to penalize medium to low-income workers for profiting for those types of inefficiencies. Bill Clinton and Executive Order 13059 of 1997 punished US citizens and companies for even being involved, even indirectly, with Iranian trade due to policital disagreement. However, Iranian exports through other countries grew, and normal Americans didn’t even benefit financially from the middleman premium.
3. Acknowledgements. It’s probably a good idea for officials and courts to acknowledge when sanctions break local laws. If we look at the US: Americans can’t import legal items from certain countries, can’t send money to people if they happen to live in certain countries, and aren’t allowed to fly directly to various destinations. Some of these activities can lead to the seizure of personal and financial assets without due process. There is a grey area here legally, but acknowledgement of how the enforcement of sanctions, or sanctions themselves, violate the right of citizens encoded in various laws might be important. This acknowledgment is probably most effective in the form of class-action-esque legal endeavors by citizens in republics, such as the US, UK, South Korea, etc.

The varied processes of sanctions development, enactment and enforcement has evolved over the decades. Certainly, they are a much more civilized alternative to armed conflict. Taking the lessons we’ve learned in successful, failed and meh sanction implementations, maybe it is time to enhance our drive for more equitable sanctions by taking an everyday-citizen-oriented approach.