Sanctions as a Weapon of War

I recently came across an interesting discussion that sought to understand why Russia’s economy has survived economic sanctions from the West. And to appreciate the interest and intrigue of Western Nations and (especially their media), we’d have to consider that the sanctions did not begin after Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine; Russia faced years of sanctions for annexing Crimea as well. And yet, Russia’s economy is not only surviving the sanctions – but they are doing it to the extent that even Western media cannot deny this fact (despite having previously claimed that the sanctions were working). And so, we have to address, more broadly, the nature of sanctions as a weapon of war; and also the irony that makes them futile.
THE WEST IS INVESTIGATING WHY SANCTIONS HAVE NOT WORKED ON RUSSIA
And now onto our main discussion on sanctions as a weapon of war, and I indicated earlier that this discussion was prompted by a Western media outlet’s quest to understand why Russia’s economy has survived economic sanctions from the West. Kindly have a listen to this excerpt from the discussion.
Let’s directly respond to this. First, the problem with the sentiments expressed here is that they, firstly, are peddling the Western propaganda of a claimed Russian invasion or a Russia that is a perpetual axis of evil for the west to contend against or contain (which we had refuted a number of times, here on ‘The War Room’). The second problem with the sentiments expressed in the video is that this discussion carries a loaded assumption of the legitimacy of sanctions, which is to say that the people who put the discussion together are desirous of finding a way to make sanctions (which are a destructive economic weapon) successful and destroying the lives of millions of people Russia. Well, these two problems from the video excerpt we just watched fundamentally answer why sanctions have not worked on Russia.
In essence, these sanctions are fuelled by an ulterior motive of purely weaking Russia, while treating Russian citizens as a mere casualty. However, governments take precautionary measures to protect even their economic sovereignty and the wellbeing of their people. Governments are aware (or should be aware) of the potential for abrupt changes in global politics and alignments, which includes the possibility of sanctions, because leaders of nations are also people that are susceptible to being fickle – or even purely making drastic changes that are perhaps uniquely advantageous to their respective nations – like the brilliant move where the US exited the WHO. But, this potential for drastic, abrupt and at times fickle changes, is why countries generally build comparative advantages in trade, invest resources in being a major policy influencer in regions, or why they try to move away from dependencies.
All of this is a really long way of saying the sanctions on Russia are not working because Russia is aware of the West’s desire to weaken it, and has generally prepared against such measures, while progressively increasing its capacity to surmount them. And so, it is the perpetual threat of western hostilities that have made Russia capable against them.
THE SYSTEMATISATION OF SANCTIONS AND THE THE 1919 PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE
Now, the original impulse for a system of economic sanctions came at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, from the British delegate, Lord Robert Cecil, and his French counterpart, Léon Bourgeois. The Paris Conference in this case refers to the international meeting that established the terms of peace after World War I, culminating in the Treaty of Versailles, and also plans to establish the League of Nations (which is the organisation that preceded the UN). Now, these men were unlikely partners. Cecil, an aristocratic barrister and renegade member of the Conservative Party, was a fervent free trader who became Britain’s first minister of blockade during the war; Bourgeois, the son of a republican watchmaker, worked his way up the professions to become a Radical Party prime minister in the 1890s and advocated a political theory of mutual aid known as “solidarism”.
But, despite these different backgrounds, both Cecil and Bourgeois agreed that the League of Nations which could, and should, be equipped with a powerful enforcement instrument. They envisioned deploying the same techniques of economic pressure used on the Central Powers against future challengers of the Versailles order. Such recalcitrant countries would be labelled “aggressors”—a new, morally loaded legal category—and be subjected to economic isolation by the entire League of Nations. The methods of economic warfare were thus repurposed and refined for use outside a formally declared state of war. What made interwar sanctions a truly new institution was not that they could isolate states from global trade and finance. It was that this coercive exclusion could take place in peacetime.
Well, what then resulted from this, is that a coercive policy that used to be possible only in time of war—essentially, isolating human communities from exchange with the wider world—now became possible in a wider range of situations. Commercial and financial blockades, which were a policy developed as a form of economic war, were now re-conceived as a prophy-lactic against war. By carving out the space in which international economic sanctions have been used for the last century, the League thus had a much more profound impact on modern history than is usually assumed. Indeed, it is further argued that this economic weapon deeply shaped the interwar world and thereby the structure of the political and economic order that we inhabit today. For one thing, it marked the international emergence of a new form of liberalism, one that worked through a technical and administrative apparatus of lawyers, diplomats, military experts, and economists.
These officials’ work, first in wartime and then after 1919, had far-reaching effects. In a period when European governments granted suffrage and extended welfare and social insurance, sanctions made them see other populations as suitable targets of coercive pressure. Long-standing traditions, such as the protection of neutrality, civilian noncombatants, private property, and food supplies, were eroded or circumscribed. Meanwhile, new practices, such as police action against aggressor states and logistical assistance to the victims of aggression, arose. All of this amounted to a major and complex transformation of the international system.
ECONOMIC SANCTIONS ARE THUS NOT AN ALTERNATIVE TO WAR, BUT A FORM OF WAR
Today, economic sanctions are generally regarded as an alternative to war. But for most people in the interwar period, the economic weapon was the very essence of total war. Many sanctionists regretfully noted the devastating effects of pressure on civilians but nonetheless wholly accepted them. Woodrow Wilson held that if “thoughtful men have thought, and thought truly, that war is barbarous, the boycott is an infinitely more terrible instrument of war.” William Arnold-Forster, a British blockade administrator and ardent internationalist, admitted that during the Great War (quote) “we tried, just as the Germans tried, to make our enemies unwilling that their children should be born; we tried to bring about such a state of destitution that those children, if born at all, should be born dead.” Internationalists were exceedingly honest about this awful reality for a good reason. By deliberately spelling out the horror of enforced deprivation, they hoped to dissuade revisionist states from even thinking about challenging the Versailles order. They thought that the threat of being blockaded would keep the peace.
And so, interestingly, the initial intention behind creating the economic weapon was thus not to use it. To interwar internationalists, economic sanctions were a form of deterrence, prefiguring nuclear strategy during the Cold War. Of course, sanctions were not nearly as immediately destructive as nuclear weapons. BUT, for anyone living in the pre-nuclear decades of the early twentieth century, they raised a frightening prospect. A nation put under comprehensive blockade was on the road to social collapse. The experience of material isolation left its mark on society for decades afterward, as the effects of poor health, hunger, and malnutrition were transmitted to unborn generations. Weakened mothers gave birth to underdeveloped and stunted children. The economic weapon thereby cast a long-lasting socio-economic and biological shadow over targeted societies, not unlike radioactive fallout. Feminist politicians and scholars in particular recognized this during the Great War itself, and many pursued an energetic campaign against the economic weapon’s targeting of civilians. The women’s movement played an active role in the international history of sanctions, largely opposing and moderating their force—although also sometimes supporting them as preferable to war.
SANCTIONS HAVE A DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED RELATIONSHIP WITH HUMAN RIGHTS
At the 48th session of the Human Rights Council, on 16 September 2021, Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for governments to reassess and critically re-evaluate their use of sanctions so as to avoid adverse impacts on human rights.
In her statement to the Human Rights Council, Ms Bachelet highlighted the severe impact that economic sanctions targeting an entire country or sector can have on the most vulnerable people in the country, who have “neither perpetrated crimes nor otherwise bear responsibility for improper conduct”. Ms Bachelet flagged that the lack of due process in imposing country-based sanctions enabled those “sought to be targeted” to “perversely benefit through gaming sanctions regimes” and profiteer “from the economic distortions and incentives introduced by them”.
Ms Bachelet further explained that punitive restrictions on banks and financial institutions led to over-compliance which in some instances created obstacles to importing basic food and medical supplies and “risked causing more suffering and death and wider contagion around the world”. She added that “individuals and corporate entities subject to such sanctions often have scant legal process prior to being brought under such regimes, and frequently have little if any effective recourse to any mechanism to appeal liabilities or penalties that are applied against them”.
It is no secret that economic sanctions are a powerful tool of foreign policy. Governments seeking to influence a State’s behaviour in situations where diplomacy is insufficient and military intervention is deemed too risky (or otherwise unacceptable) regularly rely on economic sanctions to further their policy interests. Equally, it is no secret that economic sanctions can have and have had a direct and dire impact on the everyday lives and businesses of normal civilians. The questioning of targeted sanctions’ legality and compliance with fundamental rights, combined with the fact that country-based sanctions remain in use, highlights that the adverse impacts of sanctions on basic human rights continues to be felt by many until this day.
Let’s consider a notable example in the discussion on sanctions – being Zimbabwe. And we have to consider this in light of “targeted sanctions”. In essence, the imposition of country-based sanctions can have a massive adverse effect on the economy and humanitarian wellbeing of the targeted country. As recognised by Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General to the United Nations in his 1997 report to the UN, country-based sanctions tend to inflict the most harm on vulnerable civilian groups and can cause great collateral damage to third states.
Widely shared concerns about the adverse impact of country-based sanctions led to the birth of “targeted” or “smart” sanctions in the early 21st century, following the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States in 2001. Targeted sanctions aim to reduce collateral damage to the general population and third countries by targeting specific individuals or organisations believed to be responsible for offending behaviour. Widely considered to be inspired by the Pinochet case and the Bosnian war crime trials, targeted sanctions were born out of a growing emphasis in international law on individual accountability of those in power for the unlawful acts of states.
This development has arguably increased the effectiveness of sanctions as a foreign policy tool. However, concerns over their impact on human rights remain. Indeed, the European Court of Human Rights has questioned the legality of targeted UN sanctions and found them to be in breach of key procedural rights enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) e.g. the right to fair trial (Article 6 of the ECHR) and the right to an effective remedy (Article 13 of the ECHR).
THE IRONIC FUTILITY OF SANCTIONS
Now, the essence of what we have discussed thus far is this: when sanctions actually work, they do more harm than good; in fact, they contradict the claimed aim of coercing governments to protect human rights because the sanctions themselves hinder the everyday lives and businesses of civilians. But, then let’s talk about why sanctions are also (ironically) futile.
Sanctions are ironically futile for the reason they have not worked on Russia, which is that they make countries eager to be prepared to withstand them. Secondly, sanctions also fail, because they shift alliances. Today, part of the reason why sanctions have not worked on Russia is because it has formed stronger economic alliances with countries like China and India. For instance, while European countries are incurring high energy costs from not purchasing Russian gas and oil, Russia is still making a lot of money from oil exports to China and India; who then export the oil to other countries!