And if it was one of the greatest failures of Washington’s foreign policy? This is, at least, one of the questions that the reading of the book is opened by the work, director of the world forecast for the Economist Intelligence Unit, has just published on American economic sanctions (Backfire, Columbia University Press , not translated). Today, she explains, some seventy programs of this nature implemented by the United States target more than nine thousand companies, people and sectors almost everywhere on the planet.
And yet, “history shows that, most of the time, nations resist and the sanctions fail,” said Agathe Demais. This is evidenced by Cuba, where the Castrist regime was hardly shaken by sixty years of American embargo, or North Korea. If, most often, the measures taken have potentially terrible consequences on the economy and the populations, they fail to change the nature of the regimes. “A review of all American programs since the 1970s shows that only 13 % of targeted countries have changed their behavior in the sense hoped for by Washington,” adds the economist.
In a book also devoted to the subject (The Economic Weapon. The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War, Yale University Press, not translated), the historian Nicholas Mulder underlines that at the XX e century, economic sanctions have often proven to be counterproductive. In the 1930s, those aimed at arresting attackers, notably Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, did not prevent the Second World War – worse, they pushed these states to develop their self -sufficiency and radicalize a little more again.
And for good reason: embargoes have a chance to operate only when imposed on a short term, with a very specific objective, by a large circle of allied countries, against a state having of a multipartite electoral system, where the pressure of the populations affected by the sanctions can influence the leaders. “Either the exact opposite of most American sanctions,” said Agathe Demais, stressing that these are not very effective against autocracies. “By definition, authoritarian regimes have no intention of abandoning power; in many cases, their leaders would sign their death stop.”
vertiginous question
What should we conclude about the measures taken against Moscow since the start of the Ukrainian invasion? Will they be more effective than those adopted in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea? First of all, it should be noted that the economic difficulties crossed by Europe are in no way caused by these sanctions – they are imposed by Russia cutting the gas supply. The retaliatory measures gradually weaken the Russian economy, complicate the financing of the army and underline the unity of the Western camp. It is already a lot. But they will not put an end to war alone.
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