In June 2021, the United States imposed 36 different sanctions regimes on states, groups, or individuals. Some of these measures have been in place for several years – such as American sanctions in the Balkans – while others, like those imposed against members of the Hong Kong government, have been implemented for less than a year. The United States is the country that has imposed the most sanctions regimes, with over 120 occurrences during the last century, even though the overall effectiveness of these sanctions seems to have been decreasing since the 1990s.
Are sanctions effective?
From the end of World War II to the 1960s, American sanctions led to notable successes, such as those taken against Southern Rhodesia in 1965. At that time, the United States was at the center of numerous international assistance programs, aiding war-torn countries with reconstruction and providing essential goods and services. In the 1970s and 1980s, despite economic development due to multilateral assistance, American sanctions remained effective as long as their goals remained limited. The sanctions against Libya in 1978 serve as a good example.
Before World War II, fewer than a quarter of the sanctions in place aimed to overthrow the sanctioned regime. However, since the 1990s, more than half of the sanctions regimes have had this goal. A well-known example is the sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990, following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. This case, which did not result in the dictator’s overthrow, illustrates that sanctions rarely lead to political changes as definitive as a regime change.
Various factors contribute to the success or failure of a sanctions regime, including the economic cost to the sanctioned state, the nature of its power, its political and social stability, the relationship between the imposing and sanctioned states, international cohesion, phenomena like “rally around the flag” in the sanctioned state, the reputation and image of the sanctioned state, and time – with the economic cost being perhaps the most decisive factor.
PLAN – Are sanctions effective? – The use of secondary sanctions – The precedent of Soviet hydrocarbons – The Helms-Burton and D’Amato laws – Sanctions under George W. Bush and Barack Obama – The Trump administration: the resurgence of secondary sanctions
Sophie Marineau is a PhD student in the history of international relations at the Catholic University of Louvain.
