By Jordan Olmstead
Sanctions may well be the least worst option in dealing with hostile regimes. But they can have unintended consequences.
Coercing autocrats is a difficult task. The international community has few options short of military force for altering the decision calculi of the world’s strongmen, or convincing them to adopt policies more in line with international norms. Targeted economic sanctions have emerged as a least bad option for confronting misbehaving regimes. However, purposefully creating economic instability through sanctions may have destabilizing second-order effects in seemingly unrelated conflicts.
According to a study (PDF) by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, sanctions succeed in altering the target regime’s behavior roughly 33 percent of the time. The chances of success increase when sanctions are “targeted,” or directed towards democratic countries.
As such, when analysts and policymakers discuss sanctions policy in relation to Iran and Russia, most of the discussion seeks to determine the optimal scope and scale necessary to make their undesirable policies unbearably costly, without engendering retaliation, or economic consequences that spill over beyond the target state.
For instance, in a piece for the Center for a New American Security, Eric Lorber argues against cutting Russia off from the SWIFT network for facilitating international banking transactions because it would likely “collapse the Russian economy.” As a result, Russia would have a more compelling incentive to invade neighbors for their natural resources, and Western businesses with investment in Russia – or Russian investors – would be harmed.
Read the full story at The Diplomat