How Sanctions Make Everything Worse

Sanctions advocates can’t or won’t admit it, but their preferred policies act as goads that trigger worse behavior.

While I was reading Hinge Points last week, I noticed how the book touched on many other important problems with U.S. foreign policy beyond the North Korea file itself. He was discussing the specifics of North Korea policy, but the lessons to be drawn from it can be applied to many other policies. For example, in his review of the Obama administration’s record he drew attention to how sanctions on North Korea backfired in a big way:

Pyongyang’s response to the sanctions was an expansion of the nuclear program. It did not end the program or even, as far as can be determined, slow it down. The sanctions did not induce any positive behavioral change by North Korea….The sanctions action the United States orchestrated at the UN backed Washington into a corner and simply perpetuated a pattern of pressure and condemnation to the benefit of Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions [italics mine-DL].¹

Sanctions advocates like to present coercive measures as the “tough” response to a problem, and they cast sanctions relief as a gift or “reward” for the targeted government. The reality is that increased sanctions pressure gives the targeted government an incentive to do more of the whatever it is that the U.S. opposes in order to build up its own leverage against Washington and its allies. As Hecker puts it here, the pattern of pressure and condemnation worked to the benefit of North Korean nuclear ambitions.