The Injustice of Sanctions

If you want a country to become freer and more democratic, you should never wage an economic war against it.

Sam Adler-Bell reviews Anne Applebaum’s new book, Autocracy, Inc.:

Applebaum places much of her hope for combating the autocratic world order in a stronger and more enforceable sanctions regime. She repeatedly condemns Venezuela and Iran for helping each other practice “the dark art of sanctions evasion.” Nowhere does she second-guess whether sanctions are an effective (much less humane) mechanism for spreading liberal democracy.

There is some evidence they can do the opposite.

One of the open secrets about broad sanctions is that they increase the hold that authoritarian governments have on their countries. Sanctions do this by creating scarcity that the government and its cronies can exploit and by smothering the political opposition through the impoverishment of its likeliest supporters. When the U.S. wages economic war on a country, this has the effect of making people more dependent on the government to get by. Broad sanctions make the population more miserable and less likely to challenge their leaders, and governments under heavy sanctions tend to become more repressive than they were before. If you want a country to become freer and more democratic, you should never wage an economic war against it. If you wish simply to punish the entire population for what their leaders do, broad sanctions are the terrible weapon that you can use to do that.