© Institute of Economic Affairs 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing, Oxford Other articles Blackwell Publishing Ltd THE ETHICS OF ECONOMIC SANCTIONS Robert W. McGee This article examines economic sanctions from an ethical perspective. Utilitarian ethics and rights theory are applied to economic sanctions in general. Special attention is paid to the economic sanctions imposed against Iraq and Cuba. The conclusion is that economic sanctions are very difficult to justify on any grounds and have negative consequences. Sanctions should not be used as a tool of international relations. Introduction Economic sanctions have become a policy tool in the USA and, to a lesser extent, the United Nations in recent years (Cortright and Lopez, 2000). The main idea behind imposing economic sanctions is to alter the behaviour of the targeted country. The problem is that economic sanctions are seldom successful in achieving the goals they set out to achieve. Sanctions often have unintended consequences on both the target country and the sanctioning country. It is difficult to justify sanctions on utilitarian grounds because there are more losers than winners. They are difficult to justify on rights grounds because sanctions necessarily violate the rights of innocent parties. That being the case, let us take a look at economic sanctions, in theory and in practice, in an attempt to find when, and under what circumstances, economic sanctions might be justified. Why are sanctions imposed? Perhaps the main reason economic sanctions are imposed is to alter a country’s behaviour in some way. The USA Engage website lists the following reasons why the USA has imposed unilateral economic sanctions on various countries over the years: • Boycott activity • Communism • Transition to democracy • Environmental activity • Expropriation • Harbouring war criminals • Human rights • Market reform • Military aggression • Narcotics activity • Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction • Terrorism • Workers’ rights The United Nations and individual countries have imposed sanctions for some of these reasons as well. The USA is the biggest imposer of sanctions. It currently imposes some kind of sanction on more than 70 countries, including some countries that are supposedly allies of the USA, including Canada and Mexico (McGee, 2002). How successful have sanctions been? Hufbauer et al. (1990a, 1990b) did a major study that analysed the effectiveness of sanctions. The study included many countries and several decades. The conclusion was that sanctions are usually a failure in terms of altering the target country’s behaviour in the right direction. Table 1 shows a summary of the success rate for various goals of sanctions. As can be seen, the goal of sanctions that has the lowest probability of being achieved is military impairment (20%). That is dismal. Only slightly better is the success rate for disruption of military adventures (33%). The goal with the highest probability of achievement, the only one that is achieved more than half the time, is destabilisation (52%), and it is questionable whether destabilisation is a worthy goal of sanctions. Destabilisation of Germany during the 1930s led to the rise of Hitler. Destabilisation of czarist Russia in 1917 led to the rise of communism. The devil you know may be better than the devil you don’t know. Imposing economic sanctions aimed at destabilising a regime may make things worse rather than better. It could also be seen as an act of war. The leader of North Korea has stated exactly that. So imposing sanctions to destabilise a regime could lead to major unintended consequences.